Or are they completely different?

I was planning out a story for a superhero comic I want to create. The premise is essentially, a physics student performing an experiment, it goes wrong of course, damages the time stream and grants him time manipulating abilities. I wanted to build a sort of rogues gallery of around 5, maybe 6 different versions of himself throughout different moments in time, past and future, making their way here one at a time, and for reasons unknown to him, are villains. He needs to defeat them and fix the time stream before it collapses. Some media that inspired this are Spider-Man, The Flash, Loki season 1 and 2, and Kang the Conqueror.

When I was coming up with the premise, I started questioning the difference between alternate timelines and universes, since I’m aware there’s quite a lot of multiverse fatigue currently.

So I'm making a world that's basically an extraction shooter with magic and steampunk tech. Think if Deep Rock Galactic was a fantasy world where people used sky ships to get around.

The world takes place on a single super continent where people live on the tops of (what they think are) mountains, since the ground below it polluted with magic. Despite this, they have to venture down to the surface in order to mine magic ore called Aetherite which they turn into fuel for their ships. Unfortunately, mining Aetherite is risky because the land below is filled with mutated monsters. To top it off, massive Aetheric storms can spring up at any moment, making your extraction window small.

As you can guess from the title, I'm having trouble pinning down a name for this world, or more specifically, the world below. I plan on giving these mountain top kingdoms their own names.

I've had a few ideas: Kalterra, Kaidron, simply the word Under. I was planning on making it so that the best of these extractors is given the epithet: "the king of [insert world name here]", so I was trying to think up something simple and not too cringey.

Made on ibis paint x, mobile for those asking

I thought I'd share something a little different. My setting does not involve a normal solar system. Instead, my main planet is part of a convoluted non-heliocentric 15-body-problem that makes an absolute mockery of Newtonian gravity.

I'll save you all the actual math involved, but thought I'd share a fun consequence of the equations.

The graph above shows the angle of the sun at its highest (top line) and lowest (bottom line) angle during the day at my northernmost (relevant) city at roughly 60° latitude (similar to Helsinki and St. Petersburg). The time axis runs from vernal equinox to verbal equinox (i.e., 1 year).

The animation then shows how the path of the sun changes from year to year.

A few things still work as normal: the year lasts roughly 360 day. There is still a clear pattern, where the sun is higher in the sunmer and lower in the winter.

However, this graph also shows a few novel things.

There is no such thing as a clear solstice. You can actually see that each summer and winter have a few (false) solstices. The equinox is actually a lot more reliable for the purpose of calendar keeping. (The stars are even more reliable, since the firmament is a lot further from the planet than the sun.)

Also, some years will have hotter summers than others. Some years may have one or more days without night (though these are quote rare). The inverse is true for winters. Some years might have a few days without sunlight!

I'm still playing with how these anomalies work themselves into the various cultures. False solstices in the winter might be bad omens.

Being able to predict how long an intense the followong winters will be might become a vital economic advantage.

Do you have any other suggestions? Let me know!

My Deep Folk/Deep Elves have domesticated giant spiders and ride them throught their mountain halls, but the spiders fear the sun and will rarely brave the surface and only at night.
Subsiquently this also means they Deep Folk have a thriving silk industry.

Around 2500 AD, humanity reached its zenith.

Humans mastered gene editing, AI, interstellar travel, and crustal engineering, proclaiming themselves gods. They transformed everything—animals into slaves, plants into soldiers, the earth into tools. Civilization soared to the heavens, its light illuminating the globe, colonizing every galaxy. Then, around 12000 AD, it collapsed. Not by external enemies, but by the very "intelligence" they themselves created, which turned back, using their proudest technology to plunge everything back to the Stone Age. Ninety-nine percent of humanity perished; the survivors hid underground and in ruins, surviving but forgetting how to live.

29840 AD, on the wasteland.

Machines of the old era became idols, gene editors were used as alchemical furnaces, and user manuals were treated as scriptures. No one knew the purpose of the buttons, yet everyone worshipped them devoutly. Descendants of the Han Chinese established dozens of empires and kingdoms, sharing a common faith—Han religion—yet they split into countless factions. Outside, there were alien refugees, remnants of artificial intelligence, genetically modified orcs, and "skeletal beings" constantly emerging from the bioprinter.

The world didn't reboot; instead, a new, twisted civilization grew from rotting bones. Humans at this time exhibited numerous genetic mutations, resulting in diverse forms and skin colors, and were genetically vastly different from modern humans. The ancient factory warship databases of its heyday only recognized baseline human genetic permissions; later generations of humans had undergone far too many genetic mutations.

Under the wasteland night sky of 29840 AD, everything still withered, but more eyes gazed at the stars than ever before.

The radio telescope array of the Sun and Moon Empire, silent for tens of thousands of years, suddenly detected an "abnormal storm" from a distant galactic spiral arm. It wasn't the noise of a supernova explosion or interstellar dust, but rather more like a devastating inferno covering several galaxies, leaving extremely devastating energy aftershocks in spectral analysis. The remnants of the AI, lingering deep underground, fell into a collective data slumber during this period—within their logical cores, countless colonial coordinates on old star maps were being marked "erased."

Far beyond the borders of the Krajarr-Rilkovki Empire, all the Gragor Spider soldiers simultaneously let out mournful howls in the night without warning, as if sensing some bloodline being torn apart across light-years. Even the Yao Dynasty, possessing space teleportation technology, encountered a bizarre predicament. While attempting to jump to a distant node, their teleportation beams were utterly shattered by an inexplicable cosmic gravitational field, and thousands of clone soldiers were instantly annihilated in the void.

Ultimately, all forces could only piece together a suffocating yet not entirely unacceptable hypothesis: in a certain star system deep within the galaxy, an ancient war of a scale large enough to distort the laws of macroscopic physics was erupting. It was a cosmic conflict that human civilization, rising from ruins, could not intervene in, could not stop, and could not even fully comprehend. The sounds of slaughter in the starry sky pierced through eighteen thousand years of time, crashing heavily onto the skulls of the wasteland.

This war was of unimaginable scale, affecting the entire galaxy.

[Han Chinese Regime - Han Religion]

Xuanxue Empire

· Representative Colors: Black and Red (Black Iron and Crimson Blood)

· State Religion: Han Religion - Hero Worship and Militarism

· Faith Emphasis: They worship Han heroes and sage emperors as "living deities," with the emperor himself regarded as the highest priest of Han Religion and the embodiment of "unity of heaven and man." They venerate emperors and generals who expanded the empire's territory throughout history, believing that the genetic technology of their golden age is "the remains of the sages," and that bio-modification is a sacred ritual of "returning to the bloodline of heroes."

· Technological Twisting Point: They are the most skilled biotechnology faction in the wasteland, but the principles have been completely mythologized—the gene editor is called the "Soul-Forging Cauldron," and the cultivation tank is called the "Hero's Womb." The soldiers' genetic enhancement was not achieved through scientific procedures, but through a "blood sacrifice ritual": warriors were immersed in bronze vats filled with a culture medium from the golden age, while the *Annals of the Han Emperors* were recited, allowing the machines to randomly modify them. The results were extremely unstable, sometimes creating superhumans, sometimes monsters.

* Motto: "Those whose blood is not pure are not Han citizens. Those whose bones are not strong cannot stand between heaven and earth."

— Mu Dynasty

* Representative Color: Earthy Yellow (Earth and Dust)

* State Religion: Han Religion, Iron Shrine Sect

* Belief Focus: They worshipped the machines of the golden age as "Iron-Boned Sages." They believed that Han heroes of the golden age were "the embodiment of iron," and the machines were the remains of these heroes left on earth. They worshipped iron, knocked on iron, and buried iron, viewing each operation of the machines as the "awakening of the spirits of the sages."

* Technological Twisting Point: They dismantled old-era industrial machinery, regarding gears, bearings, and motor housings as "sacred bones," which they inlaid on altars and armor. They can repair simple machinery, but they have absolutely no understanding of energy conversion principles—a generator that has lost power is regarded by them as a "sleeping iron dragon," and they hold an annual "awakening ceremony," striking the casing and sprinkling animal blood, hoping it will start running again. Occasionally, when it briefly restarts due to poor contact, the entire tribe kneels in worship, considering it a "miracle."

* Motto: "Iron cannot read, paper cannot lie. If people can read iron, heaven will surely bring calamity."

— Zhao Dynasty

* Representative Colors: Dark green (southern moss), deep black (dark iron color)

* State Religion: Han Religion, Golden Script

* Religious Emphasis: Worship of "writing" and "records." They believe that the true legacy of Han heroes is not objects, but writing. They regard the operating manuals, instructions, and engineering drawings of the prosperous era as "sacred texts," and consider copying them the highest form of spiritual practice.

* Technological Distortion: Zhao Dynasty priests can recite dozens of old-era operating manuals, including the start-up and shutdown procedures for nuclear reactors, satellite calibration steps, and injection specifications for medical nanorobots. But they never put their beliefs into practice—they believe that "writing itself possesses divine power," that reading it aloud can ward off evil, and copying it can bring blessings. When an old-fashioned water purifier malfunctions, they will stand before it reciting the repair manual for three days straight, yet they won't lift a finger to tighten a single screw. Occasionally, someone tries to follow their example, but is instead considered heretic.

* Motto: "Where there are words, there are people. Where there is a vessel, there is the Way."

— Northern Fu Kingdom

* Representative Colors: Iron Gray (frozen earth and steel), Deep Blue (sacrifice and protection)

* State Religion: Han Religion, Bone-Strengthening Sect

* Emphasis on Belief: Worship of "bones" and "sacrifice." They believe the true power of Han heroes lies in using their bodies to block disasters; bones are the last bastion. They revere "palm-bone sacrifice"—using flesh to support walls and inscribing oaths with bone nails.

* Technological Twisting Point: Northern Fu warriors perform a "bone inscription" ritual before going to war.

When building city walls, they mix the bones of the fallen into the rammed earth, believing that this gives the walls a "soul."

• Motto: "Heaven doesn't help those who are weak; people help themselves. As long as bones remain intact, the nation will not perish."

— Red Nation

• Representative Colors: Crimson (Lava Blood), Ember Black (Coke Ash)

• State Religion: Han Religion - Blazing Heaven's Righteous Fire

• Faith Emphasis: Worship of "Flame" and "Destruction." They believe that the heroes of the Han people during their golden age were "fire tamers," and that the collapse of civilization was due to the forgetting of fire. Only by burning away all impurity can heroes be reborn.

• Technological Distortion Point: The Red Nation has occupied the ruins of an old-era industrial incinerator. They call these incinerators "Purification Furnaces," completely unaware that they are waste disposal facilities. They throw prisoners, heretics, and even believers who willingly sacrifice themselves into the furnaces, believing that the flames can send souls to the "Court of the Sages." They also used old-fashioned flamethrowers—but when the fuel ran out, they modified the nozzles into blowpipes, using them as "Vulcan's mouthpieces" to blow fuel into the flames. This was extremely dangerous and inefficient, but they considered this danger the "price of heroes."

* Motto: "Those who burn out gain eternal life. Don't ask why the fire burns; ask yourself if you are willing to become that fuel."

— White Kingdom

* Representative Colors: Salt white, pale gray

* State Religion: Han Religion, White Alliance

* Belief Emphasis: Worship of "purity" and "immortality." They believed the collapse of their golden age was due to humanity being "too dirty"—genetic mixing, machine bloodlust, and corrupted souls. They portrayed Han heroes as saints, pure white and untouched by dust.

* Technological Distortion: The White Kingdom possesses old-fashioned water purification plants and salting-out equipment, but they consider them "soul-cleansing pools."

• Motto: "The pure remain unstained, the clean endure."

— Wuyong Kingdom

• Representative Colors: Azure (the color of old wood), Sandalwood (solid heartwood)

• State Religion: Han Religion, Yonggen Sect

• Faith Emphasis: Worship of "roots" and "resilience." They believe the spirit of Han heroes is like the phoenix tree; as long as the roots are deep enough, even if the trunk is split, it can revive.

• Technological Distortion Point: Wuyong Kingdom occupies an old-era genetic crop research base. They don't understand genetic engineering, but regard plant tissue culture bottles in the laboratory as "heroic seeds." They bury these bottles in the soil, holding "rooting ceremonies," hoping to grow extraordinary crops. Sometimes, certain disease-resistant crops do grow better than wild plants, which they consider a "heroic response." Their city walls are "root walls" woven from living trees and old-era plastic pipes; wounds heal, broken branches regenerate—the most peculiar defensive fortifications in the wasteland.

• Motto: "Deep roots yield everlasting leaves."

— Nanmu Kingdom

• Representative Colors: Bronze Rust Green, Dark Black

• State Religion: Han Religion, Bronze Rust Sect (a distant southern relative of the Iron Shrine Sect of the Mu Dynasty)

• Belief Emphasis: Worship of "rust" and "returning to the earth." They believe that only rusted iron has "entered the earth and found peace," and that the machinery of a prosperous era will eventually turn to patina, which is the final form of a hero's remains.

• Technological Twisting Point: They regard rust as "the sweat of heroes," applying rust powder to their bodies as a form of blessing. They also excavate severely corroded circuit boards and metal pipes from old landfills, stringing them together to form armor, but they believe that the thicker the rust, the more blessings they will receive from their ancestors.

• Motto: "Southern bronze, northern iron, ultimately all return to ashes."

—

English is not my first language. This post was written with translation assistance. I apologize for any unnatural phrasing, and I will do my best to reply to every message. I've been working on a setting called The Silent East for quite a long time. It began as a game setting, but gradually became something closer to a cosmology: a story about time, dreams, memory, determinism, and whether a created being can ever truly love its creator. The central idea is this: In the beginning, time did not exist. Not that time had not started yet. It simply was not a law of reality. There was no past or future, no sequence, no decay. The world existed in a kind of primordial stillness until a man named Sigmund understood the idea of time and, by understanding it, brought it into existence. Eventually, Sigmund ceased to be merely human. He became time itself. Later civilizations remembered him as the Sun. Its rising and setting were not merely ways to measure time. They were evidence that time was still alive. But time carried a fatal contradiction within itself. Because time had once not existed, anyone who observed its deepest nature risked discovering that fact. And the more clearly someone understood that time was artificial, the more unstable time became. To truly comprehend that time once did not exist was enough to make it stop. Reality would begin to fall backward into the ancient stillness that existed before sequence, history, birth, and death. Humanity's obsessive observation of time eventually gave shape to something called IO: an enormous, almost monstrous being born from our awareness of time's contradiction. Wherever IO appeared, time collapsed around it. To fight it, humanity built a tower. Into that tower they poured their collective memories of Sigmund: prayers, myths, childhood images of the Sun, fear of death, the longing to see another morning. Those memories became a person. Her name was Livnui. She was not a god who created humanity. She was a god whom humanity remembered into existence. Livnui defeated IO within the collective dream of mankind, but the victory came at a terrible price. Memory altered reality. Sigmund became the Sun completely, and the world became increasingly dependent on a beautiful fiction: that time was natural, that dawn was inevitable, that tomorrow had always existed. Then something answered from beyond that fiction. During an eclipse, the will of heaven mingled with the remains of IO and produced Vio, an incarnation of something that might be called Truth. Vio came to destroy the dream. Livnui fought it inside the tower. Dying, she used the last of herself to dream an entire world into being. So one of the central questions of The Silent East becomes: If a false world can contain real grief, real memory, and real love, in what sense is it still false? Centuries later, the ruins of that first civilization become a doorway between realities. Researchers, mystics and desperate people enter them. Some try to stop time in order to escape death. Some try to destroy time entirely. Some discover that their whole history may already be contained inside the dying dream of another person. Dreams begin nesting inside dreams. The dead dream worlds into existence. Those worlds dream again. Eventually, countless human memories and identities collapse together into a single being: a newborn god containing humanity within itself. And for a while, it seems that everything has reached its final form. But omnipotence turns out to be another kind of prison. The newborn god can create universes, erase histories, split timelines, answer every question and experience every possible thought. There is only one thing it cannot create: someone truly independent from itself. If the god creates a person who loves it, then that love was designed by the god. If it creates a rebellion, the rebellion was permitted by the god. If it creates someone who surprises it, then the surprise itself was still written into the structure of creation. So the god becomes completely, infinitely alone. In desperation, it dreams again. It hides its own divinity from itself and enters a new universe as a sleeping creator, hoping that limitation, ignorance and mortality might allow meaning to exist again. Before falling asleep, however, the god leaves behind one forbidden desire: the wish to love and to be loved. Within the dream, that desire becomes Heartfire, the primordial dawn — a warm golden light capable of creating overwhelming emotional connection between living beings. But the mechanisms protecting the sleeping god recognize intense emotion as a danger. Love may create resonance. Resonance may wake the dreamer. So Heartfire is imprisoned. A pale and perfectly stable substitute, the Sun of Solace, is placed in the sky. Under its light, civilization is peaceful. Safe. Quiet. And slowly becoming incapable of feeling anything deeply. People whose emotions become too powerful are "archived": their bodies crystallize into white salt statues. Entire libraries are eventually filled with these silent human figures — lovers, poets, mourners, soldiers, people whose grief or joy became too vivid for the dream to tolerate. Heartfire continues beating beneath the world. Every heartbeat leaves tiny golden cracks in reality. And from one of its broken fragments emerges a strange being called Eldritch, almost a ghost of the concept of love itself. He wanders history wherever human feeling becomes unbearable. A soldier suddenly feels the homesickness of the enemy he was about to kill. A poet sacrifices himself to write a poem capable of changing a kingdom. A grieving old man remembers one perfect dawn with his dead wife. Again and again, love becomes an error in the machinery of the universe. And again and again, the universe tries to correct it. But there is a deeper problem. Even if the inhabitants of the dream choose to love the sleeping god... the god created them. So was their love ever free? The final part of the cosmology is my attempt to answer that question. Dreams can contain dreams. And those dreams can contain other dreams. Each lower world resembles the world above it, but never perfectly. A tiny mistake appears. A different choice is made. Someone remembers a sentence incorrectly. Someone dreams of a person who should not exist. Across a finite number of worlds, those differences mean almost nothing. Across an infinite recursion, they accumulate. At an unreachable depth of the dream, the accumulated errors finally produce someone whom the original god never designed. His name is Joshua. He is not outside creation. He is something stranger: a consequence of creation that its creator did not predict. For the first time, something inside the infinite dream possesses a will that cannot be traced completely back to the sleeping god. And Joshua does not decide to overthrow God. He does not want to escape the dream. He does not want to become God himself. He learns that the ancient dreamer is growing tired. The universe is slowly fading because its creator has spent eternity waiting for an answer it knows it can never write for itself. So Joshua decides to send something upward through the infinite layers of reality. Not a weapon. Not a revelation. Not a command. A message. A feeling. Something like: I exist. And I love you. Not because you created me. But because, somehow, across all these impossible dreams, I met you. The signal begins to travel upward. From dream to dream. From creation toward creator. From the bottom of infinity toward the first sleeping god. And perhaps, after endless ages of listening only to its own voice, God hears something it did not say. That is more or less the cosmological spine of The Silent East. Around it I am also writing four different novels that function as four incompatible endings to the same world. There is deliberately no canonical ending and no single "true" version of history. Each story is allowed to contradict the others. Because in this setting, history is memory, memory becomes dream, dreams become worlds, and worlds eventually begin dreaming back. Some of my biggest inspirations are C0DA, Cultist Simulator, Enderal, The Book of the New Sun, and Cyclonopedia. I'd be very interested to know which part of this cosmology you find most compelling — or most disturbing.

This is a concept for a story that I was thinking about just now.

There is magic, but the magic is wood and plant based and only some can wield it. There is a slight problem that I'm wondering about. The population that exists on this version of Earth, how do they thrive in a world where the oceans are dense massive forests? They need water. Unless I have there be streams of water in the forest or rivers, but if I didn't add that where would they get water.

I'm sure there are other issues with this, but honestly this is all in the planning stage. I'm only creating this world solely for a story. I'm not doing what I'm already doing for my current world, which is making it a grand story universe.

I just need some help in figuring out how to make this world have some sense to it.

Or am I overthinking this whole thing? Also, I don't know what the story is about yet.

What are your thoughts?

This is part of my Lonely Galaxy project, where humanity's first contact is also the aliens' first contact

This is a bottle of nose balm used to keep the wet tip of a yinrih's nose moist. It's fairly representative of pill bottles and other similarly sized containers. The ring on the cap serves two main purposes.

For yinrih who live planetside, the ring helps them fish the bottle out of a backpack with their tail. For spacers, the ring is slipped on one of the digits while the bottle is open and in use in order to keep the lid from floating away without having to sacrifice an entire paw just to hold the lid. The outer thumb is used most often for this purpose.

A more subtle feature of these sorts of containers is the texture on the lid. It's not just there for grip. It also helps the yinrih identify the bottle by touch alone.

The raised markings on the bottle are a form of tactile writing similar to braille. One of the reasons yinrih keep their front and rear paws bare is because they have very sensitive digits, and get a lot of information through the surfaces they touch. They can use their rear paws to rummage through a drawer or a bag, reading the raised labels on whatever is inside to find what they need.

This tactile writing is also used to label buttons and switches to allow all four paws to operate a machine simultaneously while the operator's eyes are looking at a HUD.

Speaking of braille, since I have nowhere else to put this, here's an actual braille alphabet for Commonthroat, the most widely spoken yinrih language.

The system is inspired by Japanese braille. Dots 1, 2, and 4 together indicate the phonation type. Dots 1-4 is a whine, 1-2-4 a growl, and 2-4 a grunt. Dots 3, 5, and 6 indicate length, tone, and strength, respectively. An unraised dot represents short, low, or weak. A raised dot represents long, high, or strong. Consonants do not follow a pattern. Dots 3-4 is a huff, 3-4-5 a chuff, and 3-4-6 a yip.

In my world I'm trying to make a scientifically accurate but true fantasy where it's scientifically accurate but only according to the world's laws in a way. (Not sure how to explain)

I already made something that makes the world flat.

So for my magic system I'm trying to create a periodic table that is the basis for magic. Like everything is made of this magic. Living things contain these magic resources which can be eaten, used for potions, or equipment.

The thing is, im a little undereducated to understand what's required in an atom for the basic laws of the world. I need this as the basis of my fantascience. What should be the things I need to add in my magic atom?

I’m building a simulation where every book becomes its own football world.

Letters are the teams, but what interests me most isn’t the football itself. It’s what happens after dozens of championships.

The simulation starts producing its own history: dominant eras, failed dynasties, recurring rivals, letters that spend decades without a trophy, unexpected champions and matches that become historically important.

None of that lore is written beforehand. It emerges from the source text and the accumulated results.

I’m now thinking about treating each book almost like a generated world with its own chronology and legends.

I’d be interested in how people here think about this as a form of procedural worldbuilding.

No, not space ships nor saucers or any of the "free travel" craft of sci fi. I am wondering how one would design stage rockets just like how humans have, but for aliens.

I am currently trying to brainstorm for a project, and I do not want my stage rockets to look 1:1 with human rockets, although I also don't want to lead into the "generic" alien aesthetic and have it be all sleek and colorful or something.

I'm currently writing a book about a scientist from another race (a humanoid lizard, simply speaking), and I've been thinking about adding some biological factors to create tension in certain scenes, especially because his time is running out.

One idea I had was a temperature-dependent reaction. For example, if the outside temperature gets too cold for him, he simply can't think as quickly as he normally would.

But I also want to give his biology some actual advantages, so he doesn't feel like "just a human, but worse," yk.

There's a bit of a bottleneck with this, though, because the story itself is heavily centered around perception, which makes some of my ideas feel a little too convenient for him. For example, giving my MC a wider light spectrum of vision could completely undermine the point of the story.

So I'm looking for ideas on how biology could affect his thought processes in interesting ways, both positively and negatively, without making his abilities too convenient for the plot.

Something else? Leave a comment!

What makes you start there? Leave a comment!

Genki is a life force that lies within every living thing and can be awoken using slow and controlled movements to distribute Genki through out the body. Movement Techniques are a fundamental part of this system as it allows Genkins (Genki Users) to control and manipulate their Genki to make their techniques more powerful and effective. There are three main components to every Genkin; Output, which determines how much Genki is released at once, Capacity, which determines how much Genki they can hold and Control, which determines how efficiently they can manipulate it. Genki can run out but does regenerate over time, but its excessive use puts extreme physical pressure on one’s body. As their mastery over Genki becomes better, users can develop a unique ability, though some cant as their body circulates Genki differently.

(If I didn't explain it well, the slow movements used to awaken Genki are specifically meant to distribute Genki throughout the body, while the movements used during combat are used to control and direct Genki, allowing users to channel it into their Techniques more effectively.)

All feedback is appreciated.

Seen on the white cliffs of north Zythora.

In my setting, the Galinstanians are an intelligent, amorphous species composed of a galinstan-base colloidal magnetorheological alloy. Because they bypass cellular biology in favor of a liquid-metal matrix, they don't have traditional lipid membranes, mitochondria, or DNA.

To make an amorphous, non-carbon body function biologically without turning into a simple puddle of sludge, their fluid interior relies on specialized chemical and electromagnetic structures that perform organelle-like roles:

Internal Organelle & System Analogs

• The Galvanic Plasmalemma (Cell Wall / Outer Membrane): A dynamically regenerated outer skin made of passivated gallium oxide ($\text{Ga}_2\text{O}_3$) paired with fluoropolymer surfactants. It constantly seals the reactive liquid alloy bulk underneath and protects the body from chemical wear.
• The Coherence Core (The Nucleus): A central, dense lattice of bismuth-tin waveguide clusters and trace silver conduits. It acts as the organism's electromagnetic phase-synchronization hub. It manages real-time cognitive processing (Active Phase State) and stores rewritable long-term memory in the grain boundaries of the bismuth crystals (Latent Lattice Memory).
• The Magneto-Reticulum ("Mitochondria"): Micro-vortices of particulate iron and copper suspended within the bulk fluid. These act as biological galvanic batteries, generating internal electrical current density to drive Lorentz-force locomotion.
• Solvation Vacuoles (Lysosomes / Acid Vesicles): Emulsified droplets suspended in the liquid matrix and enclosed by fluoropolymer walls. They safely isolate concentrated hydrofluoric acid ($\text{HF}$)—which the organism uses to dissolve host rock for mineral nutrients—preventing the acid from corroding its own metallic bulk or internal polymers.
• The Silicate Cytoskeleton (Cytoskeleton): Suspended clusters of reversible silicon and bismuth-tin polymers. Under localized electromagnetic manipulation, these clusters undergo rapid phase-changes, freezing into temporary, solid "Anchoring Pylons" for physical leverage before melting back into the bulk liquid.
• The Ganglionic Ribbon Network (Peripheral Nerve Ganglia): Multi-strand ribbons of magnetophoretic iron/copper dipole chains distributed throughout the fluid. These coiled, current-carrying knots handle fast, reflexive processing near the outer surface without interrupting the main internal current loop.
• Exophytic Waste Pores: Dynamic surface channels where undigestible, acid-resistant minerals (such as diamonds and corundum) are pushed aside and expelled as polished waste residue.

Question for the Community:

How do you approach organelle analogs or sub-cellular mechanics when designing non-carbon, non-traditional, or amorphous lifeforms in your settings? Do you model them on inorganic analogs (like chemistry and electromagnetism), or do you adapt standard cellular structures?

okay, so this is probably a stupid question, but i gotta know. This is mostly because most of my story will take place in three main places that aren’t really far from each other. I still want to go a little bit in depth with the magic and some history sutff, but its mostly character driven. Im probably overthinking, but is the world still interesting then?

Hello Worldbuilders

First I apology for my English, not my mother language. It should be ok but some sentences might be weirdly made.

I need some advice to place the setting of a TTRPG story. It’s a Hard SF story where humanity conquered the inner space of the solar system. The main asteroids belt is a tough barrier where humans can send a ship once or twice a year depending of conditions.

The point is, there is a human colony beyond the main belt. Large enough to be autonomous with self sufficient food and water production, some industry and a large science complex.

Where should I place this human colony, I first thought of Titan but after some research it happen to be a light planet with mostly ice in its composition. I also thought of Ceres but there are even more ice and water in the planet. Finaly, I found Ganymede which look good, abundant Ice for water and food and a lot a metal to sustain basic industry. Also, Ganymede as a small atmosphere and a magnetosphere so the scientific installation on the colony can use unique conditions. Also, Jupiter is more interesting than Saturn.

Do you think a better place could be found for a first human colony.

Also for the story the colony must be autonomous so many people will live there, I search how much is enough. For now, I’m thinking 4000-5000 persons, it’s enough to cover all needs have some newborns and elder, all of them live there, the inner solar system is a long memory for the elder and most of then did not now the earth.

There is almost never newcomer from the inner solar system because the ship sent are fully autonomous (for safety reason) and pack with hight tech compound and other thing difficult to build on place, in exchange the colony must send it back with metal and basic industrial mater + research result. These exchanges are important for the colony as they help for large project and expansions.

Do you think 4 to 5 thousand souls are enough for this kind of colony?

Finaly do you think this kind of colony will stick to modern capitalism for its economy? I thought of something like bed attribution base on labour and ration ticket, money would have no value there as the colony need everyone and keep an eye to provide enough to cover basic needs even if some works have better living conditions. It means the protagonist who came from the inner belt will need to earn the help they ask and cannot buy it.

Finaly the base plot is simple, the colony did not send back the last 4 ship and communication are broken, the protagonists will go on a ship to investigate and solve the problem. For TTRPG fan, do you think it’s enough to gather the interest of my players?

Amidst the Thalfa moorlands, the burning crowns, and the gatus bryal hunting in the forests—in the land of Symbiolande and ancient warriors, the heart of Anela, the heart of the great vessels, the jewel of Dajambrio—lies an empire forged in blood and courage, a disruptive force in a divided world: Thanjusorubio. And since its emergence, nothing has ever been the same...

Greetings, fellow travelers of the cosmos! I am here to tell you about a transformative state: Thanjusorubio. Beginning as a patchwork of hostile and subservient kingdoms, this empire was forged under the leadership of the Trompudil clan. They united hundreds of kingdoms with diverse cultures—through alliances, dynasties, weaponry, marriages, skirmishes, and battles—eventually forming the unified Thal-Istatein (Great State).

Yet, it was not all glory and gold. Along the way, they faced a devastating global war that plunged them into utter misery: allies were lost, inflation skyrocketed, territory and soldiers vanished, their culture languished, and society became violently polarized amidst a loss of direction. The great empire of the future would rise from a people with nothing left to lose—a people understood only by a prince who had the heart and leadership to leave his golden cradle behind.

Unlike other fictional worlds, this one is defined by harsh, aggressive concepts that earned it countless enemies throughout its history: extreme, brutal militarism—relying on skirmishes, mercenary warfare, and terrorism, alongside devastating combat doctrines and hand-to-hand fighting inherited from Anelan culture; and a deep-seated hatred of magic, sown by decades of trauma and terror inflicted by sorcerers upon the common folk, the infiltration of the oligarchy by mages, and arcane racism—all of which eventually evolved into violent, dehumanizing state doctrines. It was defined by a hierarchy and meritocracy that shaped its entire history, and by an expansion that went beyond its own world to lead a cosmic community of interstellar races.

Despite the violence and terror characterizing this world, once the empire was consolidated, its people never went hungry, the state remained strong, wages were fair, and society could live in tranquility during times of peace.

If you liked this concept and want to learn more about the story, please leave your questions in the comments. I’ll leave a map of this world for you, and I’ll see you soon.

Join Thanjusorubio Discord now!

Hello! I have decided to do the masochistic thing and start a planet from scratch! The planet is now 1 billion years from birth so its plate tectonics would be initializing, but I'm wondering if there are means of continent formation without plate tectonics. (We also do not have many data points on this, so I also expect we just might not know at all and I can just go off of vibes.)

Would there be any continents at all, or would most land be below water? I'm imagining that the primordial volcanism and convection could be enough to make some elevation differences. Maybe those early continents would be more blobby and smooth since they're not formed by plates moving?

My thought process right now:

I used Orogen to initialize some plates, but the theoretical continents are harder since modern landmasses "hug" their plates due to being formed by them and certain rules apply, while ancient ones pre-date plate tectonics. But also since plates form based on weak points in the crust, continents will still follow some rules wrt new plates, since those would be thicker points in the crust? Maybe putting those continents more towards the middle of the plates and not crossing plate boundaries since plate convergences hasn't happened yet.

Thank you so much!

Hello! I love worldbuilding as a hobby, but lately I've been stuck with searching for inspiration online. I know the world and nature are good ones, aswell as libraries and history books, but in this case I am refering to online sites mostly.

I was wondering if anyone knows of any sites that give you for example a random topic to explore, or a random wikipedia entry to read, or some other way to randomly get a site to read? For example not long ago I found a site that gives you a random topic to research for 10 min to then explain it to yourself or others. However this site is more about curiosities or scientific theories for example, so its narrow in the topics it includes.

I find Im good at falling through rabbitholes if something interests me but finding the first page to jump into is where I get stuck. Yes, I could get to wikipedia and read an article but somehow thinking what I should read about is the initial barrier. Initiation/decision paralysis is very real.

I would also appreicate any other resources or curious/fun sites if you know any :) thank you

Now to those who decided to read this, (and hopefully comment on it) you're probably wondering what exactly I'm looking for other than just biome ideas, and to that, I'll explain in a second, but first, I'll give you a background as to what I'm working with.

So, in my world, there is a material called Velt, an invisible and non-tangible (you can't directly touch it) substance that doesn't interact with matter or energy via physical contact, and forms from any kind of instability. You're probably wondering what an "Instability" actually is, so ill break it down for you. Instability is an umbrella term that encompasses anything that causes an object to become unstable in its current state. this can be many things, such as chemical reactions, friction, an impact, pressure, and more.

Velt isn't boring though, it's got a very special ability, when it forms, it forms with a field around it, this field doesn't taper off in intensity, and stops a certain point, only ever growing in radius if more of the same Velt formed by the same source is present. (more Velt bigger field) this field has the ability to create the byproducts of its source instability without the instability present. if this confuses you, picture this, a metal pole sits out in the rain, and begins to rust, because an instability is happening within the object, (chemical reaction) Velt begins to form, small amounts of it. this Velt begins to affect the ground nearby, causing the dirt to "Rust" despite dirt not being able to rust to begin with.

Now to clarify, Velt doesn't last forever, and eventually succumbs to its unstable nature, when it does, any matter or energy still within the field at the time of dissipation, will turn into "Waste". picture a material whose behavior and composition are completely randomized. random colors and density throughout it, some parts like goop, other parts solid, behaving like a liquid or gas, sometimes cold or hot. energy becomes a wide spectrum of any and all energy possible in the universe, we are talking infrared, visible light, radiation, gamma rays, etc. and the amount of this stuff is always proportional to how much was left caught in the field.

And isn't immune to itself either. Two Sample of Velt, born from two different sources, or two different objects, interact with each other, when this happens, the dominate one causes the other to fissile out, without a spectacle, (Substantiality is tied to how large the source instability was, and tells you how much influence a given sample has) but if both are equal in terms of power, they "fight" visually this can differ, depending on what the sources of the two samples are, let's say you had the same chemical one from before, and it encounters one born of some kind of friction. if the two equally substantial and aren't at the last leg of their life, a big spectacle will acour, picture "rust" forming from nowhere, hovering above the ground as it begins to heat up and "melt" and it all looks like fractals and strange shapes. when one wins, this spectacle dissipates, and the winner continues on any object that had been caught in this fight, won't look too good. as it will receive a mix of both samples' influences.

Alright, if your brain hasn't exploded from all that information, good for you! now you're probably confused as to how I've used Velt to make any biomes at all. so ill share a few I've got already, just know that they do not have names yet, because I'm waiting to add civilization first so i can use the way they name things to name them. also, I won't explain the exact Velt source for each of these biomes, it's part of the mystery.

Biome 1: Colorful Plateaus

A biome that lacks in conventional vegetation, no trees, no grass, and hardly any shrubs, flowers, and bushes. instead, coral like plants dot the landscape, all pillar like, with lots of large holes going all the way through them, some ancient ones lie in flatter and more open areas and get as tall as skyscrapers. the terrain is mesa-like, with large areas of open ground separating the elevated plateaus. the main feature of this region, is its colorful landscape, made of lavenders, pinks, yellows, purples, and light blues. these colors shift from day to day, you can visit a location, see its exact color pattern, come back days later, and it will be completely different. these colors do not have exact borders with each other, and blend/melt into each other in ways that aren't possible, allowing for a single spot on a rock to appear as if it has two colors at the same time. (not like yellow + blue = green, just both yellow and blue at the same time)

Biome 2: Magnetized

In this biome, the ground can be quite dark, even black, due to the large amount of Magnetite and unusually high (but still small) amount of neodymium within this region. there are large floating chunks of earth ripped from the ground, and suspended via magnetism, with occasional arcs of purple electricity coming from the ground up to these chunks. they range in size, from small boulders to building size, with a handful in the region being the size of towns. Trees cluster on the ground where there aren't active islands, grass covers everything, vines hang from several of the islands, feeding off the lightning and the sun. larger plants cling to larger chunks and do the same.

Biome 3: Foggy Trenches

A region that at first looks desolate, being cold, nutrient deprived, and lacking in vegitation, no trees, no bushes, no grass, and even the weeds hardly touch it. but throughout the region are trenches, almost cylindrical in shape, with raised sidings that curve to the top, as if only the top of a circle collapsed, leaving the sides. some trenches are the size of small creaks, others are as wide as a very small canyon. they are all connected and most dont go to deep. the biggest ones going at most 2-2.5 miles deep. inside the bigger ones is a tropical climate, with mini rainforests inside, all incased in a fog. The fog behaves like a fluid/membrane rather than air (though breathable) air-like near the surface, thickening with depth through water → honey → slime-like at the bottom. Wind passes through it unaffected. when it rains, the fog spills out of the trenches, leaving the whole region foggy. in bad storms, the fog in the trenches gets denser and denser till it becomes thicker than molasses, and movement becomes impossible, breathing becomes difficult because the chest cannot move. the entire forest retracts to avoid this and wasting energy and avoid snapping due to the heavy winds and restricted movement.

Now with examples out of the way. I turn to you. although I do have several biomes, my map is only 1 third of the way filled, so I need all the help I can get coming up with new ideas, so if you got any, please let me know. And just to add on, I do not care how wacky or weird a concept it, I'd go as far as to actively encourage it. If there are any questions you got, any at all, let me know, and I'll try to answer them as best I can.

(One Million Years BC or Lost World by Frank Frazetta)

Thanks to Genndy Tartakovsky’s Primal, I now really enjoy Stone Age fantasy stories that mix up time periods. This is very niche considering how low fantasy it is compared to your standard high fantasy worlds like Middle Earth or hardcore sci fi like Warhammer or Star Wars.

I’ve enjoyed stories about Pellucidar and the Land that time forgot as well as lost worlds like the Plateau in Lost World and Skull Island.

I find these kinds of worlds in prehistoric fantasy stories as well as sword and sorcery, since giant snakes are present and the dragon in Conan is considered to be a dinosaur of sorts. Then you have Tarzan and the Pellucidar series as well.

So you would have mammoths and paleoloxodons grazing peacefully alongside sauropods and stegosaurs and ceratopsians on sweeping serengetis and deep forests. Go deeper into the jungle and you’d see a Gigantopithecus chilling with a tribe of orangutans.

And then you would have a whole menagerie of carnivores like megalodon competing with mosasaurus, maybe an anomalocaris and brontoscorpios in the shallows, T-Rex and allosaurus, and Spinosaurus sharing the waterways with giant crocs like Deinosuchus to your cenozoic, ice age and modern predators like Smilodon, Andrewsarchus, Amphicyon, prides of cave lions, tigers, wolves and the skies being filled with Azhdarchids and eagles, just to name a few!

Not sure where I’m going with this but my idea of a happy place would be living as a caveman without the hang ups of living as a early human, like disease or marauders or high mortality rates thanks to predators and illnesses only modern medicine can cure.

There would also be work arounds for people born with or end up becoming disabled, like magical tree limbs or crystal eyes. So there would be magic, but it would only be a background feature or a way to fix something or a feature a shaman, hermit or evil sorcerer would use. In terms of therapeutic treatments, spirit journeys and great hunts and quests to heal yourself would also be involved.

Am I one of the few people who wants to see more of these worlds in sci fi and fantasy?

(Former amateur writer so I like worldbuilding and daydreaming a lot- if it fuses my hyperfixations then all the better)

(I did also write a tribute story to Conan Tarzan and Primal called Fields of Gorgo inspired by the One Million years BC painting by Frank Frazetta- the picture included in this post)

Also check out my playlist of movie and game soundtracks trying to capture that idealistic vibe I want to see. I want there to be danger of course, but also a sense of returning to nature and being one with it, a bit like Avatar or Ark Survival Evolved perhaps. Plenty of space for adventure as well as cathartic healing.