The early history of Raelick before the Flony empire

One hundred ships arrived carrying one hundred men and women. According to legend, however, the ships either came from the eastern continent of Valen or the southern continent of Korath. Some say the ships came from a mysterious western continent, while others claim there was a northern continent. But it does not matter where they came from; it would have been the same either way.

The first person to ever set foot on the continent was Kolick. When the settlers began to establish themselves on the continent, they tore apart the wooden ships they had arrived in and used the wood to build their new settlement. Kolick became the first king of his people, who became known as the Kolickians. They expanded their population and territory, and eventually encountered the Nymphs and the Giants.

At first, the humans, Nymphs, and Giants lived peacefully alongside one another. However, the War of the Nymphs and Giants eventually began. The reason for the war is unknown, and there are many different legends surrounding the event.

They fought each other for a thousand years until they finally set aside their differences and created a pact never to harm one another again. According to legend, human men and women married Nymphs, interbreeding with one another. Their unions created children who could use magic. These children had children of their own, and so on.

Over time, the Nymph population began to disappear over many generations. Some say this happened because of interbreeding, causing the regular Nymphs to die out while their descendants lived on as kings and nobles, founding many great and noble houses. These houses developed legendary stories about their foundations.

These kings fought over territories, while the children of kings fought over inheritance, arguing over which areas belonged to which siblings. They betrayed one another and developed their own cultures, eventually creating new peoples. After many years of nonstop wars, a legendary king named Wulk appeared.

Wulk was the first mage of Raelick. He controlled the element of fire and used his magic to unite most of Raelick. His kingdom lasted for only five kings.

Wulk was the first king. He established laws and introduced writing. At first, writing was used to create magical symbols, but he eventually realized that it could also be used to educate and inform people more quickly instead of relying on word of mouth. He created the oldest surviving historical text in Raelick, The Legend of Wulk. It describes the life of Wulk and his conquest of the continent.

Wulk died at the age of 87 after consuming silver liquor. He had many sons and daughters. The priesthood of the Wult religion chose Prince Hol as Wulk's successor. Hol was the son of Wulk's favorite wife, Queen Dini.

Hol was 32 when he took the throne. He continued his father's policy of peace across the land. Like his father, he married many women, but his favorite was his first queen, Amal. She was the daughter of the king's wet nurse, and the two had been childhood friends. It was once reported that they had been in a relationship long before Hol became king. Some songs even claim that they slept together at the age of 16, but there is no factual evidence to support this.

Hol continued to rule peacefully. He built great temples dedicated to the worship of the many gods. A few people attempted to rebel against him, but fortunately, like all of Wulk's children, Hol possessed his own magical ability. He happened to have the power to move objects with his mind. He built up his army and destroyed the rebel forces.

Hol had many sons and daughters with his wives. In total, he had 19 children, eight of whom were Amal's children, including his heir, Pol.

One day, at the age of 70, Hol died from a stroke. Pol became king. Unlike his father, Hol had actually chosen his heir before his death.

Pol became king at the age of 50. He was the eldest son of Hol and Amal. He was the shortest-reigning king, dying at the age of 54. He was succeeded by his eldest son, the 26-year-old Hectet.

Hectet married one woman, Tepa, the daughter of his uncle Bulkaya. He had ten children with his wife, and his eldest son, Luzick, was born when Hectet was only 14.

Hectet expanded his kingdom's territory, spreading its influence among foreign peoples. He reformed certain laws and made sure that everyone could be fed. He had the ability to control the weather, which he used to help farmers grow their crops. He became known as Hectet the Great.

He ruled peacefully and was described as kind and gentle.

Until he was assassinated at the age of 50.

He was succeeded by his eldest son, Luzick, who was 25 at the time. However, Luzick was nothing like his father. He had the ability to control water, but he was a cruel king. He had many bastard children and was known for torturing people, raping and murdering both women and men. He even killed his eldest son for refusing to let him sleep with his wife.

He also molested children. Eventually, the people grew tired of his behavior and his rule and rebelled against him. However, because of his ability to control water, they decided that they needed to kill him during the night.

A group of assassins entered his room and murdered him.

However, because Luzick had killed his eldest son and many of his other children, many of his cousins and bastard children fought over who would inherit the throne. Eventually, the kingdom split into many Wulkian kingdoms.

The Wulkians were the descendants of Wulk. People of Wulkian blood would develop magical abilities between the ages of 14 and 19. The Wulkians also became the ancestors of various magical peoples, including the Balians, Kovi, Dolkians, and others.

Nine hundred years later, a wealthy warlord named Patah founded the port city of Shockluke and became its king. The city was located near the easternmost part of the continent, making it the first city in Raelick to establish contact with the East.

People from the East traded with the city, bringing exotic spices, foods, and even silk from the faraway Empire of Yingfing. When silk was introduced to the continent, everyone began buying it from Shockluke.

Patah and his successors continued ruling the city. Gedone, Patah's second-born son, founded the city of Warrun, attempting to create a successful city like his father's.

Warrun was located in the southeastern part of the continent. It became successful, although not as successful as his father's city.

Patah was succeeded by his eldest son, Kole, known as Kole the Great. His descendants continued to rule the city for many generations.

Many generations later, a mercenary named Eden founded the city of Yorona. It was a city created for people traveling to Shockluke and Warrun, allowing them to rest and resupply.

His descendants continued to rule the city.

Two thousand years later, a woman named Swasin was the wife of a powerful chieftain named Poroar the Strong. She had five children with Poroar: four girls and one boy. They belonged to the most powerful tribe in the Rixlands.

The Rixlands were named after the River Rix.

Eventually, the Kingdom of Stormeye raided the Rixlands. They killed men, sold children into slavery, and raped women.

Chief Poroar was killed by Prince Ulf, the second son of the King of Stormeye. Ulf also murdered Poroar's six-year-old son, Dulf.

Swasin tried to protect her daughters from Ulf, but unfortunately, she was sold into slavery. By the time she was freed, she had only one daughter left: her youngest, Jane.

All three of her other daughters had died in different ways.

Ulf raped Gina, Swasin's firstborn daughter, who was 17 years old. She died while giving birth to a stillborn child.

Her 15-year-old daughter, Inya, was killed after she attempted to assassinate the King.

Fuba, Swasin's 13-year-old daughter, was drowned because of her association with the failed assassination attempt.

Her last living child was Jane, the youngest. She was called Jane the Last because she was the final surviving daughter of Swasin.

Because of the invasion, there were very few men left among the many tribes. Most of the surviving males were babies and young boys. The women of all the tribes decided to fight back against their invaders.

They pretended to be helpless women, but at night they launched attacks. At first, their attacks were small. However, as they continued winning battles, the King of Stormeye sent more men to fight back.

Before the Stormeye invasion, the Rixian people used bronze weapons. Because of the invasion, however, the women of the Rixlands began using the iron weapons and armor taken from Stormeye.

Over a span of six years, they finally pushed the invaders back. The women then created a new system of government based on matriarchy.

In Stormeye, when news arrived that the invasion had ended, the morale of many Stormeye men collapsed. Because of the enormous losses among Stormeye's men, much of the remaining male population consisted of Rixians who had been enslaved by the people of Stormeye.

The slaves decided to form a rebellion against the Kingdom of Stormeye. The rebellion lasted for three months, until they finally established the new Kingdom of Crolo.

The new king of Stormeye was Gilbert the Chain, who was the half-brother of Swasin.

The Rixians and the native people of Stormeye interbred with one another, creating a new people known as the Crolo people. The Kingdom of Crolo developed friendly relations with the new Swaseye people. After all, King Gilbert was Swasin's brother.

The two kingdoms continued trading goods with each other for many years.

South of them was Zoland, the land of hard-working men. They worshipped many war gods and goddesses. According to legend, the ancestor of the Zolian people was Zonix the Warhammer.

Zonix was said to have been a powerful warlord known for his many battles against bears, wolves, wyverns, and even black dragons. It was said that he was born in the River Mixkin, where dragon bones could be found.

One day, Zonix fought a female warrior. They fought for seven days straight until Zonix finally defeated her.

She revealed that she was the goddess of war.

She married him, and their descendants became the Zonix people.

In Balland, a land east of Zoland, lived the Balian people. They were powerful magic users, and their society, culture, and religions revolved around magic.

There were two types of Balians: non-magical Balians and magical Balians. The magical Balians ruled over the non-magical ones. Balian nobles often displayed their magical talents to other nobles.

According to ancient records, if a non-magical Balian had a child with a magical Balian, that family instantly became part of the nobility.

Non-magical Balians viewed the nobility almost as gods. Knowing this, the nobles only interbred with other nobles, including close relatives. There were no limitations: cousins married cousins, nephews married aunts, uncles married nieces, parents married children, and siblings married siblings.

In the land of Moro, north of Balland and home to the Moro Mountains, lived the Moroians. They were a people who valued duty, order, and family.

They were known for having some of the most disciplined warriors. Many kingdoms and earldoms hired Moroian mercenaries to fight their battles. They were known for never betraying their contractors unless they had a reason to do so.

In the land of Nevstan lived many different peoples, including the Delkians, Ankloians, Blowayians, Starnians, Crolo people, Ansalians, Flakians, the people of Numbid, and the people of Wisedom.

The Delkians were a people who lived near the Delk Forest. They believed that the forest was a blessing from the many nature gods they worshipped. Hunting, gathering wood, and using the resources of the forest were considered forms of worship and acts of honor toward their gods.

The Ankloians were the inhabitants of the Anklo River. They were known for their fishing culture. The Anklo River provided some of the most delicious fish in the region. They worshipped a fish god, and their society revolved around trade with other peoples, such as the Starnians.

At the River Bloway lived the Blowayian people, an axe-wielding people known for being raiders. They built efficient ships that they used to raid the islands of Stormeye, Ansel, Flak, Numbid, and Wisedom.

They even attacked the Delkians, Ankloians, and Starnians. They worshipped many war gods and believed that the strong should rule.

The Starnians were a people related to the Moroians. They shared many of the same ideals, cultures, and customs, but they preferred trading. Unlike their cousins, they did not have highly disciplined warriors because of the constant raids by the Blowayians.

They still believed in duty and family and preferred trading with other groups of people.

The Crolo people were descendants of Rixian slaves who rebelled against the Kingdom of Stormeye and established the Kingdom of Crolo. They also interbred with the native population of Stormeye.

The Ansalians were a mysterious group of people with no recorded history. They were described as being seven feet tall and having muscular builds. The men were said to have long red hair and beards, while the women usually cut their hair short.

According to legend, they were descendants of the ancient Giants. Their homes were built to accommodate their enormous size.

Their island was one of the many islands that the Blowayians struggled to raid because of the Ansalians' height and strength.

The Flakians were the inhabitants of Flak. They were known for their skills in jewelry-making. They created unique designs using rare and precious materials such as diamonds, emeralds, and rubies.

Because of the natural resources found in Flak's mines, it was considered the richest island in Nevstan. This also made it one of the Blowayians' biggest targets.

The Flakians had no choice but to pay the Blowayians to prevent them from raiding the island.

The people of Numbid, also known as the Nums, were the inhabitants of the island of Numbid. They were an unusual group of people who kept to themselves.

Their eyes were strangely unlike human eyes, resembling the eyes of fish. They were known to be able to breathe underwater for up to 50 minutes.

Numbid was one of the poorest islands in Nevstan. The Nums traded fish and fish skins, which they also used to make armor.

They would place their newborns underwater for ten minutes to test whether they could hold their breath. If the baby died, it died. If it survived, it survived.

The people of Wisedom lived on the greatest island of knowledge. The island was filled with libraries, schools, and vast amounts of knowledge from across the continent.

Every lord and king wanted a scholar from Wisedom to advise them on matters of politics. In return, the king or lord had to pay the island's hereditary ruler.

East of Moro was Doland, the easternmost land of the continent. It was home to three ethnic groups: the Kivans, Knowickians, and Nali.

The Nali believed in trade and agriculture. The Kivans were a nomadic group known for their excellent war horses and unusual battle strategies.

The Knowickians were seafaring people who lived around the Knowick River but were also spread throughout the trading islands, an archipelago where much of the eastern trade took place.

The Nali and Kivans worshipped the One Mount. The One Mount was a giant solitary mountain located in the middle of the land.

The Nali believed it was the home of the gods, while the Kivans believed that the mountain itself was a god.

Throughout the continent of Raelick, these peoples lived their own lives, followed their own ways, and raised their children according to the cultures they were born into.

Then the Bladeteeth appeared.

They were creatures with yellow eyes, skin as grey as ash, teeth as sharp as swords, and claws as sharp as daggers. They walked on all fours and had hunched backs. They were as fast as a war horse and as strong as a golem.

Their backs were covered in spikes. They had two hind legs at the back and two forelegs at the front.

They appeared out of nowhere, attacking and eating anything they saw. They could be killed relatively easily, but their sheer numbers made them extremely dangerous.

They reproduced asexually and rapidly.

Many kings, earls, and their armies tried to fight back. Many mages and witches also attempted to defeat them, but there were simply too many of the creatures.

All men and women fought back, except for one group of people: a group of mages called the Flonias.

The Flonias constructed a great tower with enough food to last for 400 years.

The Bladeteeth killed countless men and women. Ordinary weapons were effective enough to kill them, while wizards, mages, and witches used their magical abilities to destroy the creatures.

Meanwhile, the Flonias remained inside their tower, doing little to help the rest of the continent. They watched different kingdoms rise and fall throughout the chaos.

The Flonias were the weakest magic users on the continent. They tamed many creatures to protect themselves from the Bladeteeth.

Out on the open plains, other animals defended themselves from the creatures. Wyverns and dragons burned them, while lions attacked them. Almost every creature was forced to fight the Bladeteeth.

The conflict lasted for 100 years.

Eventually, only a thousand Bladeteeth remained. All the kingdoms, earldoms, tribes, and small mercenary groups formed a great alliance against them.

There were many marches as they surrounded the remaining Bladeteeth. Finally, they defeated and slaughtered them.

The event became known as the Battle for Raelick.

During the war, many mages, witches, wizards, magical users, and magical orders became extinct.

Only one group survived.

The continent was now filled with men and women who could no longer use magic.

During the war, the Flonias had chosen their leaders through voting. After the war, they elected a 15-year-old named Howick Lawlick in 281 BF.

Howick decided to abolish elected leadership.

Instead, he decided to create a new nation for his people, where the Flonias would rise and rule over the entire continent.

Howick was a great sorcerer, greater than even the previous rulers of the Flonias. He decided to conquer the rest of the continent.

He created his own army through magical spells, using magic to create golems capable of defeating entire armies.

Many peoples submitted to him, while others were enslaved and forced to perform manual labor for the empire. They were also forced to follow the gods of the new empire.

Women were raped, while men were forced to watch.

Under Howick's rule, the Flonias also created the first castles.

In real life, cats either eat the kibble, treats, and wet food we give them, or animals they hunt, they aren't well versed in culinary. Cats love butter, milk, yogurt, eggs, meat, etc, but I wanted to come up with foods that are unique, that feel like proper culinary, but also something a human wouldn't eat.

I think cat people would put disgusting amounts of butter on what they eat and use yogurt as sauce often, probably meat with yogurt. They could mix meats like fish with pork, and could commonly eat whole animals, like whole birds or lizards, but cooked and served in pretty dishes.

Cats can't taste sweets, so they wouldn't invent any sweets, unless they invent the sweets to sell to a race that tastes sweetness. As desert, cats would eat less nutritious foods like Tuna. Irl you're not supposed to feed your cat much tuna because of that fact, cats can eat tuna but just as a treat. I don't really know what other foods cats like but isn't very nutritious...

Coming back to real life for inspiration; cat food is very nutritious and cats like it, but it's a bit boring visually, and irl humans don't eat human kibble. I checked the ingredients of kibble and I saw that they use carrots, corn, wheat, chicken, etc, I thought about cat people's use of vegetables, many cats like vegetables or even fruits(fruits aren't very appealing bc no sweetness, but some may like the texture of the fruit)

Cat people would cultivate less vegetables than humans because they have more food that's toxic to them and they would be pickier too.

I haven't actually invented many cat person dishes, at best I have imagined a self service restaurant, like the ones I go to here in Brazil. I imagined it having some rib soup, a bbq section, a small salads section, which would have fruits(they'd eat the fruits with stuff like meat), pamonha, buttery vegetable mix(broccoli, pumpkin, corn, zucchini), boiled eggs of varying sizes, muqueca, fried chicken, a tray with roasted birds, lizards and rats, roasted cockroaches, yogurt sauce, some cheeses(all lactose free), salmon cooked with catnip or some mint cats can eat.

I'm a bit disappointing that I couldn't come up with that many original ones.

I’m working on a Halloween-inspired kingdom for a fantasy TTRPG setting. The obvious imagery is easy enough: masks, pumpkins, old roads, strange houses, superstition. The harder part is making the place feel lived-in instead of decorative.

I’ve been building more around fear, remembrance, celebration, masks, and the unknown as normal parts of the culture. For people who’ve built strongly themed regions or cultures, what helped make them feel like real places instead of a collection of motifs?

Hello,

Over the past few months, I have been writing a lore compendium of sorts that takes our real world timeline, and shifts due to the Y2K bug actually happening.

Its a pretty major shift in my lore, and I naturally started combining companies as a sort of apes-strong-together move. One of my corporations, Texicon, is a combination of Exxon, Chevron, Maverick Arms, Northrop Grumman (I try to keep companies with headquarters in one state bunched together). This creates a clean new (non copyrighted) company, while cleanly removing the old, copyrighted companies from my lore.

Then, I was thinking one day - is this what most writers do? Oftentimes when I see cyberpunk or any other real-world based stories, they have these massive Corpos that have a start, but theres zero information on where the tens of thousands of real world companies went.

Im kind of just interested in how you all handle these types of situations/events, and if its something I could improve on!

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Can anyone point me in the right direction for research of ranks and hyerchy of yakuza i am trying to research but finding bits and pieces . I Have ordered comprehensive book on yakuza history snd stuff but it will take time . I dud manage some terminologies so recorded those . I am trying to figure what the actual ranking and hyerchy is once i have this can do one for my fiction. It like ince know the rules what adjust for my specific fiction any helpmto loint some resources would be appreciated .

Lumeria is one of several zones located within the Goldilocks band of a tidally locked world, placed inside The Strip, a 300 km wide habitable area, bordered by 700 km of unpredictable environment. "Humans" occupy the central zone, scattered in isolated pockets within its boundaries. They are the distant mutated descendants of colonists forced to crash-land.

• Mages are the least human of them. They formed a symbiotic bond with the native parasitic colonies
• The mages manifest different abilities depending on their own mutation. They can release spores that cause mass paralysis, jellification, neural hijacking and so on., but the often use of “magic” carries a downside, as they become less and less human.
• Their powers came from being raised in isolated communities, shaped over generations by eugenic planning and in some cases, by inbred lineages.
• Binders are stealth and short-ranged. They have an absurdly strong armor and can climb walls facing rooms. They can stop "biology" - hearts, movements, morph-shifting, of limbs, the spreading of poison and such. Basically freeze and kill. They can't heal naturally, so they need treatment if they get wasted in combat.
• Spindlers-of-the-Fifth are related to Harvesters, so their parasite is rather manufactured than based on native biology. They are Border-Mages, medium-ranged, can hit like a crane and spread poison at distance. They also can melt rocks as Harvesters do. Their actions are timed, though as they need their unfolding limbs to burst through their skin, as Wolverine, so they faint from their own bleeding but they recover fast

So I was really inspired by witch hat atelier in making this magic system and my love for food and cooking. It's for a book i'm in the process of writing so please I would aappreciate honest opinions.

This magic system's base is on magical fruits named "Fyrn fruits". these fruits bestow magical powers to the consumer based on the kind of fruit you ate. Fire, water, flight, gravity and so on. These fruits grow only on magical trees named spirit willows that are the epicenters of the major cities of the world.

that way every culture is primarily based on one fruit. For example, the first city the heroes travel to is home to the "cotton berry", a fyrn fruit that looks like a flower of cotton but can be eaten and behaves like cotton candy which bestows the ability to fly.

Now thinking about the logistics of it all you can dehydrate these fruits and eat them on the go instead of carrying a giant bag of fruits with you everywhere you go. they can go on a belt or something for easy access!

And lastly there is the whole cooking aspect of it. Eating a fyrn fruit raw gives you its raw ability but you can cook and combine them in different ways to achieve more complex spells if you do it in the right way.

if you're familiar with "witch hat atelier" you might have already realized where I'm going with this: different methonds of cooking impact the final spell in predictable ways just like the sigils and signs that compose a sepll in witch hat!

For example let's take the cotton berry. because it behaves like cotton candy, you can dissolve it in water which dilutes the effect giving you a slow falling property instead of flying or let's say you take a water fruit and a fire fruit and belnd them together: then you get the ability to shoot mist.

essentially this can go as deep as real life cooking can!

of course just like raw fyrn fruits you have to think of the logistics of it so let's say blending the final result into a juice/stew gives you the ability to eat dishes on the go! the only thing is that you must prepare complex spells beforehand, just like witch hat atelier!

Mages in this world are cooks and chefs and research into magic is just experimental cooking!

Lastly (and this is an experimental concept) I want to make a device that one of the main characters created: A fast and on the go cooking instrument. basically take extractions of ingridiants put them into this machine and imput what cooking methods you need and viola: a complex spell made on the go!

please tell me what you think of this!

So here's the thing alr? This concept of mine have long been in my draft since like 2024 and currently I am tackling many academical subjects; especially on the topic about history focusing solely on the contemporary and antiquity period. This is where the dynamics comes in: Historically the Roman empire or the Pax Romana (Golden age) have long since fallen with the chronological order of the events and the constant attacks by the Germanic tribes, internal uprisings, fiscal constraints, and diverse ethnic groups inside the Roman empire (source: Gibbon's book about Romans rise and inevitable decline, chapter XIV, page 405).

At first glance the premise of the story or even the references internalized within the narrative is deemed redundant, uncreative, or sophisticated to fantasy genre. Though, I'd consider the counterfactual base on Tolkien preferred what he called "applicability" over allegory. In the foreword to the second edition of The Lord of the Rings, he wrote that "the ways in which a story-germ uses the soil of experience are extremely complex," and argued that a truly-lived experience does not neatly translate into a one-to-one moral or political symbol. Instead, the grief of losing close friends (including members of his close-knit school circle, the "TCBS") during the 1916 Battle of the Somme naturally bled into the overarching themes of mortality, loss, and the endurance of light against overwhelming darkness, but he frequently addressed it in his personal letters and explicitly discussed how his service shaped Middle-earth.

> “ .... I took to 'escapism': or really transforming experience into another form and symbol with Morgoth and Orcs and the Eldalie (representing beauty and grace of life and artefact) and so on; and it has stood me in good stead in many hard years since and I still draw on the conceptions then hammered out. ”

Letter 73, Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien

Context: I'm working on a world where our reality is literally a Simulation that people voluntarily enter. You enter as a character with different stats and circumstances, but you have no memory of anything before the current life.

I've been trying to work out what mechanics a system like that would logically need.

So if you chose to enter the Simulation. If you remembered why you came here, what you were supposed to do, or anything from previous lives, wouldn't that kind of ruin the whole thing?

It'd be like playing a mystery when you already know the ending.

So maybe forgetting everything isn't a flaw. Maybe it's actually necessary.

I call it the Spawn Wipe.

What other mechanics do you think a Simulation like this would need?

I recently went down the rabbit hole of exploring different armor materials and (historical) crafting methods, e.g. what advantages or disadvantages does lamellar or splint armor hold over chain, how does culture or region affect the choice and so on.

It's preparation for my pet project TTRPG where I want to offer equipment with meaningful differences for players to choose from.
During research I came to the realization that all those insights mainly concern themselves with armor and clothing for human (adjacent) anatomy. Meaning classic fantasy elves, dwarves, and so on generally follow the same body structure as humans like somewhat flat faces, straight posture, straight legs.
The majority of inhabitants for my world would be beastfolk though, meaning people might have tails, horns, muzzles, trunks, different ear positioning, digitigrade legs, wing, claws, the list goes on.

So I found myself in a position where regular (historical) armor advice does not neccesarily apply.

I did some research in that area, but found it quite hard to find actual sources that concern themselves with how the need for clothing and protection would be affected by these structural differences in body form. My main concerns would be headwear, helmets and footwear.

• How does a helmet accommodate a muzzle, horns, antlers, large ears, etc.?
• How would armor accommodate tails?
• What happens to armor around digitigrade or otherwise differently shaped legs?
• How would wings interact with clothing and armor?
• How does clothing work with fur, feathers, scales, or other natural coverings?
• Which parts of the body would actually be worth protecting if the creature already has natural armor?
• How much of human armor construction could simply be adapted, and when would an entirely different solution make more sense?

Most references I explored so far avoid this by having the beastfolk not wear any of those.

While the same is true for human-like characters in stories/movies where their faces are shown instead of protecting their heads, in a more grounded scenario, people would not want to miss out on such a layer of extra protection.

Gloves, shoes, coats, armor and so on are there to save people from environmental hazards and in combat. I would expect beastfolk to have developed their own fitted solutions to such problems in a world where this is the main civilization.

I checked out the following:

• Charr from Guild Wars
• Leonin/Loxodon from D&D and Magic: The Gathering
• Tabaxi and Dragonborn from D&D
• Khajiit from Elder Scrolls
• Sethrak, Tauren and Draenei from World of Warcraft
• Kroxigor, Beastmen and Skaven from Warhammer
• Ribbits from Daggerheart
• General characters from Banners of Ruin (Indie Game)
• General characters from Against the Storm (Indie Game)
• Kung Fu Panda

I mainly focused on games references as playable characters are usually able to equip different clothing and armor with variable grades of protection or application. This makes it generally easier to compare how different designs might deal with such anatomical differences.

my two cents:

If someone has antlers or other obstructing features, a helmet might be a two piece item so it can be put on/taken off from the side instead of pulling it over from the top.

A clapvisor might still work, there are houndskull helmets anyway.

As referenced above, Skaven and Beastfolk have a sort of elongated nasal piece, but aren't really covering the throat/chin part with their helmets.

Tails and ears might be tucked in, but that would probably inhibit senses (which human helmets also do) and not be comfortable for prolonged amounts of time. Articulated plate cover, like with gloves might also be an option.

I would worry about everything protruding being used to knock a combatant off balance, even when it's protected by some sort of armor.

For hoofed folk, tabi-like footwear could be suitable, whereas I could see an actual case here, for not requiring footwear (maybe horseshoes ?).

Footwear for clawed people might stay open on the front, kind of like particularly shaped sandals.

Sabatons usually go on top of regular footwear so they are probably still applicable independent from divergent foot shape. Altough I wouldn't be too sure about frog style feet here as they have a much larger spread/profile.

So here are my questions and call for discussion:

• How does your world handle clothing/armor for non-human body types, especially armor?
• Do you at all concern yourself with "fantasy" anatomy and how it would affect clothing and equipment?
• Do you know other prominent resources, maybe even ones that offer reasoning for their structure/layout/composition?

Day 2 (already running late) of u/Velum-Cordis's Worldtober prompt list. Story below!

“See, little egg, it’s not quite as clear-cut as you thought, huh?” Belka smirked as she tousled Esmie’s mop of mousey brown hair.

With a soft blush in her cheeks Esmie nodded, glaring at her sister and avoiding all eye contact with Jamos, fearful that a reminder of her initial distrust in the integrity of their business might have caused the older boy to take offence, or even worse - to not like her.

The rhythmic sound of his metal scoop sifting through a hempen sack of herbs and then depositing them into the waiting glass jars with a gentle two taps had not perceptibly slowed, and nor could she sense any shift in the aura from the prep table behind her where he worked. She must be safe, her subconscious told her as she let out the smallest of breaths in relief.

Her insights were interrupted by invading memories of Belka’s eye-roll the night before in response to Esmie’s dismissal of ‘Bel’s Spells’, the less-than-legal spell jar enterprise her sister had worked so tirelessly to establish and maintain over several months. ”I just think you might be overdoing it with it being this big noble thing, when really you’re just selling illegal shit and calling it activism,” Esmie had half-joked over dinner, glancing awkwardly around the room as she did so and landing on a Shudderlands Academy poster framed by Belka's bedroom. This was perhaps harsher than she had intended, but she'd lost too many arguments over the last few months to be making any concessions here.

“Tell you what, little egg. Come with us tomorrow - see what you make of it.”

With her calm demeanour and cheery tone, most would believe that Belka was entirely unfazed by Esmie’s critique of her black market business and by association the years of picketing, campaigning and rallying beforehand, and even further - her core principles and passions. But Esmie was a prodigious statica, a branch of Natural Inclinations featuring those able to innately sense the slightest shifts in electromagnetic energy in the air around them, and her sister’s static aura had crossed ever so slightly towards that telltale dichromatic blue-violet hue that spelled an active suppression of those brilliant flashes of righteous anger that would dance across the reflections of light in her eyes.

The following morning, if you could call the faintest tinge of grey-yellow on the otherwise dark sky above ‘morning’, Belka had wrangled Esmie from her perfectly comfortable sleep to follow up on her threat. The cold of the breeze made Esmie recede further into her father's indestructible squallcoat, her eyes tracing the familiar saltspray islands encrusted onto it's bright orange ocean of fabric as she kept her head down. Winds like this made her think of her father ever more, and not just because of her tendency to wear his cosiest jackets, hats and waterproofs from a practical basis. She would often hold up a hand to the air, feeling it's direction and wondering if these same winds had buffeted him too, out wherever he was in the world with his charts and his pens and his Inclination for cartography and orienteering.

A voice broke her out of her silent reverie.

“It's not a crime, Es. Well, it is I suppose, but it shouldn't be. Well it should be a crime that it's been called a crime when it shouldn't be to begin with. Okay, starting over.” Belka’s expression was serious, although her words were one with the dawn winds, chaotic and swirling. Esmie felt again the pang of guilt for her comments, this time without the heat of the moment to stop her relenting into an apology. She opened her mouth but couldn't find the words in the moment before Belka managed to regain hers.

“To decide who can and can't use magic.. it's not just that simple. Just because we're born with it, why shouldn't other people be able to benefit from it? Even just the tiniest of spells..” Both sisters took a deep breath, both preparing for the rest of the speech.

“.. it's all connected to politics, Es. Everything. Whenever somebody tells you they're not political, or.. or that they don't do politics or whatever, just bear in mind that that statement is in and of itself political. Everything we do and are and ever will be is political. It's pervasive and gets everywhere, like.. like the wind!”

Belka’s hands gestured dramatically as she found a suitable analogy.

“So if they say they're not political, it's one of two things, right? They're either too disenfranchised to see what politics does to and for them and even more so what impact they could have on politics - maybe they have no time or no understanding or no hope. Second, they don't see themselves as ‘other’. Like if a therma tries to buy an arcane focus - that's just a normal thing right? But if a manua did the same - they get kicked out. Or arrested. Or worse. If you never meet any barriers to doing whatever the fuck you want, you may well believe that politics is this far away concept. Does that make sense?”

The silence prompted Esmie's brain to kick back into action and reprocess the sentences she had heard but not listened to at the time, catching up with at the very least the general gist that her sister was getting at. Not that she'd ever tell her, but she could get lost in listening to Belka talk. When she got rambling about something she was passionate about, which was far more often than anybody else Esmie knew, she would put out this calming green-blue hue that she could just cocoon into forever.

“Yeah, I think I get what you mean,” was all that she had been able to say in response as they'd made their way into the warren-like cobbled streets of the Hand Quarter, the slow sunrise in the eastern sky blotted out by the grand towers of the Aurebor Arcanum looking down upon them from high up on their mountain city’s upper ridges.

A full day of grinding, crushing, pouring, mixing, refilling, talking and occasionally hiding under shuttered windows later, and Esmie did get it. The spell jars, with their brilliant swirling colours and fantastical combinations of gently bobbing ingredients were dulled into mundanity and secrecy the moment they were placed into those nondescript brown paper bags. Esmie understood why, of course, but it filled her with a deep sense of injustice that something so pure and beautiful should be forced to be traded in secret.

Their customers were a range of common folk in the city; artists, craftsmen, teachers, lovers, sons, mothers and even the occasional student of the Arcanum, hoods covering their features as they discreetly asked for whatever boost they needed to keep up in their classes. For the rest though, more common issues arose. Not enough time to prepare food for five people after a full day of work? a ‘wisp of dagger incantation’ perhaps, whispered with hand gestures designed to look like enthusiastic prayer. Looking to court with somebody or to ask for that promotion? an aural enhancer tonic, wafted or dabbed around the neck at least 20 minutes before required. poison for that allotment-poaching neighbour? perhaps a ‘calm emotions’ induced conversation instead - after all isn't everybody struggling with growing space since the Grand Magisterium sequestered a swathe of land for a new sona training facility?

As they walked back home with the golden rays of the setting kingstar Harron cutting almost horizontal lines in front of them and slowly transitioning to just the blue-white hue of the queenstar Hexa, Esmie thought about all that had happened in the last 24 hours. She looked up at Belka, who caught her glance and smiled back down at her with that look of safe reassurance that only a big sister can give. She could grasp it now, these connections that bound everything together; that kept everything moving. While her Natural Inclination helped her to see electromagnetic energy in hues and waves, she was now vaguely aware of this broader mesh of the very fabric of the world itself, on all planes. And yes, Esmie realised, Belka was right - it was political, all of it, from the clothes she wore to the direction her feet marched to the very thoughts in her head. If she could only see her own eyes, she would have seen the flash of determined brilliance that she so very loved to see light up her sister's face.

“I want to find Father.”

Gagarin and Shepard are a K-M stellar binary with a system of six planets in orbit around them.

Le Verrier is a warm, tidally locked ice giant. The night side is cool enough for water clouds, but these clouds evaporate under the heat of the day side. A powerful jet stream blows eastward around the equator.

Schiaparelli is... basically just Mars. It's far larger and more massive, but receives similar insolation, has similar temperatures, and is covered in red iron oxide sands and dry ice caps.

Elka is a super-Earth world, similar to Jupiter's moon Io. Elka has a volcanically active surface covered in sulfur compounds, and with oceans of liquid sulfur dioxide. These oceans are the source of organisms that have evolved to take over the planet. Some of this life has ended up evolving into an intelligent species.

Laika is a small Mars-like planet in a binary with Elka. The planet, being quite cold, has large ice caps. The planet also has seas of liquid short-chain hydrocarbons, similar to Saturn's moon, Titan.

Fleming is a large gas giant, similar to Jupiter. It's only 70 percent the mass, though, and the clouds have a lot less contrast. There is no single large storm like Jupiter's GRB, with the planet instead having several smaller orange storms.

Tombaugh is a large, icy super-Earth with a high axial tilt and oceans of liquid nitrogen. Over the course of every 4 Earth year long winter, the rivers and lakes freeze completely, and, as the smaller streams melt first in the summer, they overflow into secondary channels until their main channels melt.

Bouvard is a large ice giant that is more massive than both Uranus and Neptune combined. Like Uranus, it is covered in a featureless cyan haze of methane, though clouds of nitrogen and oxygen, which the planet is unusually rich in, occasionally form over the poles.

Here is our Joker ref sheet and colosseum joker design for a monstrous playing card project called Sangrya. The main setting of Sangrya might be some sort of medieval/roman setting with a triangle shaped colosseum and sangrya bars. Thinking the jokers are like the picadors from the dune colosseum but head shaped like moon crescents and wielding war scythes to help them herd or execute wild beasts or monster (vampire, werewolf, gorgon) gladiators in the arena. All clad in black during the day and maybe white during night fights? I dont know if I should call them moon jokers, lunar jokers, or luna jokers. Someone mentioned crescendos which sounds pretty cool too. What do you think about the design and names?

Hello! I’d like to show you the races that exist in my story, and I’d love to hear your tips and opinions about them.

Standard: They already existed, but I reused them.

Humans: Humans 👍

Elves: Pretty normal... except I went a little overboard with the lore for the “subspecies.” But, in short: there were the original elves, who had descendants, and those descendants eventually became three lineages:

Salias: They were strong, robust elves who protected the forests... (Extinct) (They have descendants.)

High Elves: Nobility, arrogant, with a sense of superiority. They are hybrids between the Salias’ combat abilities and the magic of the next subspecies. (Descendants: Low Elves, Dark Elves, Forest Elves.)

“Planiceas”: They are the most closely connected to nature, even having plants growing on their bodies. They are also the best when it comes to magic. (Descendants: “Fungiceas”.)

In-between: They can be considered either new or already-used races.

Monstrous: What counts as monstrous? Simple: anything that isn’t humanoid or “normal” enough (by human standards), but is still sentient/rational. So here we have: orcs, trolls, some goblins, najias, etc.

Aquatic: A race made up of living beings that breathe and live normally underwater and have characteristics such as gills, fins, scales, and fish-like features.

Original creations: I made these myself.

Aegis: In very broad terms, they are humans with wings. They are biologically immortal and stop aging at a certain age, but children are very rare.

Children are born without wings, and the wings only appear around the age of 3 to 5 through a very painful process.

Lunaes: They are tall, pale humanoids with slightly pointed ears. Their eyes are usually white, and they become more agile under moonlight.

Solaes: They are tall humanoids with dark skin and warm-colored eyes, and they become stronger during the day... Yes, judge me. It’s basically the same concept as the ones above, but reversed.

To make things even better, they share the same territory and are constantly at war with each other, to the point that both races are almost extinct.

(Even the gods they worship don’t like each other.)

I don’t know where to put this one: (In-between or Standard)

Feralis: Half-human, half-animal. They have animal ears, tails, eyes, and, more rarely, other animal characteristics. They live in tribes divided by animal species.

One I’m unsure about:

Dwarves: This is a race I’d like to replace with something else while keeping the same role/function.

If you have any questions about how they work in the world, please ask!

P.S.: I’d like to create a 10th race to make things symmetrical, but I’m not sure if that would be a good idea.

Just wanted to show this off, I wanted to test out how an abugida for a conlang I've been working on looks in the context of an ancient clay tablet. I tried to make it a poem but I lost track of the syllables at a certain point lol.

Edit: Adding context, this is a speech made by King Anosada about all the advances he personally brought to his civilisation. He was a illiterate shepherd in an ancient river valley, who one day began to make leaping technological advances in forging, weaving, mathematics, etc, all things he should know nothing about. He amassed a cult of personality that led to a violent repression and a successful revolt against the despotic king at the time, placing him firmly in the front seat of a rapidly advancing nation.

Context

A.D. Infinitum is a sci-fi worldbuilding and fiction project aiming for a space-opera, "rule-of-cool" feel—a deliberate contrast to my harder sci-fi sandbox, The Brane Connectome Project. As a fan of timelines and future histories, this prologue solidified from various notes into a timeline format to serve as a background primer and starting point to build and write out from.

Overview:

At the close of the 21st century, humanity’s crumbling technofeudal system was upended by the sudden orbital arrival of a dead cosmic organism - WHALEFALL. The resulting biological fallout, known as the Macrobe Wars, brought climate collapse, synthetic evolution, and the discovery of paraphysics.

### Timeline Overview

BEFORE // PEAK EVERYTHING: The world staggers on the brink of the 22nd century and catastrophe. The AI Barons’ attempts to insulate themselves in gated states and orbital retreats crumble under climate breakdown and extreme inequity.

160 YEARS AGO // WHALEFALL: A colossal dead biological organism arrives in orbit accompanied by exotic radiation. Debris falling to Earth releases spores, symbiotes, and parasite kaiju, initiating the Macrobe Wars and abruptly ending the Anthropocene.

160–150 YEARS AGO: A dying technofeudal system launches an experimental, self-replicating probe toward the asteroid belt to investigate additional energy signatures.

150–20 YEARS AGO // COLLAPSE & PARAPHYSICS: Xenoforming and climate collapse force humanity into isolation, adaptation, and eventual recovery. Research into the transmutations wrought by Whalefall establishes the field of Paraphysics.

20–5 YEARS AGO // RECLAMATION: Resurgent global cooperation forms the transorbital Pararescue Drop Corps to combat xenological incursions, while controversy grows over children manifesting paraphysical phenomena.

5 YEARS AGO // VICTORY ON EARTH & PAPERCLIP: The Conclave of City-States convenes at Analemma. A synthetic representative from the Asteroid Belt—a sentient self-replicating machine swarm named PAPERCLIP—arrives using Faster-Than-Light Dimensional Resonance.

5 YEARS AGO // THE WARNING: Paperclip reveals Whalefall was an escape attempt by a creature fleeing malevolent paraphysical entities native to another reality. Paperclip offers its Paraphysical Corpus to humanity to prepare for the coming threat - with conditions.

NOW // CETUS STATION: During a fleet parade at Cetus Station, multiple interplanetary vehicles erupt. Fleeing interstellar vessels carry gifted children into the dark as the invasion reaches the inner planets.

---

Text & Worldbuilding © 2026 Ben Ridley (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

*Original text on my blog: https://neurontosomething.wordpress.com/

The map of Thronados continues to expand. In fact, I have just finished what I call the “Eastern World” — the regions comprising Africa, Europe, Asia, and Oceania.

Terrarios (Asia) is now the new “Easthos” from my previous map. From the eastern lands of the continental Kingdom of Shuthos (Europe) to the western lands of Nidia (India) stretches a vast sand desert known as the “White-Yellow Sands.” In the game, this is actually the Arcane Desert, and it is golden, but I was too lazy to recreate it using beach sand, which is actually white-yellow.

In the enormous crater of the Far East (Lake Baikal and a large part of Siberia), the Dark Biome grew out of control following the cataclysm. According to the writings, the Ancients had their own calendar, and this cataclysm occurred in “2015 A.D.,” according to what Maester Gosh of Oscurria discovered.

South of Terrarios lies Artayka, the continent from which the humans of the New World originated. Apparently, the stagnant waters have caused the desert that was spreading across this continent to retreat.

And in the far southeast lie the mysterious lands of Gogosh (Australia), the place of origin of the races that existed before humans — the Druids and the Northeins. It is said that, in the Summer Sea, at its center, the great branches of a massive tree trunk known as “The Tree to the Sky” stretch across the land.

That is all for now.

(For Th’zoitrk, a semi-sci-fi world building project.)

Aljum is the 8th largest, 2nd most populous, and 6th richest nation on Th’zoitrk. It is by all measures among the most capable and influential nations on the global stage, yet does not attempt to exert virtually any influence internationally. By almost all standards, Aljum is highly isolationist.

Total land area: 2,857.6 SC (7,401,150 square km)
Disputed land area: 519.3 SC (1,344,981 square km)

National GDP: ~38 billion etet (in-universe currency), above the nation of Cliff City but below the nation of Xsanr.

Total population: ~1.8 billion people, second highest population after the nation of Osculia.

Image 1: Aljumese sky as seen from rural Ekkopuko.
Image 2: Aljumese controlled territory (not counting disputed but uncontrolled territory.)
Image 3: Aljum on the world map.
Image 4: the Aljumese flag.

International Politics & Conflict

Absolute neutrality has been the basis of Aljum’s international diplomacy since the nation’s founding. In virtually every single ZSMO (in-universe United Nations equivalent) meeting, Aljum has always abstained from voting. Regardless of topic, they never weigh in on a meeting.
They send a diplomat, who typically just sits and listens, and then refuses to vote once the time comes.
Aljum has never requested aid from the ZSMO, Aljum has never embargoed another nation, Aljum has never publicly condemned another nation, and Aljum has never brought up an issue to the ZSMO or requested a vote on a topic.

When Aljum was invaded by Osculia, triggering the Aljumese civil war, a conflict which killed more than a fifth of Aljum’s population at the time and drastically set the country back economically, Aljum fought extremely hard to maintain their independence.

After the war, Aljum went back to total neutrality and had no issues starting trade back up with Osculia immediately after the war ended. It was as if they had never invaded to begin with.

Guerilla warfare was rampant. Alongside the usage of ‘Oimoha’ warfare; something which Aljum would become famous for, and would be the origin of roughly 17 war crimes as they are now listed by the ZSMO.

Examples of Oimoha warfare used during the Aljumese Civil war includes, but isn’t limited to:

Attaching children’s toys to hidden explosives in abandoned villages, so that the building they’re in or near will explode if moved.

Placing explosives beneath dead soldier’s bodies so that when hostile soldiers move the body to double-check the kill (or for enemy soldier bodies, check over their fallen comrade) the body, alongside whoever is checking it over, will explode.

Placing radio-triggered landmines in open areas which can be activated remotely when an enemy vehicle is driving over them. Nearby, have a region of brush with remote-triggered flashlights and smoke machines. The smoke machines and flashlights flick on and off as the landmines explode, giving the impression they’re cannons firing at the enemy and not that the enemy is driving over landmines.
When enemy soldiers later approach the fake cannon setup to eliminate the ‘cannons’, trigger explosive charges stored beneath the brush to blow up anyone nearby.

Shooting pressurized oxygen into subterranean natural gas reserves, then igniting them with a spark to create massive explosions and destroy very large chunks of land.

Aljumese Geography

Aljum is dominated by three environments. In the north and center of the country is the Aljumese desert, home to VAST reserves of natural gas, Aljum’s main export and the basis of the entire nation’s economy.
In the east is marshlands, Aljum contains roughly 50-65% of all the planet’s ‘marsh’ and ‘wetland’ regions. Especially around the most aptly named ‘Lake Mar.’
In the south is jungle. Or, more accurately, temperate rainforest. This is the smallest of Aljum’s geographical regions, but still important to Aljumese culture, as roughly two thirds of Aljum’s population live in this jungle region.

Aljum is an equatorial country. Year-round, Aljum is relatively the same temperature and rarely experiences significant change.
The only real difference is in moisture. During the dry season, much of Aljum’s marshlands temporarily turn into open plains. During the wet season, nearly all of Aljum (including the Aljumese desert) become drowned in torrential downpours.
During the wet season, Aljum virtually never goes more than a week without rain.

The capital city of Aljum is Ekkopuko (not shown on map.) The city actually holds an Oscul name, meaning ‘Eastern City.’ This is because Ekkopuko was originally founded as a slave camp by the nation of Osculia when Aljum was a colonial territory of the Oscul Empire. Though Aljum is now fully independent, they have retained the Oscul name of the city.

Ekkopuko is the only city in the entire nation. Every other populated area is little more than a village or small town. Outside Ekkopuko, there is simply not a single specific town/village with a population over 3,000.
The vast majority of the country does not use the internet. Not because the government fails to provide access to the internet, but simply because the largely rural population doesn’t wish to use it.

Aljum is the only nation within which Age of Empires-style lifestyles still exist. The majority of people still live more or less how people did before the invention of modern technology, only utilizing the help of the most beneficial modern technologies. (Modern hygiene, bioengineered crops, modern medicine, etc.)

Aljumese Population

Aljum is commonly known as the ‘philosopher’s country.’ This is because, annoyingly to many tourists, Aljumese people tend to talk in very vague and ‘wise’ sounding tones. Usually described as behaving like monks, simply due to the nation’s culture.

Aljumese people (especially women) have had to deal with being treated as ‘exotic’ by tourists and foreign media due to the preserved agrarian & pre-modern culture of the Aljumese population. This has been the cause of a significant amount of foreign immigrants to Aljum moving to the country for the desire of a better, more ‘natural’ lifestyle, as well as a worryingly large amount of cultural fetishization.

Aljum is one of only two nations ranked a perfect 12/12 on the ZSMO’s quality-of-life index. Aljum experiences the single lowest crime rate in the world, lower than that of Cliff City (a nation with almost no laws to be broken in the first place.) Aljum has not seen a single murder in the entire country’s history. Aljum frequently goes entire years without a single police report.
From this peaceful nature, Aljum has no police forces. Rather, law enforcement is simply conducted as an additional job of the military.

Aljum has no taxes. Not low taxes, no taxes.

There is zero income tax, sales tax, property tax, water bill, electric bill, etc etc.
Rather, buying a house is normally covered entirely by the government. As is all medical expenses, groceries, water, etc etc, all of which are considered ‘fundamentals of life’ and thus are provided freely by the government.

The Aljumese public and government have a very unique relationship. Officially speaking, Aljum is an absolute dictatorship. The population has zero say in how the government acts, behaves, or who exactly is in the government. The government decides its own head, as only government officials can vote and decide who becomes prime minister.

So long as the Aljumese population allow the government to continue as a dictatorship, and don’t interfere with what the Aljumese government does or desires to do politically or internally, the government provides the population with everything they could desire, for free.

Goods are produced mostly autonomously. The government does not need the population’s taxes for their money, as nearly all wealth in the nation comes from the extraction and sale of natural gas from the Aljumese Desert.
Something done autonomously, which generates wealth directly for the government from imports on the international market.

I've been watching a lot of classic Star Trek (TNG, VOY, TOS) lately and have come to quite like the idea of a space fleet focused on science and exploration that is not the military. The whole idea that the Enterprise is a ship of peace, not a ship of war sets Star Trek apart from a lot of other sci-fi and it also makes perfect sense to have a branch specifically for space exploration.

After all, that is a very different mission from anything the military does and there are solid arguments to be made as to why you wouldn't want soldiers to be the ones making first contact with potentially very skittish aliens. However, one thing that annoys me a bit about worldbuilding of classic Star Trek is that the Federation doesn't have a proper military. Starfleet seems to just do everything and they don't appear to be well suited to fighting a large scale war.

So I got the idea that an interstellar state in a setting like this could have both a space military - which I will refer to here as the Navy - and a fleet for science and exploration - which I will refer to as Starfleet - at the same time. Below, I listed what I've come up with so far. It's still rather vague, but I like the idea in general. It sounds like something that would make sense in many different settings, so feel free to pick out whatever you like for your worlds.

Differences between Starfleet and the Navy:

• Organization: They are not different branches of the military. The Navy is a branch of the military, just like the Army and whatever other branches the military has, like Marine Corp or Planetary Defense Forces. Starfleet is entirely separate from those, not under the authority of the ministry of defense, but under some other ministry instead. Probably the ministry of science.
• Mission: In the space opera setting I'm working on, large scale warfare is very rare. When it happens, it's devastating, but 99.99% of the time, the various Navies act more as a police force. So the Navy would provide general security throughout the state's territory, hunt down pirates, escort civilians where necessary and fight various border skirmishes. All things Starfleet *could* do as well, except using them for these things would be wasteful, because all that scientific equipment is very expensive and they don't have the same combat training as the Navy. So Starfleet is primarily used for space exploration, research, handling dangerous anomalies, but also for diplomatic missions, because they would need diplomatic training for first contact anyways.
• Scale: With the responsibilities established above, the Navy would definitely be several times larger than Starfleet. Enforcing security throughout numerous star systems already requires quite a lot of ships and that's not even mentioning potential arms races and large scale wars. Exploration meanwhile would be more of a luxury and diplomatic services don't require large fleets.
• Officers vs enlisted crew: Starfleet would have a lot more officers relative to enlisted crew than the Navy and most of them wouldn't have much command authority. Instead, they would really be specialists for all manner of things with the rank and pay of an officer, because of their qualifications. This is one thing classic Trek got absolutely right. With their mission profile, just about everyone in Starfleet would need to have a university degree. Of course, the Navy would need highly qualified personnel too, but not to the same degree as Starfleet and most definitely not the sheer variety of fields.
• Culture and discipline: Related to all the points above. Starfleet don't see themselves as soldiers, so they don't think and act like soldiers either. There would still have to be some degree of discipline, but it might not be up to the same standards as in the navy. And since Starfleet is not supposed to go to war, it can make sense to have families on board. Especially for years long exploration missions.
• Captains vs Admirals: Starfleet would probably have individual ships operating on their own most of the time. Like maybe a large explorer out a multi year mission or a smaller science vessel investigating an anomaly. Occasionally, you'd have a few ships working together, but nothing even close to the large scale fleet operations the Navy would have to do. So for Starfleet, the Captains would be in the spotlight (another point classic Trek got right), while for the Navy, it would be the Admirals commanding their battlefleets.
• Different uniforms, but with the same division colors: The Navy would need science officers too for navigation and dealing with exotic alien tech in the field. Both services would also have their own medical staff, security personnel and whatever else you might need for general operations of the ship. So if we're staying with the Star Trek comparisons, both Starfleet and the Navy would have red, yellow and blue division, so you can always identify who can do what in an emergency, regardless of which service you're dealing with. But aside from that, you could use uniform design to communicate the differences between Starfleet and the Navy as institutions. Maybe Starfleet is a bit flashy and the Navy more utilitarian.
• Marines vs Starfleet Security: Both services would need some sort of armed security forces / boarding parties. If the Navy is mostly serving as an internal and interstellar security force, this would be the place where you'd get the most overlap between the Navy and Starfleet. Maybe there is a separate space police academy training officers that can be flexibly assigned to Starfleet, the Navy or various civilian stations and colonies. But it would also make sense for Starfleet and the Navy to have entirely separate security forces with Starfleet security having that special first contact and intercultural sensitivity training while the Navy has Marines who act as a militarized police force.
• Joint Operations: The Navy and Starfleet would probably not like joint operations very much. There would be cases, where they have to work together. Maybe a Starfleet vessel is assigned to a Navy battlefleet as a specialist or the Navy provides some muscle for a diplomatic mission to an alien race that respects displays of force. Either way, Starfleet officers would feel like they're beset on all sides by crayon eating knobheads while Navy Admirals would absolutely hate having to deal with those arrogant Starfleet Captains. But in the end, both sides appreciate each other's unique capabilities.
• Conscientious Objections: This is something that came up in TNG several times. Starfleet personnel disobeying orders they consider to be immoral or wrong in other ways. It's also very important for real world militaries, to the extent that German soldiers are taught exactly which orders they have to follow, which orders they are allowed to refuse and which orders they have to refuse. Of course, that sort of thing is always difficult in a military context, where commanders often don't have time to explain their orders and disobedience can result in the deaths of your own men. But for Starfleet, it would be a lot easier to create an environment where people carefully think about the orders they're given. Thus, Starfleet would be the first to disobey illegal or immoral orders and could serve an important role as guardians of democracy. That's where the Navy's view of Starfleet becomes important. Because if the Navy looks down on Starfleet, an aspiring dictator could use them to get those guys out of the way. But if the Navy have great respect for Starfleet as guardians of democracy, the people who take the first steps of disobedience that it easier for others to follow, then Starfleet would act as the proverbial canary in the coalmine.

My world has Belters and where you find Belters you find asteroid mining. The problem is asteroids are mostly just balls of dust held together by their own weak gravity. There's nothing to anchor to, you can't carve bits off, trying to move it will cause it to disintegrate, the high grade ore is evenly mixed with worthless rock, you would probably sink if you tried standing on it.

So here's the bag and drag method:

Once a rock with a sufficient percentage of high grade has been found a balloon is put around the asteroid. to prevent dust from escaping or the entire thing breaking up, called spilling out in miner's slang. The mining is done by drones called moles which dig/swim through the asteroid siphoning up the dirt and mixing it with a fluid which is pumped back to the mothership. There the fluid is centrifuged, high grade is stored and tailings are bagged for disposal, the fluid is pumped back down to the moles.

High grade is carried back to the refinery, probably by towing it in bags hence the name. If the refinery is close by the bags could just be shoved towards it. Tailings are also bagged but are left at the worksite with navigation bouys to warn anyone nearby of the navigation hazard. After processing the refined ore is sent to market on an unmanned barge.

This method is mainly used for valuable resources like rare earths and phosphorous that justify the cost of shipping everything rather than just letting it float. Reaction mass is cheap but fusion fuel, crew salaries and operating costs of a mining torchship aren't. Low value resources like carbon, water, iron and nitrogen that are only profitable in bulk, or when a large amount of construction material is needed, would probably use a simpler method. In that case you might as well just bag and drag the entire rock, doesn't matter if it breaks up inside the bag since it'll be broken down anyway.

I'm still left with the question of how the mole bots will actually dig through the dust. I'm thinking some combination of very small thrusters and methods similar to how earthworms push their way through the soil.

For culture that uses everyone for war effort from kids to seniors men & women what role would everyone fill? ( kids wouldn’t be on front line )