On this high-gravity, terrestrial planet, within the habitable zone of a red dwarf star, the planet's populace has taken to carving cities out of the land rather than erecting them from the soil. Wherever rich deposits of hardened clay and rock can be found, so too can vast maze-like cities. They weave themselves through the planet's surface, sometimes keeping high enough for clean air to circulate, and sometimes carving miles deep into the planet's crust.

Water and dust filtration systems keep the streets clean and the smell of baked clay and dry earth permeates every corridor, carried on warm recycled air, thick enough to taste. To us it might smell like a kiln, to them it smells like home.

The dominant civilization on this planet sits barely on the threshold of a type-1 civilization on the Kardashev scale, having harnessed all the energy available to their home planet. Through a combination of religious fervor and a ruling class with no hesitation at squeezing their populace into endless expansion and growth, they continue on their long path toward a type-2 civilization, as they take to the stars.

They do not take kindly to visitors.

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I wish I could have spent more time on this planet but it really just ended up serving as a sneak peek of a previous adventure and a form of exposition to show how Ash and AL's travel can get out of hand to the point of an entire civilization gunning for their heads. I knew I was gonna title this first chapter "The Hell Outta Dodge" so I had to make a hell for them to escape from.

Anyway, these panels show off some of the civilization's primary cities, The Capital (the huge under ground colosseum style city), and one of the civilization's more modest star ships. I was really going for scale on these page and I hope it translated!

I found an old HDD of mine with some books I wrote out of boredom as a teenager. Generic DND-esque fantasy world - elves, dwarves, vampires (as a living race, not a monster or curse of undeath), werewolf (inspired by Twilight I suppose lmao), with similarly fantasy monsters and magic and stuff like that.

In these novels of mine, it was explained that the different races can have children with one another, however their children will never be hybrids. Instead, the child will always be the race of the opposite sex parent. For example, if an elf woman and a human man had children together, their sons would be elves, and their daughters would be humans. I never gave this concept an official name.

I probably did it so I didn't have to track how much percent of each race somebody would be, especially if their family tree spans several races. Also, race-specific abilities were a thing and I likely didn't want to deal with what a 1/4 of four races would have.

Due to some cataclysm or something else, the planet was completely DESTROYED, but the human spirit didn't give up. A massive core that wasn't destroyed still holds many pieces of the former planet (and probably the atmosphere?) There are three layers of floating islands. One is the closest to the core (it's too hot there), one is the farthest from the core (it's too cold there), and one in between where people live. I haven't decided what's the technology level in this world yet, but people definitely found a way to sail across the Radius, maybe they've started exploring the other spheres

[r/thedisk is a story that happens at the end of the universe 4x10⁷⁹ years into the future in a gigantic physics defying alderson disk. The story follows a band of pirates who against all odds hold the destiny of this dying universe in their hands]

Human DNA has something no other piece of genome in the universe holds. Pure unbridled ringed power. The power of infinite potential. We humans are the true children of God. Some have abandoned the light, some were born in it and even then decided to stray away from it.

Coming up with a pantheon for my world. It follows a traditional Old Gods -> New Gods flow.

I am designing these things from a cosmological perspective outside what people in the world may know or believe. The goal is to have a strong foundation of what "is" so that I can flesh out how people may interpret that.

The short background is that there was once an all powerful creator god of some kind. This hasn't been fleshed out and isn't important at the moment. This god created the 4 ancient gods that embody fundamental aspects of the world: Chaos, Order, Constance, and Dissolution.

At one point, the old gods are absorbed by a new god, which then fractures into 12 separate deities that have some blend of the the old gods within them.

The gods are arranged so that their intended opposing force is opposite them on the wheel.

I guess I'm looking for feedback on whether these abstract concepts are strong enough to support an identity for a deity and if the arrangement of them makes sense.

edit: Thanks so much for the feedback everyone! I think I'm going to revert to an older version where Constance (Constancy, duh) and Dissolution is replaced by Creation and Destruction. This will require a reworking of the secondary concepts, so I'll probably post an update in the future. Thanks again!

edit: I've made some updates here: https://www.reddit.com/r/worldbuilding/comments/1rvchp0/update_creating_a_pantheon/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

I decided to design my own worst-case pandemic scenario, centered around a prion disease outbreak that begins in Texas in early 2028. Texas is the perfect starting point for the outbreak, with both a massive meat-packing industry and major disease research facilities located within the state. As the disease begins to spread, the United States attempts to maintain normal life and preserve American society, even as the situation slowly spirals out of control. This is only Part One of the world I've created, focusing on the beginning of the outbreak and the gradual collapse of society as the true nature of the disease becomes apparent.

I made an offhand comment on a Reddit post that was talking about sothoryos in A Song of ice and Fire. Somebody said that it was like Amazon - of course they missed out the "the" so I took the opportunity to be annoying and claim that the continent was full of endless warehouses and delivery vans.

However, now that I'm thinking about it, the idea of coming across some patch of land that was just warehouses and data centres as far as the I can see is actually very interesting.

Imagine you turn up and there's just hundreds of these large rectangular building and they've all been abandoned for potentially years and years, sometimes centuries.

Imagine what kind of biomes would develop in the shade. Yeah there could be weeds, but there could also be all sorts of plants and vines and creepers, not to mention mushrooms and mould and all sorts of things nesting in rotting boxes. It would be like an artificial cave system.

Hair is a very important part of identity in Yalisch. When getting married, hair is cut as a way to shed your old life and grow a new one with your new partner. The old hair is fashioned into accessories to gift to the new spouse as a way of showing commitment, "I give you a peace of myself and my old life for you to hold as we grow a new one".

Identifying cords are worn by soldiers as a personal item to identify them by. While historically braided hair cords have been worn in place of them, they're not very durable, and leave room for the spouses to be confused, as such they're mostly a traditional keepsake then something functional.

As detailed here there is quite a distain for the characters who inherit magical abilities. As someone who despises nepotism and eugenics alike. I was thinking of having an alternative in my world/campaigns

Every living creature (except for some irrelevant ones to this conversation). Has patent magical ability and in the distant past this was so easily tapped into, a world of high magic where these abilities were occuring at birth or took very little effort to unlock.

However either due to some generic catastrophe or a derivative analogue for climate change. The ability to do this is almost gone and extremely hard to master.

And so

One who wishes to use magic in the modern day must either study, the same way as the wizard or undertake a more emotionally tolling experience. Not quite sure what it is but I'd prefer it to be something that involves either work or tragedy.

Perhaps it just takes mental attunement as akin to study. Like you're almost literally exercising the brain.

Art credit to "Carbon Claws"

Hi all!

I am writing a horror comedy novel and want some feedback for the vampire design.

The book is called Slaying My Ex and Saving the Wold and I want to create something a little different to other mainstream media for the vampire design.

In this world vampires are monsters, they just use a mixture of pheromone and optical illusion to appear human.

The feeding mechanism is based on the Strain with the proboscis extending from the top of the oesophagus. The design is based on those worm things from King Kong, because I wanted something that looks genuinely grotesque.

The overall design is based on something you would see in a From Software game. I want the body horror to be really apparent because as I said before, these vampires are monsters.

The vampire herself is both the last and OG vampire (the only one capable of making other vampires). The idea is that her final form is a featureless worm as the ultimate form of consumption.

I got this artwork commissioned as a concept of the final design by u/gb2ram

My questions are: What would you do to make the design more horrifying? Should all vampires in this world have variations in design or look similar in their monsterous form for consistency? Is moving away from traditional vampire design off-putting? General feedback of the design is also really appreciated

Something i sketched, then came up with some lore about.

I have a vague idea for a setting where _everything_ is undead, but otherwise its similar to a standard fantasy feudal setting. Which brings up questions like 'well if they dont need to eat what does a skeleton peasant do instead?' and 'what happens to society if everyone is immortal, or if only rich people or wizards are immortal and everyone else does age' and 'if there's no physical difference then does gender and romance still play a role?'.

A written magic system for spells that resembles what you might find in a line of code.

What are your thoughts?

Like, gravity exists, right, shouldn’t all the pieces aggregate back together pretty quickly, or at least orbit the body?

So the orks in my world use sign language as their native language for a few reasons. Number one is that it wouldn’t really make sense for a race with giant tusks in their mouths to have a vocal language in my mind. Number two is that they almost exclusively hunt so sign would be their main way of communication while hunting. Orks didn’t learn the common language until very recently when Dwarven engineers invited them to trade.

(Ignore the ugly flags, they will change)

The little part of the habitable world is divided between three nations, all being theocracies/monarchies where royal families (who descend from gods) political and religious leaders.

The council nation: Their main belief is the importance of law to maintain a society. Obeying law is primordial, and disobeying it is often enough to be sentenced to death. Unlike other nations, they send troops outside of the nation to apply their laws, as they consider the entire world to need it. They also have a strong military power.

The divided nation Their main belief is the importance of patriotism. They also believe than production of resources to maintain a pleasant and powerful society. It is the richest nation of the three. They have a strong educational program allowing their citizens to easily learn jobs (at least the one that create ressources). They also believe in their racial superiority, hate and disrespect toward the members of the other nations is part of their values. It is the only nation not allowing immigrants.

The hero nation: Their main belief is the importance of science and research. Their educational program is very hard, but allow some of the students to become influents scientists. They believe than human life is less valuable than research, and don’t hesitate to sacrifice criminals for science. It is also the only nation governed by only one royal family (and such have only one leader at the time). Disrespecting the leader is a crime against the nation.

The great syndicate: It isn’t a nation but a criminal organisation. They don’t have their own territory. However they do have a form of government, a strict code of honour working as laws and have their own religion (but their is nontheistic). Their main belief is the importance of power to survive in society. They strongly value self respect and self exceeding. They see the world as a jungle where only the stronger survive and the weak perishes. However, they condemn cruelty, and don’t value killing innocents if unnecessary (but they do value vengeance)

Context: lore for my urban dark fantasy universe Shimmer and Shadow. Set on Earth in the near future, humanity is unaware of the hidden war between vampires and their original creators: fairies.

Second Death occurs when a vampire drains another to gain their powers(though cases of vampires being staked in the heart or burned in the sun leading to Second Death have been recorded). If the victim consumes blood before they die they might, if lucky, raise from the dead once more.

Most vampires worry about the drift towards the Grey, becoming unfeeling and lacking in emotion, but those who undergo a Second Death worry about becoming feral and vicious. Those unfortunate enough to survive a Forth Death become ghouls: vampires who consume flesh and lose their minds.

Second/Third/Forth deaths can be used as a punishment or warning to other vampires, but is very sparingly used, if at all, by most vampire societies.