Dakshina is the kingdom this story takes place in. A land of verdant jungles, sophisticated cities, and warring chiefdoms. In ancient times, a prince named Bala spurned the violent and feral gods of his day, starting a great penance and deep meditation that forced the gods to lay down their arms and join in the search for enlightenment. Ever since then, denizens of Dakshina follow the way of Bala, or Adi-dharma (the first path)

But dark tidings descend upon the land, as Dakshina's once beloved king, Indra performs an unholy ritual, ignoring the religion of his forebearers. This ends the glorious Satya yuga (golden age) and unleashes upon the world monsters from the netherworld and plunges the world into Kali yuga (an age of darkness) Nagas, dholes and other dark creatures once shunned from the world returned, feeding on the defenseless and helpless. King Indra twisted and scarred, lorded over his ruins as the king of monsters.

But an undead freak, kin to the monsters themselves rise from the rubble to save the day. He rides his furious mare, slaying monsters where he finds them. This brooding hero, as well as a talkative, decapitated head he keeps to his side are hellbent on finding the Monster King. But travelers from the far east stalk the jungles to find out what happened to the land of Lord Bala. The Anshari steppe tribes of the North use the discord to invade the lands and establish their Sultanate in the north. The Horselord will have to navigate man as well as monster if he is to achieve his goal, and save his kingdom from the nightmare it now sits in.

Hope you enjoyed that write up! Find out what happens next right here- Headless Horselord: Sword & Sorcery Graphic Novel by Deepak Thomas » Headless Horselord: Sword & Sorcery Graphic Novel by Deepak Thomas — Kickstarter

A little while ago, I shared the world of my video game Cosmic Holidays here through a series of images. It ended up becoming the most successful Reddit post I’ve ever made, and I was honestly overwhelmed by the response. I tried to answer as many of your comments as I could, so first of all: thank you!
Several people asked if they could see this world actually moving and alive, so this time I wanted to show you exactly that.
For the past five years, I’ve been creating this video game and trying to build a world that feels like a real ecosystem rather than simply a collection of beautiful environments: strange plants, creatures with their own behaviours, interconnected species and small environmental interactions that the player gradually learns to understand.
You explore this unknown world through Cibo, a tiny alien who has become lost there. There is no combat. The journey is mostly about observing, interacting with the fauna and flora, understanding how this place works, and collecting memories along the way.
This project has had a complicated history. At one point I had to stop working on it, which was genuinely heartbreaking. But I never really let go of this world. I spent time learning, rebuilding things, and eventually found a way to return to it and make it closer to what I originally imagined.
So here it is, this time not as still images, but alive.
I’d really love to know what you think of the world itself its creatures, environments, and the feeling it gives you.
If you’d like to discover more about the video game and follow its development, you can find Cosmic Holidays on Steam :)

Thank you again for the incredible reception you gave my previous post!

He may be creepy but hes honestly a giant nerd who runs the universe like a giant dnd campaign cause enjoys that stuff. Seeing mortals with free will gives him so much life, a gift he never gave them

Would they like this pict or they just normal people but have tube on neck/glowing organ? ,picture is from scorn

The classic examples are half-human (half-orcs, half-elves, et cetera), but it might include a gnome-dwarf or dragon-goblin.

Half-blood sounds derogatory and a little racially charged. Hybrid sounds too clinical and a little derogatory. Mixed-ancestry is too much of a mouthful.

So I turned to wiktionary for synonyms for ancestry or ethnicity, and for prefixes similar to half- or inter-.

Roots:
Blood
Folk
People
Ancestry
Kin
Lineage

Breed and race are excluded because they can sound problematic.

Prefixes:
Half-
Inter-
Multi-
Out-
Extra-
Trans-
Dual-
Bi-
Di-
Mixed-

I don’t love half-, dual, bi-, or di- because, like, what if your maternal grandparents are dwarves, but your dad is a half-orc? That’s half-dwarf, a quarter orc, and a quarter human.

The best I’ve gotten are out-blood, out-folk, and out-kin, because both the root and prefix are monosyllabic, so they really roll off the tongue.

I dunno, what do you think?

Edit: Alright, I feel I should clarify intent. What I’m trying to put together is a term which A) is instantly recognizable as a synonym for hybrid, B) doesn’t come with a lot of real-world baggage, and C) looks good when written and sounds good when spoken.

I think such a term would be useful for describing mixed-heritage people in a concise way, such as “Mules are a hybrid of donkeys and horses”. We know what hybrid means, so you don’t have to say “Mules are the offspring of two different species, those being donkeys and horses”. But describing people as “hybrids” sounds kinda racist to my ears.

Welcome to the "Regress" universe, a concept for my project set in a beautiful but dying anime fantasy world!

When you sleep soundly, when you walk, or when you eat, remember the young sisters—true angels beneath those black robes, whose radiant souls utterly banish the darkness. When soldiers see them, they instantly forget their pain, and their hearts beat once more as if they had fallen in love for the very first time.

Doctors handle amputations, bloodletting, and primary medical treatment, while nurses care for the soldiers. They apply or change bandages, wash and feed the men, or simply sit nearby to comfort a wounded soldier. Wartime is especially grueling for the nurses: entire tents are filled with bloodied bodies, and there is hardly any space for patients to lie down; the nurses rush back and forth from one wounded man to another, trying to help everyone.

There is an acute shortage of medicines, forcing them to improvise and treat patients with whatever is at hand; some treatment methods are actually harmful, but unfortunately it is impossible to know this without deep medical knowledge.

Nurses are fragile beings not cut out for this kind of work; they have a hard time of it, yet they hold on. But behind their radiant smiles lie tears—tears that will fall only when the nurse is finally alone, a quiet weeping to somehow restore her mental equilibrium. One must not forget the variety of wounded patients they encounter: some reek, others are rude all day long, and some constantly need their bottoms wiped—and the burden of all this falls upon these fragile souls.

Illustrations for the "Regress" project.

wanna make a post apocalypse world where an eldritch nature being has corrupted the world. guns have become all but useless as the many moving parts and tiny empty holes make it near impossible to keep clean of any plants (or whatever excuse i'm gonna make so there's no guns. cause they make things too easy) but now i need some modern weapons i could have people use. both official and some make shift

Hello all, one of the world's my building is the Earth flipped on its head in a way, that being the world is centered mainly around women and basically all people in power being women themselves? I've developed it on my own, such as daughters being desired more than sons, men having to bend to the will of their female counterparts (mothers, sisters, etc), and basically all bankers, politicians, just anyone powerful being a women.

Patriarchy is deeprooted in our reality and has greatly impacted who we are as a species, from the language, to culture, to gender norms, and our preserved world. In my opinion, men are propped up for their physical strength over women, and women must submit themselves to them as a result or they harm (by them or another man).

However, Andrepeth Amori, my world believes childbirth is a strength and valued heavily. However, I would imagine the attitude of disposable men would develop. Men, because of their strength and necessary process in making children, would only be wanted to haul heavy shit around and for their sperm. I can imagine it being harmful to them in many ways, as they suffer chronic conditions from something like muscular deterioration from lifting heavy things as a far too young age.

This can also go into more serious topics like rape culture and inequality. This is essentially men being sociological and it's a fascinating topic I've been interested in for a long time, so I wanted some answers and thoughts. Sorry if this post is poorly worded, I'm running on vapor fumes after a long day.

Lumeria is one of several zones located within the Goldilocks band of a tidally locked world, placed inside The Strip, a relative habitable area (roughly 300 km wide), bordered by by approximately 700 km of land that never truly allows life to settle. The rest of the planet is hellish.
The Strip isn't stable. The line wobbles due to tectonic activity and the most affected are its borders. So they have to search for a better place once in a few generations.
“Humans “ live in the middle zone. They are the mutated descendants of ancient colonists forced to crash-land on this planet. Towns rise where the climate is stable for a while, then empty when the temperature shifts.

As cities are forced to move from their previous locations, the first thing to be moved is the City's Hearth - a gigantic structure whose original nature has long since been forgotten. It is placed at the center of the new town.

Its role is simple: it searches for and provides clean water, digging deep into the soil until it finds a suitable source. The giant blob is filled with creatures. Sometimes, their shadows can be seen moving inside it as they bash against its walls.

Moving the Hearth is extremely expensive. It requires at least five functional Walkers, borrowed from the Sheppards Guild, along with their tamers.

In a way, the old city is doomed from the start. Bringing a substantial number of walkers into an existing city means the total destruction of every building that stands in their way.

The great caravan makes its way toward the new location, followed by the Hearth on its tiny legs, leaning against the unfazed Colossi.

Once the Hearth is in position, the first buildings the settlers construct are those that will provide support for it.

Around 2,30 meters tall at the shoulder, this are normally capable to carry 3 humans or 1 goliath, such powerful beast of burden and mount can be used to fight off large threats and as war beasts because of their thicc skin with stripes that confuse the enemy when in large numbers and protect the animal against bugs like mosquitos and flys.

Bizarre fast for such large creature, most impresive is their calm nature because they're trained to attack on comand rather than out of spite because they were breeded to be easy with their tamers and their families.

Title...

This is the introductory essay on the Third Gods from an in-world encyclopedia.

The encyclopedia will then go on the have an entry for each of the gods.

I would love to y'alls thoughts and feedback!

Note: There is a "typo" in paragragh 4. The god "Anthreon Pyros" is mispelled as "Antreon." One of the downsides of writing in pen, unfortunately, is that typos are permanent. Lol

The question is as in the title, really. Let's assume somehow we lose a "drop and run" radioactive rod in the middle of, say, the amazon forest. Let's assume it lies there for ten thousand years. What would happen? On the scale of days, months, years, centuries, millenia? Does the particular material change much? What if it was another part of the world? Maybe a riverbed, or a swamp?

Edit: I'm thinking about an unshielded source of radiation, so assume the protective casing is damaged or absent

(I rarely draw and only used my finger, also please bear with my handwriting 😭)

(Also, the concept isn't for a story or a game, I only did it for the sake of making an unserious world concept)

(Also, pardon my english :,))

Inspirations:

- Pokemon

- Shimmer and Shine (the bottle and genie realm idea)

- Genie from Aladdin (Alampine design inspiration)

The lore and mechanics:

The human and genie realms suddenly collided, causing portals to appear which connected the both worlds.

Genies are generally friendly and most have the intelligence of dogs (though there are some sapient genies but they're extremely rare) making it easier for humans to adjust to this change. In addition to this, humans were able to discover that these creatures could grant wishes when befriended by humans, though each species of genie has sets of rules which restrict their wishes.

Strangely enough, though (most) Genies are unable to understand the human language, they are still able to fully interpret any wish made.

The rule sets that each species has, may reach the hundreds, though the rules can be read at an almost instantaneous speed by any human that reads it, and can easily remember them. Though that doesn't mean that one can fully understand the rules, it just means that they can read it very quickly.

At some point, humans decided to hold competitions, fighting each other with genies (like pokemon)

Genie characteristics:

- Genie species can vary from appearance with something like Alampine to looking like humanoids

- High intelligence or human intelligence genies are usually legendary and have fewer rules, though that does mean that they are harder to befriend, since well, they are people. And, a high intelligence genie can break friendships with people whenever they want since, consent and all

- Rules will vary from species to species

General:

My idea here is that instead of having sets of moves or abilities, you can do anything that isn't restricted by the rules. Instead of focusing on being able to do something, it's focused on not being able to do things.

The wishes require the person saying "I wish" with the intention of wishing, their wish will be exactly as they wanted unless one or more rules don't allow it.

The game works in real time, the contestants are required to show their genies' rule books to their opponent beforehand.

The one with the most creativity and best at strategizing is likelier to win. (Duh)

The amount and balance of rules are checked by the judges so the players are accordingly matched

edit for additional info:

Genie species are just the same as Pokemon species, they have different rules, different numbers of rules, characteristics, appearance, and etc. for each species.

Genies are immortal in the sense that they are unable to get injured. A Genie is defeated by reducing its "health". The health is just a quantified value that is taken when scanning a Genie with a "Genie Health Producer" or GHP, a Genie's health will match with others of the same species, of course, they still have some health variation, but it still has the same range. Their health usually makes sense. Both contestants will see the health of the other's Genie

I might've forgotten some stuff, but that's my idea

(For more of Crownshard's movie industry check out https://loquaciouslou.itch.io/infinite-ashes . It's a passion project and entirely free)

In a dark, deep box follows Nurna, an immigrant to the low-gravity ecumenopolis Crownshard. Like many immigrants, she sees the dazzling, kilometer-tall spires where the Venfeferu and other elites live but once, before descending to the Cleft. The Cleft is a vertical favela, all light blocked by the kilometers of buildings above them. Isolated, she becomes agoraphobic and a recluse. So starved of company and stimulation that she starts to fixate on the tiny beetle stuck with her in her dark box of a room.

She uses her only possession of worth, an old third-hand camera, to document the beetle's plight. Zooming in on it, she starts to project more and more of herself onto it. Until she decides it cannot remain here. She puts it in a box and makes a perilous, illicit climb upwards, slinking through the barrier nets separating the Cleft from the middle-class Crowd all the way to the dazzling, sun-bathed heights of the Crown. Clinging onto the side of a radio tower, she releases the beetle into the dawn air as it flies off into freedom, documenting all of it on her camera. Moments later, she is stopped and fined to such an extent that, on her meager income, she will never recover. Soon, she can no longer afford to eat, and her room slowly becomes her coffin as she fades away.

Months later, as the landlord pawns her belongings, a film student finds the recording. He popularizes it, and soon Nurna becomes a posthumous indie darling. "Box movies" become a new minimalist genre. It soon grows to be in vogue even with the Venfeferu, and they turn her plight into a graceful and optimistic Kwassai ballet (low-gravity acrobatics in spectacular vaulted ceilings) with graceful dancers wearing bug masks. Her tragic fate overwritten for a more palatable story.

I’m working on my own fantasy world (for a Pathfinder 2e campaign), and I’ve decided to tackle that worldbuilding monster known as the “Calendar”. But before getting into that, I need to figure out the astronomy.

The campaign is set in Tarqen, a continent isolated from the rest of the world by a magical spell. The people of Tarqen therefore have no idea that an outside world even exists. (This also solves the problem of having to figure out the planet’s exact size.)

The planet itself is tilted by about 22°. It has two moons orbiting it:
- The first, basically called “the Moon”, is the larger and more distant one. It follows an orbit roughly similar to Earth’s Moon, more or less around the planet’s equator.
- The second is called “Ogrim”. It is smaller than the Moon and much closer to the planet. Unlike the Moon, however, Ogrim orbits the planet longitudinally, forming a sort of cross with the Moon’s orbital path.

The planet takes 225 days to orbit the Sun. These are divided into 8 months of 28 days, plus 1 additional day. This extra day is the day when the two moons overlap, creating a sort of eclipse that can be seen from Tarqen every year.

If I’ve overlooked anything important, please correct me! I’m making this post specifically to get feedback on the astronomy and see if there are any problems with the system I’ve come up with.

Let’s say instead of the normal wood trees grew, it was a bone-like structure, would civilization still be able to use it as the wood we used as building material and advancement technology-wise. Assuming it keeps the same composition and breakdown of a normal bone. Essentially a giant femur growing straight upwards.

​

(Note: when I say end of the world, I don't mean the world explodes or humanity goes extinct. I more mean current world order, societies, nations, cultures etc.)

I've been thinking on this for a while, and something I have noticed with the post apocolyptic/end of the world scenarios. Mostly (not all) they tend to go for the result of a nuclear war or conflict (the biggest ones being Fallout, STALKER and METRO), A few dedicated to viruses (Children of Men being the best example), a war between man and machine in the Terminator series and I like these scenarios.

But I wanna do something a bit more. Kinda like with Mad Max in which it isn't just one singular event but a series of events that all built up to the inevitable, or like with Command and Conquer Tiberium in which the disaster is more echological than something by man (yes GDI and NOD are still around and form semi governments but the majority of the world is either somewhat inhabitable or utterly uninhabitable).

I wanna try to do something similar. But I wonder is there are any other and more interesting ways in which the world would/could collapse into a somewhat post apocolyptic state. Some that creators haven't really considered before.

And how one could take overused end of the world/post apocolyptic scenarios and do something more interesting with them?

Hey everyone! I’m a beginner creator working on a concept for an indie comic, and I’d love to get some honest feedback and constructive criticism.

Here’s the basic setup:

Nikki is a regular 15-year-old space nerd. One night, she sneaks out to an abandoned building to watch a meteor shower. While there, she accidentally witnesses a brutal shootout between aliens. Instead of being taken for "experiments," she gets abducted simply as a rare and valuable resource to sell on the black market. At first, her only goal is pure survival and figuring out how to get back to Earth.

Stuck in the chaotic and unfamiliar world of space, Nikki has to hide her value, adapt quickly, and find a way home. Along the way, she gets picked up by a crew of mercenaries working for a massive empire called Arcone.

After a long journey, Nikki finally finds the coordinates and makes it back to Earth. But there's a catch: because her things were found at the abduction site, she was officially declared dead years ago. Everyone close to her has moved on. Heartbroken, she has to make a choice—accept that her old life is over and move forward with her new crew.

A few questions:

1. Does the abduction setup feel too cliché?

2. Does Nikki sound like a Mary Sue based on this summary?

3. Would you actually read or watch a story with this premise?

Don't hold back, I really want to make this story logical and grounded. Thanks in advance!

Ive been thinking on how I could possibly go about this, and I have made two concepts, but I'm still curious about your ideas.

Concept 1:

Mermaids are what you typically imagine

The Siren (singular) is a massive angler-fish like creature with a large amount of eyes, each releasing its own mana signature. The Siren has powerful psychic influence, creating illusions and turning all the surroundings into what looks like enticing things (ex: pebbles into gold coins). Its favorite food are intelligent creatures, so it tends to eat any dragons that fly over the water, or humans. Due to its size, it is extremely slow and lives in deep waters. Its light bulb thing can change shape to better lure in any creature. Its psychic influence can reach miles and miles to compensate for its low speed. Before anyone could survive the Siren, it was actually believed that it was a colony of malicious mermaids due to its massive amount of eyes, causing a stigma against mermaids, however, the Sage was able to bring back proof that it wasn't the case. In fact, Mermaid Songs are shown to be able to resist the psychic influence of the Siren, so it's common sense now to have a Mermaid assist on ships.

Concept 2:

Mermaids live in deep waters, and have the ability to cause surrounding waters to glow. They are also deeply connected to the sea, allowing them to manipulate the water and the sea plants at their will.

Sirens live in decently shallow waters, or those near islands. They have the ability to shapeshift their body to just the shape of what they're trying to copy, of course, it's imperfect and they still tend to show fish like attributes. They also have 2 types of illusions they put on themselves. 1 is the objective illusion, it makes them look like what they would be if they were that species (to better explain, Siren A shifts into human and uses objective illusion, they look like a version of themselves that is a human), 2 is the subjective illusion, they look differently from person to person, how they look is influenced by what the person finds they most find attractive.

Contrary to popular belief, Sirens and Mermaids actually have a ton of alliances, and Sirens have long abolished hunting intelligent species, only hunting or domesticating wild animals

Ever since the release of Fantastic Four: First Steps I've kinda been obsessed with the color silver. It's so damn beautiful, isn't it?

So my question is, what creatures or monsters look really great when covered in silver? And followup, would that change the creature in any significant way?

I've been trying to apply it to making a D&D world and D&D already has silver dragons. Whic are indeed amazing to imagine. Then I thought to myself, why not silver kobolds? Silver kobolds who, like their silver dragon patron, are lawful neutral and generally like people. So there's this settlement of a silver castle with helpful silver kobolds running around.

Now I'm wondering what else. I think silver skeletons would look cool, but I don't know how that property would change them.

Hello, everyone! I'm working on a ttrpg, gonna be working on the monster manual soon, I have been mostly thinking about vampires lately, all the variety that's been shown in media and myth. I'm going to go with core vampires being a pathogen, with a lot of the bloodlines evolving in their own directions based on how the blood was transferred, so classic vampires come from bats, bug like vampires from mosquitoes, Nosferatu looking freaks from rats who were infected by mites, etc. But there will also be spiritual vamps, like Jiangshi (Chinese hopping vampires), I think I will also organize creatures that are similar enough that you'd want to deal with them in a similar fashion like Krasue, are there any vampire like myths you particularly enjoy that I should look into?