/lit/ I think we should Attempt the impossible. We write a coherent

Horror, first person, neolithic setting

go

>>5701884
That'd be intriguing, hopefully this thread takes off.

High-Fantasy Mystery set in Bronze age civilization.


story is third person perspective but sometimes a narrator whom is the literal embodiment of /lit/ starts talking about how shit the story is and how everyone involved should just kill themselves; how gay all the characters are ETC.

The only way we can possibly do this is if we create a context that allows for wildly varying tones and characters to all exist within the same setting. We need to create a insanely diverse city where almost anything can happen, with one constant element strung through it all.

Similar to Mega City One and Judge Dredd

>>5701910
I like the meta commentary of /lit/ personified, but it should be massaged into the story a little more naturally than that.

>>5701884
>horror
>neolithic

Now that's an interesting combination. Would we be crafting the horrific elements out of the simple struggle for existence in a post-Ice Age world, or would we fill the pages with strange events and entities that still lurk in the shadows of reality, entities which the light of the Neolithic Revolution will soon banish?

>>5701917
I thought of this. Kind of like theirs a plot but from lots of random people who also contribute. Similar to the Martian Chronicles all a bunch of unrelated stories and a loose plot.

>>5701924
Obviously the unknown entities of an age undreamed of would serve as a metaphor for the existential crisis our protagonist is facing is the dawn of civilization. They should always be lurking on the peripheries, but never confronted directly.

>>5701934
The Martian Chronicles is a collection of short stories, not a novel.

>>5701884
So are we pretty much agreeing with this?

>>5701922
The character who is trying to solve the mystery can come across a fat hairy character in the woods watching some maidens bath whilst masturbating.
when the main character slays the voyeur for his perversions and cowardice the voyeur vows to haunt the main character for the rest of time.

through his verbal mocking as the narrator we discover that he is a failed play write and virgin whos sexual repression and failure have turned his personality into that of a gremlin.

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I'm feeling romance.

We could call the book Attempt the Impossible.

It could be a kind of wish fulfillment for all of us in having the ultimate romance, sure, but we can let the battle of realism vs. idealism take reign, and have the lover die tragically, show the color fading from the world, and decide whether our brave protagonist gets his spirit crushed through the whole thing.

It would be like a phenomenology (description of experience as it immediately appears) for a young romantic-- falling madly, manically in love with somebody and overwhelming them with calls, texts, etc... seeing a pretty girl in passing an imagining life together, yearning in the night, drinking to forget, etc.

Basically, a romance that we would enjoy, but since it's an essentially philosophical topic, we could give it very complex threads.

The romance topic is one that we could all write passages for and edit into one cohesive thing, whereas building a sci-fi universe is very difficult, and doing a historical fiction requires special knowledge across the board. The romance would mainly require solidarity and eloquence on all of our parts.

>>5701934
Right. But the trick would be keeping all of the element from being too disassociated from one another.

There needs to be some element or theme that keeps everything vaguely on the same path.

>>5701943
Eh my copy says a novel by Ray Bradbury but im pretty sure you understand what im getting at anyways

Survival? Love? Stability?
What would early men strive for?

>>5701969
God

If we're going to write a coherent novel together, I would be careful with picking anything that includes specialized knowledge people have to a wildly varying degree as a part of the base concept. By which I mean to rule out neolithic horror, and anything that has the word "phenomenological" in it.

We could do something like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_the_Khazars There are tons of proofs that people can write great encyclopedias together (fictional and not). Why not do a literary one together?

I like the romance novel idea too. It's simple, but immortal. And a novel written by lots of people together doesn't really have to worry about being original. It's bound to be. Our weakness is coherence, so a simple basis, I believe, is our best shot.

>>5701957
Your character in our neolithic horror setting can experience a manic romance. But it has to end horribly.

>>5701986
I would assume most people here have pretty similar specialized knowledge.

>>5701988
This, Old romance was a horrible affair im pretty sure the strongest could claim more then one wife. Our main character should have parker luck. Maybe a treacherous wife? Or brother?

>>5701986
The fictional encyclopedia idea might work. Or something parodying literary commentary. Really anything permitting of interaction between different voices.

>>5701943

Trainspotting, then. Or Last Exit to Brooklyn. Point is it's possible.

The only way that this can work is if there's a selection process. Voting won't work as it's trivial to rig. So I suggest (I won't be submitting anything) that OP just uses his discretion and picks what he likes from the submissions.

>>5701988
OK, thank you.

>>5701986
I like the idea of doing something meta, and I agree with you about the specialized knowledge thing.

How about we write a bunch of fake literary reviews of the work? Like, we pretend as though the thing just makes a huge splash because we wrote it anonymously and because it contains genre-bending elements. So it's this really controversial and divisive piece, where some PoMo professors love it, some hate it, we have a big Harold Bloom critic who hates it, etc.

>>5702024
Hmm sure. Im making a pastebin for when we get started also. I believe all submissions must be posted on the thread before I add them.

>>5701884

Ugg had not moved for what felt like half of the sleeping time.
He could not believe his eyes.

It was Uggs moon day to stay awake and tend the orange light. It was the most precious gift his tribe had ever gotten from the gods who were more often cruel than good.
But the orange light made good many things: it made good food, and sharpened sticks for hunting. It made the cold leave when you shivering and it made the deep dark leave when the moon day came with no light.

But the orange light did other things too.
the orange light could hurt you badly if you tried to eat it or touch it. and if you poked it with a stick too long it would eat your stick.
One of the elders tried to hug the orange light and he died more scary than any death Ugg had seen or heard of. The orange light had hugged the elder, but it had made elders body go like meat in the orange light.

But in the dark the best and most scary thing about the orange light was it kept the beasts away. They would sometimes come by the cave and eat members of the tribe.
But when the orange light came that got all better. The beasts never came up near the orange light that was kept at the mouth of Uggs cave. Now one tribe member alone could keep them all safe. That was good.

Sometimes it was scary to see beast eyes in the dark. They shone like the water in the Bright day. But the eyes were low to the ground and they soon left. They were green and funny looking, not like tribes members eyes. further apart and with slits as the black bits.
But these eyes that Ugg saw now in the dark were different. High up off the ground, taller than anyone in the tribe. close together like Uggs eyes and they shone much less in the light of the orange light. Barely there at first, until they got closer.
They got much closer too. just barely out of the orange light they stopped. they stopped as Ugg sat in silence and watched. Uggs hair stood up like a cat being hunted! Uggs body felt frozen in place like the white time had come early.
But there was no noise from the eyes like the beasts eyes would do. No growls or cawing, no whoops or hollering. Even the bugs in the tall trees beyond the tribes space did not make noise. The moon day was dead silent with only the eyes in the dark. They stood there for a long-time. then suddenly left.
Ugg stood alert for more time after. and soon the voices of bugs in the tall trees could be heard again. and the dark became less and less.
Ugg threw another log on the orange light and wondered if he should tell an elder.

>>5701884
Lets do this but an anthology

>>5702028
I like the idea of a meta narrator(s) that is the embodiment of /lit/ as a way to deal with style and tone changes.

+1 for neolithic horror, perhaps in a primitive city and the introduction of a foreign person or element coinciding with a plague. As an early city, the effects of plague would be extremely unknown and confusing, right?

>>5701884
Op here, so we've decided on this?

>>5702062
Write it.

Ok we need a plot. So whats it gonna be about? Just the daily stuggles and horrors of early human life?

>>5702085
An anthology involving stories about monsters forgotten by the modern world, mysterious plagues, and cruel murderous warlords.

We'll create a sort of mythology across all the stories akin to Lovecraft's works.

>>5702085
Hunters find a strange looking man in a forest who appears to be dying. His skin is fucked up etc. and he has trouble talking. They take him back to their village and he dies. He was sent out into the woods by some other group of people bcuz he was sick but our heroes don't have the concept of sickness. The head of the tribe is an old man that comes to see the man die and he's the first person to get sick and die. This causes instability and lack of leadership.

>>5702095
Concept of contageous disease*

>>5702095
Could devolve into rival factions, some think they angered god or whatever and start like a reign of terror or something?

>>5702095
>>5702093
I can dig it. So will we stick within the same tribe or tap the experience ls of others?

This is what I wrote:

Na often stood staring at the grass, and out into the horizon. He could see the animals roam in all their magnificent beauty and listen to the wind; the voice of the ancient gods.

>>5702085
Obviously it should begin with some cataclysmic natural disaster that unearths an ancient structure that was once buried deep beneath the ice.

The stories can be about anything from anywhere on earth, but the unearthed horrors of an ancient earth are the constant through out them all. What those actually are and how they play out is up to the writer obviously.

>>5702107
Obviously some of us can write about the inter tribal conflict, while others can write about a small group that decided to go search for the tribe that sent the old men, leading them on an adventure across the world.

>>5702111
Cool I like it. all the stories ill dump on my pastebin.

I know you have at least the baseline for an idea here /lit/. What is it?

>>5702195
Read the thread man, to much to explain in one post. But its a Horror, first person, neolithic period story.

>>5702202
I was trying to get everyone to explain their ideas for the neolithic horror story.

Na trembled with expectation and excitement, heightened by the chattering of the tribe. He peeked atound his uncle's elbow at the figure lying in a crumpled heap at the ce ter of town. He had been laid out on a thin mat of rushes, dragged hurriedly out of a nearby hut. His grotesque figure was splayed awkwardly, as if he were a crumpled doll. He seemed to be unconscious or asleep.

He was dressed like a woman, in clothes Na had never seen before. His brown woolen tunic was tucked into a long skirt, and he was wrapped in a heavy coat, seemingly made from long fur of an animal Na didn't recognize. He was covered in dirt, and the shuffled remnants of the forest clung to his coat and matted haur. He had familiar, if a bit lught, stringy brown hair, but what took the breath from Na's chest and fillex the early morning aur with a low buzz of surprise was hos skin.

"What's wrong with his skin?" Asked [?]. He knelt down and dragged a finger slowly down the man's dirty neck. It picked up a thin film of mixed sweat and earth, but left unperturbed beneath it the most disturbing element of the whole scene. His skin was white.

>>5702206
Oh well lots of post contain ideas. We've agreed it will be an anthology, and a compiling of short stories about early man dealing with the unknown horrors. You should contribute.

Update
sorry of its crappy just writing

Na often stood staring at the grass, and out into the horizon. He could see the animals roam in all their magnificent beauty and listen to the wind the voice of the ancient gods. He had not understood what they had said. For only the priest's had such power. However that had never stopped him from admiring the gods work and listening for their voice. The wind blew by his face like a faint whisper but he heard nothing.
"Come Na"
He knew his time of idleness was finished. He grasped his spear.

>>5702212
So my part should go before yours.

>>5702212
Sorry for the typos. On mah phone.

>>5702227
Its cool so ill add ours together. Im on mines to so it's cool.
Na often stood staring at the grass, and out into the horizon. He could see the animals roam in all their magnificent beauty and listen to the wind the voice of the ancient gods. He had not understood what they had said. For only the priest's had such power. However that had never stopped him from admiring the gods work and listening for their voice. The wind blew by his face like a faint whisper but he heard nothing.
"Come Na"
He knew his time of idleness was finished. He grasped his spear.
Na trembled with expectation and excitement, heightened by the chattering of the tribe. He peeked atound his uncle's elbow at the figure lying in a crumpled heap at the ce ter of town. He had been laid out on a thin mat of rushes, dragged hurriedly out of a nearby hut. His grotesque figure was splayed awkwardly, as if he were a crumpled doll. He seemed to be unconscious or asleep.

He was dressed like a woman, in clothes Na had never seen before. His brown woolen tunic was tucked into a long skirt, and he was wrapped in a heavy coat, seemingly made from long fur of an animal Na didn't recognize. He was covered in dirt, and the shuffled remnants of the forest clung to his coat and matted haur. He had familiar, if a bit lught, stringy brown hair, but what took the breath from Na's chest and fillex the early morning aur with a low buzz of surprise was hos skin.

"What's wrong with his skin?" Asked [?]. He knelt down and dragged a finger slowly down the man's dirty neck. It picked up a thin film of mixed sweat and earth, but left unperturbed beneath it the most disturbing element of the whole scene. His skin was white.

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>>5702206

OK, let's get going on this.

1. Creation myth a la >>5702111
2. Set our mythology and speak to the desire for human understanding >>5701977
3. What are our horrors? Are they beasts, like >>5702043 ? (good job, by the way. But remember that we want to write in first person.)
4. What of human conflict? Do we describe a "state of nature", like >>5702124 ?
5. Do we implement plague and sickness and disease, like >>5702095 ?
6. We can do love interest, >>5701988 . And sex. If this is horror, we could dabble in the grotesque.

But let's try to hone just what kind of horror is in the air or horrors our first-person protagonist will speak of. If we can weave all of the cataclysmic events we picture archaic men facing, that's a good start. But we need that tone of desire for understanding and peace, and the kind of dejection our protagonist feels when he doesn't comprehend. Think of the modern experience of "package rage".

And, we need to get the voice down. What does a neolithic man's inner monologue read like? Is it classic "ooga booga"? I like this, it has that first chapters of Joyce's Portrait thing going, like >>5702043 . We can make that tone stunning.

Great ideas going around, guys. I've got a couple of things going on today, but I want to get started on writing ASAP.

>>5702244
Me too anon I have a pastebin for all our approved writing. We also wrote something me an abother anon we combined our work but I do like the idea of a dummbed down narrator.

So do you think we should world build, and create lore?

>>5702244
Obviously it should be existential horror the first men face as they attempt to build civilization and understand their existence outside of basic survival. The horrors they face are just the physical representations of the existential crisis they face. The horrors should be vague only seen on the peripheries of the story.

"Oops," said a fair-haired girl of 14 that had been standing concentrated above the tome, as she tore a page trying to turn it. She was a princess, and princesses read no torn books, no matter how much they pertained to the subject her schoolmaster had asked her to study: A great horror that had happened in neolithic times, and which the engineer-mages of Second Tibet had managed to learn of by deducing the history of the universe by analyzing the physics of today's world. This great horror, though, they could not explain. It seemed to defy all laws of physics, and so they had not been able to move past it. "Perhaps," Shirley's teacher had said (for Shirley was the princess's name), "that was for the better," and then he had played absentmindedly with his beard as he always did philosophizing.

Princess Shirley grabbed another book from the shelf with books on the neolithic horror, and put it on top of the tome with the torn-page, dust flying up, and making her cough. Her soul was as young as her physical self, and so she almost trembled with excitement, willing to pay any price to get past the neolithic horror, and learn of how the universe came to be, for the Big Bang theory had not been considered reliable since the Fourth Cold War. Not that she excepted to learn anything thousands of scholars, much older and smarter than her, had managed to miss. It was just a subject which the mysteries of for once appealed to her adventurous heart. As opposed to family history, and the like.

The plot could be about a young man (possibly autistic) who slowly slips into schizophrenia and takes on horrendous nightmares leading to him murdering someone or doing a shooting. After the shooting he begins to get medication and realizes what he has done and has to deal with tremendous amounts of guilt and regret.

We need a title, how about.

The Winds of the Gods
The Silent cries of night
The land of dark trees

>>5702339
Too flowery and poetic. This setting needs to be raw and primal and the title should reflect that.

>>5702360
Really?
The Dawn of Crimson?

>>5702339
i think we should start something before picking a title. otherwise it will ultimately be totally disembodied and meaningless.

>>5702373
True, we only have two entries right now.

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Sounds like some Fire and Ice stuff to me.

So are we gonna start this anons?

>>5702623
Ya we're waiting for you to write us something.

>>5702752
Ok, wanna help me write their religion anon?

Anyone have the ">implying this is literature" cover with the feels guy on it?

>>5702769
It has to be a very primal, base belief system. God needs to be a cruel, inhumanly brutal figure that demands sacrifice. Their religion would obviously revolve around fire and the sun.

I was actually already thinking of something, just a tribe sitting around a fire, but they view it as their connection to God. An ever consuming force that will leave them in the dark to die unless it is constantly fed.

>>5702769
>>5702856
Their religion is the central mythos tying all the stories together. Similar to Lovecraft's mythology.

Their religion is true and that's the source of a lot of the spooky stuff that happens, however it should always be kept kind of vague and mysterious. Like, there are a number of gods and most of them are fairly cruel or otherwise malevolent yet none of the characters will ever directly interact with them or anything like that.

>>5702865
>>5702856
I was thinking something paganistic. Especially if their nomadic people because usually religion is tied to you environment.

So is this earth or some fantasy world?

>>5702856
>>5702856
I like this. I still think delving into how they work and how they'll play into the story is vital.

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>>5702865
If we're going to make it true, which I think is a great idea, we need to really make it feel like real spirituality.

I say it should be based on the ideas of Gnostic duality. The higher powers in this universe are two abstract, conflicting forces diametrically opposed to each other on the most base levels of existence. Think of the concepts of form and void personified.

One, a violent, penetrative force of light and life, and the other a void of emptiness, silent and vague. Both of these entities are far beyond the comprehension of humans, and are completely outside our definitions of morality.

As far as visually what they look like, the entity of light would look something like this, but only reveals itself in the rarest of circumstances. The void would obviously be a faceless, empty void.

>>5702928
That sounds kinda like Zoroastrianism and a bit too far ahead for a Neolithic society.

In my opinion having any sort of force of good also kind of kills the horror mood. I think it should be a pantheon of mysterious arbitrarily cruel gods with unknowable motivations and impossible to satisfy. Maybe we should base it more on ancient Mesopotamian gods like in the Epic of Gilgamesh.

Maybe the gods being in conflict with each other could work but their conflict's side and goals should be incomprehensible to mortals, who are sometimes used as pawns and slaves for their battle.

>>5701922
>>5701937
Those unspeakable horros could simply be things that the protagonists aren't equipped to understand, but that would make sense to the modern reader. Things like, I don't now, the green ray.

>>5701917
>>5701934
We need a very open setting but thematically unified setting. Neolithic seems fine, as we can imagine a whole unexplored world.

In one of Gaiman's comic it is implied that they were many advanced pre-neolithic civilization on Earth, but that they disappeared without recognizable traces, so we assume they never existed. There's a way we could pull off something like that in the novel. This would leavet some space for more characters than "Primitive Joe in the country of Smashed Rocks".
>>5701947
That'd be fun. Conversely, we could have various workshops each working on a different setting. So at worst we're aiming for a short story collection.

>>5701957
So you're suggesting we write l'Education Sentimentale ?

>>5702970
I didn't say it was a force of good. The force of light is violent and destructive. Life brings about death. This is a force that does nothing but consume. Yes, it brings life and warmth, but it isn't an altruistic force. It's just raw creation, which is in itself destructive. The void of emptiness in the same way isn't a force of evil. It's silence and it's emptiness are the only true peace found in existence. It's a force of preservation just as much.

These gods can't have actual faces. They need to be abstract, extra dimensional concepts that have no concept of singular consciousness that we do.

Obviously the civilization will create gods and deities, but they are nothing but confused minds trying to make sense of something unknowable to them. They will project personalities onto them, but they are nothing but creations of man.

In any case, the will of these entities are far beyond human conflicts. The conflicts are all created by man trying to understand the desires of these beings.

Ok to start me need a name for the world. It can be fantasy if we want to this means we can invision lots of animals, places, and even uniqe qualities of the world with out being tied down to boundries and limitations of earths history.

>>5703020
That's not where we should start. Worlds aren't named before civilizations come into existence.

>>5702212
Good, but shouldn't the idea of a doll be foreign to those people ?

>>5702853

>>5703013
>These gods can't have actual faces. They need to be abstract, extra dimensional concepts that have no concept of singular consciousness that we do.

imo even this is too much description for them though. I think the reader should only ever learn anything about them from what the people in the story believe to be true about them, with hints that they're much more mysterious and terrifying than that.

I disagree about them not having personalities and being uninvolved in human conflicts though. I think they should have personalities, just personalities completely incomprehensible to the human mind and never actually explained beyond what the characters falsely believe.

They should also be very interested in human affairs, and should especially delight in tormenting and arbitrarily punishing humans for even slight offenses. They should also demand human sacrifices, or at least the culture that worships them should believe that they do.

>>5703054
No toys habe been around for ages so its not that farfetched.

>>5703031
What do you suggest? Creating a map and tribes, Settlements?

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>>5703057

>>5702360
Stone

>>5703060
Oh yeah also there should be monsters and eldritch abominations and stuff, sort of like in Gilgamesh and other myths.

>>5703075
This. For now at least.

>>5703060
Well in my mind, the entire story would be a journey of discovery, ending with the protagonist learning what God truly is. Obviously, they would exist in a society that already attempts to define and personify them.

I disagree with the idea that they should delight in anything. That defeats the purpose. These needs to be primal, abstract entities at the very foundation of creation.

Man should be the one that tries to understand and become the will of these Gods. They would brutally sacrifice each other, but only based on what they interpret from God. There will always be men who use a populations belief in God to control them. There will always be men who want to be God themselves.

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I had a map generator to create a map of the world.

Heres what I have for an opening, I believe it should describe the two beings.:

When I was younger my father told me of the legend of creation. That before the great plains of Avilon, the dusty mountains of Neher, and the great seas of Ohan their were two forces. A being masked with a flame; who created all things with its touch. Its other, a dark
Link to generator:http://donjon.bin.sh/scifi/world/

>>5703079
Naturally. There should be sentient, Yeti like beings that are near extinction, but carry the knowledge of the lost ages of earth. Then there should be the indescribable tentacle beings from deep within the earth that have found there way to the surface due the cataclysm. They are completely inhuman in appearance, but have intelligence beyond all human understanding.

Then of course there should be beasts like leviathans and behemoths.

>>5703082
But anon this is a horror story not a journey of self-discovery.

I think a cruel hopeless world filled with brutal merciless gods out for blood, their indescribable monstrous creations, mysterious plagues, bloodthirsty warlords and priests, and the general day-to-day struggle of just trying to survive and feed yourself in a world like this for our protagonists would be cool.

>>5703097
I think we should be vague about whether this takes place in the real world or not, and just drop subtle hints that these things happened in our world but were just forgotten about and lost to time.

>>5702360

ashes

>>5703101
Self discovery is the most horrifying of experiences anon. You're assuming this all turns out well for the protagonist. Existential horror is the epitome of horror.

I agree that the world should be how you described, I'm just suggesting that instead of physical gods, we have men who install themselves as Gods and reap the same horror.

>>5703111
Thats reasonable.

>>5703112
Name it "Hollow Men," even if the story and writing itself have no reference to that poem. Seems like a good fit for what people are suggesting.

>>5703097
I like it. That map generator is neat

>>5702856
It's fun how your idea of primitive religion sounds like a less sophisticated form of Aztec beliefs. Not bad, but intriguing.

I agree with that the thing must be different from modern religion, but should we got straight up the edgy ladder ?

What we have for now is the idea of "something raw, brutal", which is basically the modern idea of their lifestyle. People in that time surely did suffer a lot, but did they conceive their life as "raw and brutal" ? Didn't they have things they considered "magic", "unfathimable" or "sacred" (so perhaps brutal, but not raw) ? What looks like primitiveness to us could look like a working system to a neolithic man.

On a side note, I heard that the oldest religious objects and paintings we have never depict the sun or the stars, but humans and animals (that is, all the depictions of the sun are much more recent than the oldest depictions of animals). Because of that, some have suspected that the sun started becoming a god when societies became more hierarchised and leader emerged. Obviously we don't have to follow straight, but that fact in itself is surprising enough to make for an interesting premise.

The neolithic isn't the oldest period ever, but perhaps we could take that sort of things in account. For instance imagine that some tribe experience the transition from human-and-animal animistic worship to sun-centered worship.

>>5703064
A quick research suggest that not only they were probably toys in the neolithic, but that toys were not so well distinguished from religious objects. So, something looking like a doll woulmd have pretty heavy implications (which fits the extract above to a T). Perhaps we should use a more explicit word, like "stone-body" or "mother-doll" (doll that represent a fertile woman) to emphasize on this.

>>5703117
>You're assuming this all turns out well for the protagonist

I think we're writing an anthology with separate protagonists for each story.

And yeah I think part of the horror should come from men themselves but I also think we should also imply the presence of cruel and petty gods who are never actually shown except through the events they cause to happen, the stuff they create, and the ambiguously false representations of them created by man.

I just think it's scarier if these gods are intentionally malevolent instead of just forces of nature.

Maybe we could do something like Greek mythology where the "gods" are trying to assert dominance over the "titans" (basically what you're describing) that created the world?

>>5703147
It can be changed, honestly we dont have a plot yet, or characters this is pretty much the brain storming thread, as of the moment.


Heres what I have its crap, hopefully we find a set town and change things. I think I might have borrowed to heavily from greek mythology when writing this.

Excerpt:
When I was younger my father told me of the legend of creation. That before the great plains of Avilon, the dusty mountains of Neher, and the great seas of Ohan their were two forces. A being masked with a flame; who created all things with its touch. Its other, a dark embodiment of emptiness. Which followed the light and took the things which it created. One day the light created men and blessed him with the gift of fire an eternal connection to their creator. The men used fire not for warmth, but for war; to eat of each other and other creations of the light

>>5703147
>It's fun how your idea of primitive religion sounds like a less sophisticated form of Aztec beliefs.

IIRC Aztec "gods" aren't really gods in the Western sense, and they were just natural beings (who happened to create the world we live in) that depend on us as much as we depend on them.

>>5703164
>honestly we dont have a plot yet, or characters this is pretty much the brain storming thread, as of the moment.

If it's an anthology all we need to do is flesh out the setting and mythology then anybody who wants to can write a story within those boundaries.

>>5703169
Kay anon,
So I think we all agree on those two gods thing. I think we need history, tribes, Settlements, and how they go about worship

>>5703188
I still disagree about the two gods thing, it just seems like there are more possibilities with a pantheon.

>the priests in a village are kidnapping virgins for a mass sacrifice so that their patron god can manifest in a material form
>a farmer goes on a spree of killing the vermin eating the crops in his field, an angry god punishes him by turning him into a monstrous reptilian-insectoid-rodent creature
>a god jealous of a man's extraordinarily beautiful wife sends a doppelganger of the man to rape and disfigure her, when the real man finds her like this later she starts shrieking for help thinking it was really him that did it and the local authorities have him stoned to death
>a character returns home from a journey to find that his village has converted to worshiping a new god in his absence, one that demands progressively strange and horrifying rituals
>a town lets the shrine to their patron god fall into disrepair and is punished with a devastating natural disaster

etc.

>>5703147
That's an interesting idea. This is where the story gets interesting. We're throwing these ideas around like we can only have one civilization with one set of beliefs, but really we should have several tribes that each embody the different perspectives we're all having on this, and have them conflict with each other. The notion of God should always be kept vague and in the peripheries anyway. The important part is what humanity does with these beliefs.

As far as magic goes, I always was under the impression that these kinds of cultures considered things like giving birth a magical, sacred act. Things involving blood and other bodily fluids. We're definitely going to have to discuss that whole aspect of it.

>>5703155
>Maybe we could do something like Greek mythology where the "gods" are trying to assert dominance over the "titans" (basically what you're describing) that created the world?

I actually like that idea a lot. There can always be the abstract idea of God at the end of the tunnel in addition to lesser beings, which would still be far beyond human understanding, but still close enough for cruelty and pleasure.

>>5703164
>>5703188

with this idea, a creation and a destruction god is similar to the hindu gods brahma and shiva. maybe looking up them can help you with a little inspiration.

i take it most people in the world will worship one or the other. is there hatred between the two worshippers? extremism?

symbolism is always good

>>5703227

this is fine too, and might work out better due to it being less complicated and restricted.

>>5703227
If we're going to make these spiritual beliefs real, I want them to be something I can actually believe in.

any pantheon should be lesser beings under the cosmic duality of the true God, who are merely playing at being God

>>5703227
Well who's to say their not just a whole bunch of lesser gods demanding to be worshipped. I believe what your saying, I guess it will be less retrieve this way.

>>5703255
Well didnt really think of the people that way, its interesting. I thought explaining the belifs of one of the tribes would be good first chapter.

Maybe each tribe believes in something different and we delve into this in the story? I think we should decide soon just to get it over with, so we can stop.

>>5703255
I was envisioning these two gods as a constant truth that almost no human grasps, with every tribe creating their own religions and gods.

I've always liked the idea of man making himself God

>>5703269
>any pantheon should be lesser beings under the cosmic duality of the true God, who are merely playing at being God

This is ok, but maybe we should only hint at the more esoteric parts of this mythology and have most people just believe in the lesser deities that have more tangible impact on their day to day existence.

Early religions put less emphasis on philosophy and theology and more on "oh fuck we better keep these fuckers happy somehow or they'll make our crops die".

>>5703165
They are kinda pagan gods. The Babylonians believed the role of man in the cosmic order was to bring offering to the gods, so in that respect the gods also depended on them (and indeed, in Aztec religion men feed the gods by offfering sacrifices, so in that respect there is a similarity). I guess this is standard for civilization with big cities that rely mainly on farming.

>>5703275
>Well who's to say their not just a whole bunch of lesser gods demanding to be worshipped. I believe what your saying, I guess it will be less retrieve this way.

Yeah we could do this, just obviously the characters in the story are going to interact with these cruel lesser gods (who they believe to be the only deities) more than the vague unknowable void or whatever.

I think these lesser deities should believe themselves to be supreme and are in a battle to control the forces above them, and are sometimes in battles with each other over shadowy motives.

>>5703286
Yeah, that makes sense for the way these societies would presumably operate.

The esoteric, philosophical aspects should be saved for a monk like hermit character living outside of the burgeoning civilization, or for a more introspective tribe

>>5703227
I like this idea. A land where gods are all over the place and contantly fucking shit up (Ancient Greece or Warhammer-sorry- style).
>>5703240

>As far as magic goes, I always was under the impression that these kinds of cultures considered things like giving birth a magical, sacred act. Things involving blood and other bodily fluids. We're definitely going to have to discuss that whole aspect of it.

Indeed, blood is always a pretty scary thing. I heard period blood is believed to have nefarious powers in many tribes.

Hunters tribes are interesting, because there values are somewhat different from people who practice agriculture and breeding. I remember reading the sentence: "Prey aren't different from hunters, merely more sacred".

>>5703293
It's coming together. I like it.

My biggest issue here is how they will be portrayed physically. Are they spiritual beings? How did they come to this plan of existence?

>>5703320
Honestly I think they should they be spiritual beings who appear to the people as they choose too. Weather it's in a human like form, a burning bush, a group of flies, in the campfire, through a donkey, uncanny stuff. I think they should be more fucked up then greek gods.

>>5703320
>My biggest issue here is how they will be portrayed physically.

They won't be, they don't really exist physically (or at least in our plane of existence) and are only "seen" through the shit they cause. People will have idols of what they think they look like of course but these will be wildly inaccurate.

For example there might be a god whose worshipers say looks like a man with a jackal head or something, but when he manifests physically looks more like some sort of Lovecraftian monster.

Maybe that's why these gods need followers and worshipers, to carry out their plans in this plane of existence.

>>5703342
I agree completely. This is exactly how I imagined it. The more metaphysical the better.

If I sum up the thread so far (let me know if I left out something important):
Possible titles: Hollow Men, Stone, Ashes

A collection of stories, possibly in first person, in a "neolithic horror" setting emphasis on religion, belief and supernatural or at least overwhelming entities.

People in that world are struggling to get by in harsh condition while swarms of lesser and generally cruel gods are vying for power and human worship in very visible (and bloody) fashion. Higher, more abstract beings hover above that practical pantheon (light and darkness perhaps).

Magic and mystery abound, but the mysterious entities always echo the inner troubles of humans who are at a loss to make sense of themselves and the world. Somewhere along the path of sacrifice and nonsense an answer is to be found, for worse (?).

Bonus points for fleshed out rituals and time spent detailing the beliefs and practices of various tribes.

So far this seems like a crossover between Conan the Barbarian and Warhammer: The Existential Neolithic supplement, which is quite good actually.

>>5703343
>Maybe that's why these gods need followers and worshipers, to carry out their plans in this plane of existence.

is there a common goal for these gods or do they have a personal goal? should it be left up to the writer?

>>5703374
Pretty much, I think we should work on tribes since ww got religion down.

>>5703342
Perhaps they would be restriction and rules on how they can appear ?

For instance: the more powerful, the more varied the forms they can take. Some lesser spirits who can only haunt a particular place or possess one body at a time will always apper the same way, while more powerful entities will change shapes according to needs, even impersonating other gods.

There could also be some subspecies of god who always have a common theme in their appearance no matter their powers (for instance a family of rain gods that would always appear blue).

I like the idea of a whole ecosystem of metaphysical beings, some amorphous but powerful like giant spiritual amoebia, others swift and low cunning like an animal, and others intelligent beond the scope of human understanding.

>>5703374
I don't think every story should involve the gods though, like someone else suggested there should be at least one about some kind of terrible plague and others about scary human affairs.

As far as magic goes we definitely shouldn't have wizards and stuff running around casting spells on each other, but complex arcane rituals used to gain influence and favors from the gods or to make their gods more powerful could work.

>>5703384
Left up to the writer, but fit within the lore.

>>5703384
I think it's better if the is a great leeway for the goals. As long as it fits the greater theme (gods are cruel, selfish, hard to understand although they somewhat resemble their worshippers).

>>5703384
>is there a common goal for these gods or do they have a personal goal?

They have personal goals but these goals are incomprehensible by humans, even their followers who are helping them carry them out.

The gods are loosely working together to try to take control of the highers beings above them, but there's also a lot of power struggles and internal conflicts and constantly shifting factions between these gods. They're also extremely petty and cruel and enjoy tormenting humans whenever possible, viewing them only as slaves they can use to carry out their plans.

>>5703392
>As far as magic goes we definitely shouldn't have wizards and stuff running around casting spells on each other, but complex arcane rituals used to gain influence and favors from the gods or to make their gods more powerful could work.

Yes, the idea would be that the rituals pretty much mirrors the gods (that is to say they are messy, all over the place but with their own specific rules like the gods).

>I don't think every story should involve the gods though, like someone else suggested there should be at least one about some kind of terrible plague and others about scary human affairs

Well, let's say that the gods are one big item on the lists of things human have to put up with in order to survive. Gods, climate, predators, diseases, intertribe war, intra-tribe war, good old-fashioned human perversity.

You could imagine that some tribes try to link everything to the gods, while others fancy themselves as the redpilled who don't buy into spooks (and as a consequence are immune/less sensitive to the gods). Heck, we could even have a division of tribes according to 4chan boards archetypes.

>>5703391
>For instance: the more powerful, the more varied the forms they can take

I think it should be the opposite, the more powerful gods require massive sacrifices or some other requirement in order to manifest physically at all (their physical forms are all immensely powerful eldritch abominations though), while some weaker gods can maybe manifest as a snake or swarm of insects or something (maybe related to what kind of god they are?)

I don't think any god should be able to manifest as human though.

But yeah really we shouldn't even explain the mythos in great detail and it should be kept kind of vague and mysterious. Kind of like the story of the blind men feeling the elephant where they all got a different idea of what it looked like based on feeling one part, we should have our various protagonists just interact with individual parts of the mythos and never put the entire puzzle together.

This is really good and I'd love to help.
So would each tribe have a patron god, or would individuals within each tribe have personal beliefs that might be at odds with others in their tribe?
Actually, porque no los dos? The overall structure of the tribes' relations to each other could be "that tribe's god is friends with ours so we can trade with them" or "that tribe's god hurt ours so let's fuck them up" or "that tribe has a lot of gods, what the hell is wrong with them?"

>>5703392
I was thinking of very psychedelic, PKD style reality bending trips though the subconscious and beyond into metaphysical realms for the magic. Almost New Age stuff.

Obviously, this will all be through the lens of people who don't understand these concepts.

>>5703430
We haven't really delved into the tribes yet still working out the religion, but most likely thats how it will play out.


Excerpt:
When I was younger my father told me of the legend of creation. That before the great plains of Avilon, the dusty mountains of Neher, and the great seas of Ohan their were two forces. A being masked with a flame; who created all things with its touch. Its other, a dark embodiment of emptiness. Which followed the light and took the things which it created. One day the light created men and blessed him with the gift of fire an eternal connection to their creator. The men used fire not for warmth, but for war; to eat of each other and other creations of the light. The void was upset with these humans and beset great darkness upon humans killing them with beasts of the night....

>>5703416
> Kind of like the story of the blind men feeling the elephant where they all got a different idea of what it looked like based on feeling one part, we should have our various protagonists just interact with individual parts of the mythos and never put the entire puzzle together.

That's a great idea. Depending on the story the world could feel totally different, although there would be enough common elements so as to make it unmistakeable.

I think there have been sci-fi short story collections, with collaborations from various authors, made in similar fashion (I'm thinking of one about a planet with limited life span, I think Robert Silverberg was among the contributors).

>>5703430
The conflicting beliefs of the tribes and people are what I'm most exited about.

There should always be an element of chaos or nihilism in these people too. Like people who have regressed into a state of primal cannibalism, not believing in anything or building any kind of civilization. Just roving animals that bring nothing but faceless chaos.

>>5703430
Each village/town/tribe would have a patron god but the strictness of their loyalty to this god would vary. Like some warlord would make worshiping any god but his own favored one a crime punishable by death while some little city or town might allow cults to gods other than their patron god exist (and these cults are bound to get up to some sketchy stuff of course).

Not every place has to follow the same belief system though. The same god could go by different names in different places and be perceived in different ways. Some places could even merge gods together and think they're only worshiping one god when they're actually under the influence of two or three.

There could even be a sort of monotheistic community that thinks all the various gods are just incarnations of one main god and thus doesn't care who you worship since they think it's all the same god in the end.

So how many different pages do you think we'll need? I say 180 is a a nice goal.

>>5703387
I've been thinking of an idea for a tribe founded by a man who is able to understand the concept of these spiritual beliefs and the power they hold over the minds of humanity. For all intents and purposes, this man is essentially the ubermensch, and holds himself as God and creates a civilization to shape and control the hearts and minds of the people around him. He himself doesn't believe in the power of God, but uses the idea to elevate himself above others. He is able to convince his tribe that God has chosen him as his scion in this plane. He impregnates his mother/wife, and she bares a child that she claims to be this man reincarnated, ensuring his immortality.

This incestuous line of divinity would continue for many generations. Each new God figure would be raised to believe that he truly is the reincarnated embodiment of higher power on earth. Each one would become more detached, more cruel and twisted, until this tribe is in the hands of a deranged, deformed incestuous man with the mind of child who believes he is God.

This obviously would be a villainous force in the story. I still have to figure out who would oppose this tribe.

>>5703522
I mean how many chapters and pages do you think we should strive for? I say 180 pages is enough.

>>5703524
I like it, I think this will be a long story so I'd suggest writing now. I think the best enemies for this group would be themselves(the incestuous people I mean)

>>5703441
True but someone asked us to start developing the tribes so I thought I'd lay some groundwork for how they'd interact with each other.
Also why do you keep posting that?

>>5703553
Just updating something I was working on, wanted to get somewhere with the gods. Honestly anon by all means do that. The more the better.

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I like this idea. I'm not sure how I want to get to this point, but somebody discovering ancient structures somewhere in the world gets my jollies all riled up.

How do we feel about sentient life forms besides humans existing in this world?

>>5703680
You can put one in your story maybe but they shouldn't be a common thing, and you should imply that whatever it is was created by one of the gods.

>>5703683
Well what I was thinking of was a race of Yeti/Sasquatch like beings that are near extinction living a nomadic life on the edges of the earth.

>>5703698
Actually that would be cool yeah, just as long as they're really violent and less intelligent than people.

This book is gonna suck.

Can't wait to order the hard cover from Lulu though.

>>5703709
If my part starts to suck, I'll just throw in as much graphic sex as I possibly can.

>>5703709
Me too anon amd this has more potential then Toliteraism, we can send it off the reviewers too get fame.

>>5703701
Alternatively, to borrow from Christopher Moore, the yeti could be misunderstood and peaceful. But the fact that it dies shows that the true essence of the world is harshness and pain. If we can word it in a less edgy fashion, that is.

>>5703713
This sounds a lot shittier than Totalitarianism.

Totalitarianism was at least funny, and it had novelty going for it.

>>5703725
Have you actually read this thread mate? Toliteraism was unfun trash sure the novely was the only thing going for it and even then it was shitty.

So any ideas for tribes?

>>5703701
>>5703719
My original idea was something like The Devil in the Dark episode of Star Trek, with human civilization encroaching on a dying species home, and them retaliating violently.

I've trying to lay out a pretty basic heroes journey set up, with my protagonist travelling across the land solving different crisis's and encountering strange occurances.

>>5703768
>I've trying to lay out a pretty basic heroes journey set up, with my protagonist travelling across the land solving different crisis's and encountering strange occurances.

Try not to make your protagonist mary sue-ish or anything though. This is a world where people are ultimately powerless and death is at every corner.

>>5703731
Totalitarianism was a whole lot of fun. Not to read, necessarily, but the whole ridiculousness of a bunch of random fucks on an imageboard cursing at each other while they (we) shoehorned Bolaño references into some shit about pedophilic lizardmen was pretty entertaining.

>>5703791
I know, I participated but looking back at it's pretty undreable. I was hoping we could change that here make something special

>>5703794
I think it's possible.

>>5703416
So some form of energy levels in some way (like activation energy in physics): you need more power to make a bigger god appear, but his avatar will be bigger and more free to move. While the avatar of a small god will be less unwieldy, more varying in form, but bounded to places/circumstances/power limits ?
>>5703680
There could be some fun around that. Like everybody thinks they are some form of gods, while a few madmen say they are "from elsewhere" and are not believed, and in the end it turns out they are aliens.
>>5703791
Problem is, it is what waaay funnier to write than to read.

Guys I'm full of mead right now and this seems like an excellent idea.
Throwing around some ideas, what if some of the structures from >>5703612 were known about by some gods but not others? that could establish a hierarchy among the gods, that some of them remember previous civilizations' (titans/gods reference) achievements and the younger gods only care about sacrifices and blood and fucking with people.

>>5703826
Yeah I think this has been thrown around. I think this hierarchy should depend on the followers one god had.

>>5703826
I still like the idea of at some point in the story, a massive natural disaster occurs that unearths these structures that were once hidden deep beneath the earth.

>>5703837
Right, but my attempt at expanding on that will involve the structures left behind by old societies. Maybe they, being more advanced, had more time to sit around on their asses to contemplate the divine (like us) and the elder gods miss that kind of devotion, while the younger ones only care about getting their fix of blood and belief.

>>5703842
Well this is an anthology, right? What I envision happening is ten people taking this idea and writing a story on it and then we'd all vote on which one was best. Either way, the natural disaster uncovering the structures is a must.

>>5703825
>So some form of energy levels in some way (like activation energy in physics): you need more power to make a bigger god appear, but his avatar will be bigger and more free to move. While the avatar of a small god will be less unwieldy, more varying in form, but bounded to places/circumstances/power limits ?

Yeah pretty much. It takes more to get a powerful god to manifest in this plane but when they do they're really powerful and can do a lot of shit, while weaker gods can manifest in this place with very little difficulty but they can only take weak forms that can't impact the environment much like an animal or something.

Also gods can shift in power levels through various means like getting more/better sacrifices and through complex rituals.

Here's something we should think about. Do the gods control ALL natural phenomena? Or only some of them?
Like do they make all good or bad harvests happen, and then they get blamed/thanked for that, or do natural disasters or bad harvests or whatever happen sometimes just because? For that matter, is there really a distinction between those?

>>5703866
>Do the gods control ALL natural phenomena? Or only some of them?

The gods have the power to make good and bad things happen as they please pretty much but no they don't micromanage every little thing that happens.

That's done by the higher, more shapeless beings that they're trying to steal power from.

>>5702856
>just a tribe sitting around a fire, but they view it as their connection to God. An ever consuming force that will leave them in the dark to die unless it is constantly fed.
perhaps one of the stories could be concerned with a deserter, one who leaves the illusory world of shadows they have confined themselves to, and steps out of the cave and into the sunlight.
obvious plato references are obvious, but I suppose it is quite interesting to pair the beginnings of modern human thought with the end of primal instinct (IE, when man discovered fire)

>>5703857
I like the general idea, I just think it's important to keep these gods away from feeling like video game bosses. It's a slippery slope once power levels start getting involved.

>>5703866
The hierarchy of Gods ascends into the unintelligible. Lesser Gods are almost entirely human in their psychological makeup, Greater Gods are less similar to humans, and the hierarchy keeps stretching up and up ad infinitum until it reaches a point where the Greatest Gods are entirely unfathomable forces of nature to mankind

>>5703866
>>5703866
That's the domain of the higher, abstract entities, but the lesser gods can manipulate natural phenomena as well if they acquire the power to do so.

>>5703876
Yeah, that's really where this whole concept starts getting meaty.

>>5703879
Yeah I get what you mean, this is just background info though that should never be explicitly stated and that the people living in this world don't know about.

Powerful gods manifesting in the world should be extremely difficult, to the extent that we should probably only have story at the most where it even comes close to happening and even then it should be left up to the writer whether they actually succeed in doing it or not.

The stuff about shifting power levels is just something for the writers of these stories to keep in mind as a possible motive for something they want one of the gods to do. The gods are in a constant power struggle to get an advantage over their rivals, no humans are aware of this though. They just sometimes serve as pawns the various gods' schemes.

>>5703903
This. Let's not forget that all our viewpoint characters need to be blind men groping in the metaphorical darkness only to get their heads bitten off. If ANYONE is gonna know the slightest thing about the true nature of the gods, they have to be crazy hermits who nobody believes, written in such a way so that even the reader doesn't believe them.

>>5703934
This really is an important aspect. This knowledge should bring equal parts insanity.

Are the protagonists of each story going to die?

>>5703941
Yeah it should be a Lovecraft sort of deal where the more someone knows about the true nature of things the more insane they go.

>>5703942
They don't have to, but it's horror so it might be a good idea to have at least someone die, or have something otherwise horrible happen to them.

Just make it spooky.

>>5703879
As long as we stay mainly on the human point of view, that shouldn't be a problem. For all the complex hierarchies we can make, for a puny human living within his tribe pretty much any god is spooky.

>>5703942
Death, or something worse.

>>5703981
Yeah, like self-awareness. Someone should do a story from the point of view of one of the hermits.

>>5703942
I think that every story that involves the gods should have most or all of the characters die, to show the gods' powers and how you just shouldn't fuck with them and how the gods love to fuck with humans.

For those stories about random mysterious phenomenas, they should survive or something.

>>5703981
that's spooky

>>5703985
Even the hermits shouldn't understand the complete picture.

Going back to the elephant analogy, these insane hermits have felt only maybe one or two parts of the elephant. Everybody else knows even less than that. Like, they heard some guy talking about his friend who felt part of the elephant.

The complete mythology is incomprehensible to mortals, even some of the lesser gods might not know how everything actually works.

>>5703994
Let's name this "Spooky Stories of the Stone Age"

As an obligatory assignment, anybody who wants to take part in this project in any way (writing, ideas, editing, anything) need to watch and rewatch the masterpiece movie 10 000 BC as their main source of inspiration.

>>5704020
I agree. I like the idea of the hermits receiving glimpses of this hierarchy in very abstract visions. Everything told in riddles.

>>5704041
Hollow Men : Spooky Stories of the Stone Age, or Something Worse than Death.

>>5701922
The personification of /lit/ is actually the muses talking.

Is there a muse of criticism? Or do they only give positive inspiration?

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>>5704042
See, I was getting a more Conan the Barbarian vibe here.

Well, more directly Fire and Ice.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7CdntAVRE4

>>5704056
There is a muse of Elegy, so that could be the muse of >tfw

The muse of poetry could be the muse of pasta, and the muse of rhetoric that of greentext. It does translates so bad, actually.

Lit pulled his furs in closer. He walked the forest during the snow-time, when the green things slept and the wind spirits screamed through the trees.
He searched for food. His band's stores were running out, too soon, and the bushes and trees bore no fruit. It would have to be meat. But Lit had slim hopes for finding any with the deadly winds about.
They screamed not like how the wolves howled for blood, or a child wailed for its mother. The winds screamed for death. They bit with their teeth and slashed with their claws until a man's skin turned black and cold. The winds showed no face, and they showed no mercy.
The cold sapped Lit of his strength, but he walked on. His freezing fingers held the spear in a death grip. He walked, and he looked, and he vainly hoped for a gift from the gods to cross his path, and the path of his spear. None came. He winced at the wind's sting on the tips of his ears.
Many hunters died of the wind spirits' dark wounds. Only the leaping orange light and the walls of a hut could ward them. But Lit had neither. Supernatural gusts ripped through the furs, sending him finally to his knees. Their icy claws sent bolts of pain through his body. Lit wondered if the screaming he heard came from the winds.

So, is this okay? I don't often write. I didn't like the ideas about religion and stuff at first, but I think I found a way to incorporate it nicely. Also, he's named Lit because I thought it sounded good.

>>5704067
*doesn't

>>5704064
oh yeah, Conan.
i just reread all the original stories this summer.
some of them are just fucking great.

>>5704080
The movie is one of my all time favorites still. Deeply underrated.

>>5704093
Fire and Ice you mean?
of course you aren't talking about the Schwarzenegger Conan movie that has nothing to do with Conan
I haven't seen it yet.
Might do it soon then.

>>5702212
Special care was taken for the strangers burial. An argument had broken out among The Fearless, whether or not the ashen stranger should be buried in the stone circle. They had sat serious-faced, unsure if this would anger or delight the spirits. After appearing mysteriously in the thick trees and dragged, unconscious, out of the forest, he had been left to die in the hut of Elder Teemo. His skin had been pale as ash, and strange bubbles swelled up, bursting and dripping freely. Many of The Fearless and indeed the whole tribe, thought this a bad omen. Conspiratorial whispers said he himself may be a grotesque spirit. Surely a burial in the stone circle would be an affront to every ancient rite, and with the solstice only 3 moons away! Yet others had argued passionately that no man should be left to rot in the forest like a pig, and his soul would need to be laid to rest or risk angering those same spirits.
It had degenerated into shouting, emotion was high and no one was comfortable with any answer.

“Besides, look at his skin. How can we even be certain he is a man?” The words hung in Teemo’s cramped hut, thick in the moist air. Disturbed quiet descended on the reedy hut, cut by the ragged wheezing of the dying man. They considered the stranger’s form. He had wasted considerably, his body seeming to empty drip by drip from his ruptured skin.
“Enough argument,” Teemo whispered, “It is our duty to commit his spirit to the other world. We will bury him in the stone circle.” It was settled, and preparations began to be made carefully. He died that night, and the long slow journey to the stone circle had begun early the next morning. Teemo himself sang the rites as they committed the pustulent corpse to the circle’s embrace. No one spoke on the long journey back, but back at the tribe the women had muttered quietly to each other, certainly no stranger should be committed to the stone circle this close to the solstice. Such a thing could not be profaned by the Stranger of Ashes.

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>>5704106
I most certainly was talking about the Conan movie. I actually prefer the mythology of the movie to the mythology of the books.

>>5704118
MADNESS
What about Fire and Ice though, is it any good?

>>5704109
So I'm just kinda throwing these passages out there. What does everyone think?

I figure in the next one they're doing some summer solstice ritual where they dance around the fire etc. Elder Teemo who is the leader of the tribe collapses and they think he's just old and been dancing or something. But then when someone goes to help him up they find a single pustule on his neck. He quickly descends into death and the tribe fractures as people follow different members of the warrior class (that I'm taken to calling The Fearless).

Plague spread, horror and human depravity ensue.

>>5704132
Fire and Ice is total shit, but if you're high enough it can be fun.

It's a hyper sexual, homo erotic, borderline racist, masturbatory power fantasy from the 80's.

>>5704138
They're absolutely great. Keep going.

We need a story about how they "got" agriculture.
It started in the neolithic.

Maybe some really fucking big ritual with a really important sacrifice that would allow them to summon a god to give them this knowledge?

After all, agriculture is one of the biggest shit ever.
Like, holy shit, agriculture, man.
It completely changed mankind forever.

Just found this in the Neolithic Wikipedia article :
>Terror Management Theory would indicate that in switching to agriculture, humans attempted to suppress their unconscious fear of death: controlling death by controlling nature. TM studies show that "wilderness inspire[s] more thoughts about death than either cultivated nature or urban environments" and that "death reminders reduce[] perceived beauty of wilderness".[22] From this perspective, agriculture functioned as a new modality of terror management, facilitated mainly by warmer climate and the quaternary extinction event, which undermined the competing control over nature big animals had, as well as the self-esteem, politics, and control over nature associated with big-game hunting. TMT uses both evolution and anthropology to explain non-nutritional motivations for the shift to agriculture.

That's neat.

>>5704140
>It's a hyper sexual, homo erotic, borderline racist, masturbatory power fantasy from the 80's.
my fetish

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>>5704163
Read Jojo's Bizarre Adventure

Does anyone here actually know much of anything about the Neolithic? I like this concept but this is the kind of story one researches instead of just rushing into.

>>5704183
We have an idea ofr what didn't exist back then, for a "hopeless humanity horror" setting that's the most important.

>>5704179
What the fuck is going on with that arm?>>5704183
I think the consensus is just to go with cavemen, even though that's not really Neolithic. Also, it's a fantasy world, so historical inaccuracies aren't too important.

>>5704183
We're gonna set it late Neolithic/early Bronze age.

So basically they have agriculture and little cities and towns and stuff but they're not too advanced. Yeah it's probably a good idea for you guys to research this though before writing anything.

>>5704190
Only if you make it incredibly abstract/not really the Neolithic/almost a fantasy world and more or less acknowledge this. Bad history/history clichés do not make for interesting fiction.

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>>5704191
>What the fuck is going on with that arm?

Anatomy.

That guy fights these guys.

>>5704191
Ah OK. Even if you go for fantasy, though, research might help with worldbuilding.

>>5704183
I used to have books when I was a kid that described the early bronze age with cut outs of all the buildings and tools. I figure that's all I need really

>>5704201
>tfw the gayest motherfuckers on Earth are vampire-creating superhuman lifeforms

Mangas can be pretty incredible sometimes.
>>5704196
We certainly need to do some research on the major points (like agriculture, appearance of cities).

>>5704215
Popularizations tend to be decades behind the current research, and if it's a kids' book it probably doesn't even cite sources. Use academic texts.

>>5704273
>Use academic texts
b-but i prefer drawings and figures.
3d pop-ups are the best.

>>5704245
Is that Göbleki Tepe? If we go for this as a potential setting then we'd be putting ourselves in Anatolia about 10,000 years ago.

Unless of course we transplant a similar community somewhere else. Maybe further up into Europe. There's forests and other spooky shit up there, easier to create a horror setting in darkest Europe.

>>5704273
We're not really trying to make historical fiction here.

>less forced memes
>the last attempts have ended dreadfully
Fuck off retard.

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HERE'S THE FUCKING IDEA RIGHT HERE

A man is cursed by God to have a bear always with him everywhere he goes. If he tries to run from the bear, it will kill him. If he manages to kill/get the bear killed, another will appear when he next wakes up. This will be his fate until the day he dies. Maybe nobody else can see the bear? Who knows

Some great ideas for scenes:

>meeting a QT for dinner
>going to the movies
>doctors appointment
>trying to attend his office job
>going shopping

And so many more!

Who else is on board? It's honestly a foolproof idea

>>5704286
How does he come to have this curse put on him in the first place?

>>5704289
Maybe that's what he's trying to find out

>>5704286
>inb4 twist is bear never existed

>>5704109
Na was more nervous than most on the day of the solstice. The roiling mix of dread and excitement had only amplified since the Ash Stranger (what should he be called?) had been buried in the stone circle. Like a fire lit, it threatened to consume its source and devour their dry huts. Anticipation flared at every unexpected crunch of a leaf, every shift of a stone. The spirits suddenly felt close, dancing barely beyond vision, and flickering away like shadows from a fire. Na’s bubbling anticipation grew each day. He would be participating in the Shadow Dance for the first time. He delighted in the thought, but also felt his throat constrict. Now he could join The Fearless on their hunting forays, he could built a hut, and take the nets to fish with his father. He could also take a wife. He floated through the days as if in a dream, and soon he was sitting with his mother and two young sisters on the morning of the solstice, his strong arms mashing the maize (hehe) for patkas.
The only sister, Tyma pinched Riki and tugged on her braid. Riki gave a little screech and Na’s mother swatted Tyma, “Tyma leave Riki be! How many times have I told you?”
Tyma gave a timid shrug, “The spirits are not to be trifled with during the solstice. Do you want to end up like the Ash Stranger? I bet he pulled his sister’s hair.”
Riki giggled and Tyma glared at her.
“I bet his sister didn’t squirt him and waste red berry juice,” she whined holding up the red stained sleeve of her tunic. Riki giggle again.
“That’s not funny,” Na’s seriousness cut through the scene, and the two girls looked taken aback and then frowned.
“Na’s just mad because he knows Rima won’t want to dance with him,” Tyma giggled.
“Tyma, enough.” Their mother was serious now, “Na is right. This is no time for jokes and games. It’s important that the spirits are satisfied.”
“It would certainly help,” she added nervously.

>>5704286
This is hilarious, i want to read chapters from the bear perspective

>>5704329
>I can't believe I'm stuck here with that barefur all day
>Why can't I just be licking honey and killing things ? What did I do to [bear god] to deserve this ?
>Plus if I go too far from the guy or kill him, I'll be shaved, what a pain
>Is it some form of punishment ? I have to find out
>[bear god] that guy is insufferable

>>5704301
The tribe all gathered around a large fire and shared patkas, stacked high with shredded bits from two large pigs that had been roasted over the open flame. Grease sizzled and the fire flared as the juices of the fat animals dripped and ran. Na guzzled the sweet berry juice that stained mouth and teeth and tore at the meat with satisfaction. He wiped his stained hands and face on the reed mat and looked around. Across the fire he thought he caught Rima’s eye, but it had only been a flicker between the flames and she was talking animatedly with her mother. He heard Tyma giggling at him and he looked away, embarrassed.
He shushed her good naturedly and they both laughed. The pigs, having been eaten clean to the bone, and the remaining patkas stored in the large clay pots, tribesmen began to remove their mats and clear the area for the Shadow Dance. The sun began to sink, staining the sky the red color of the sweet berries and Na smiled. Red berry juice gave everyone the faint appearance of a wild dog, gorging on a fresh kill.
The mothers and younger children stood in a wide circle, the men and remaining women stood inside, and they all faced the fire. Na’s anticipation became almost unbearable as he looked towards Elder Teemo to begin the call to dance. To his surprise, a voice next to Elder Teemo rang out with the traditional call, “Hear us Great Mother, and give favor to your children!” He began to stomp his feet slowly. Gradually the inner circle began to stomp as well, joined by claps and slaps of legs and arms from the mothers and children and the Shadow Dance began.
It started slowly, the inner circle rotating and stepping their feet with the rhythm. It gradually began to swell as the dance continued, the stomps coming with greater force, the sweet sting of hand on flesh rang out. The circle began to rotate faster as dancers stomped out their rhythm. Na felt himself slipping away. The energy of the spirits began to fill him as the dance continued. They began to sing. Starting low and long as the rhythm, it began to swell and fill their tiny village.

>>5704417
Women, finding a space between the dancers, dragged more logs to stack against the growing fire. The dancers accelerated. Their stomps came faster now, Na slapped his thigh with energy and emptied his lungs. The sounds of the rolling rhythm and the long chants of the singing began to fill his mind and he was taken totally with the energy of the spirits. The fire reached higher and the circle began to lose its shape, dancers sped past each other, carving warbling ellipses through the dirt. The sound swelled toward the sky and the Great Mother as the dancers moved yet faster again. The flickering shadows for which the dance was named were thrown all around the clearing, against the huts and onlookers. The dancers reached a frenzy. Na felt the blood course through his body, he lost the feelings of his flesh and sang again louder and with more force.
He waved his bare arms and was briefly returned to the himself when he thought he glanced Rima through the fire. The moment passed and the frenzy continued. Suddenly it was time for the offering. A large block of wood, carved intricately into the shape of maize and adorned with the images of life: animals, trees, man and water. Two Fearless placed the large offering on the fire and sang out again to the Great Mother. The flames roared and began to lick hungrily at the offering. The heat struck the dancers even in their frenzy. Sweat dripped as the flames climbed yet higher.
With an earsplitting crack! the wooden offering popped and splintered. Shards, still alight were thrown from the fire and a cheer went up. The dancers continued their circles, the rhythm slowing as the fire consumed the offering. As it burnt down to ashes Na found himself next to Rima, dancing slowly. She smiled at him, blood was in her cheeks and she was breathing heavy, her thick brown hair stuck to her face.
She leaned in, hand on his arm, “Nice of you to finally join us for the dance.” Before he could say anything an alarmed shout came from behind him. He turned to see Elder Teemo lying in the dirt. He quickly hurried over to help him up.
His wife was already there, chastising him, “Silly old man, you’re not as young as you used to be. You can’t dance all night anymore.” He offered another hand to help Elder Teemo up, who accepted it and shook his head to himself, “Yes, yes, I’m alright.” Fear gripped Na as he saw by the glint of the smoldering embers, the fire largely reduced to ash, a thick, swollen bubbling of the skin had appeared on the Elder’s neck. It leaked pus.

>>5703111
this, there is absolutely no reason to get into world building

This interests me so I'll contribute.
(1/3)

The darkness was absolute and within it Gol could see shapes. He came to the darkness regularly, it was the most velvety and pure within the depths of a cave that he had discovered some weeks earlier. While hunting.

He had gone down into the cave to see if he could find bats, mushrooms or something to bring back home, but instead he had found something unexpected. Silence.

There were no other entrances and thus no moan of wind or chill of a draft blowing through. It was quiet...and Gol was entranced by that. Only rarely did he ever encounter true silence in his life, even though he lived alone.

When he was finished with what needed to be done for the day he found himself drawn back to the anesthetized solitude of the cave like an iron filing to a magnet. At first he brought torches but even their slight crackling and flickers seemed too loud after a while.

For a long time he debated whether it would be wise to douse the torch and drench himself in blackness. He would be lost in the cave, wrapped up in a featureless void more complete than anything that he had ever seen before. But the promise of complete silence was too endearing for those fears to completely overtake him, and one day he let the torch burn out.

The light from the remaining embers lasted a little while after that but soon they faded too, like a dying star finally dissipating and leaving a new gap in the night sky. He remained very still and realized that he could scarcely tell whether his eyes were open or shut anymore. Gone were the everyday noises of birds, the wind, the crackle of flames...now there was only the regular, comfortable pace of his own heart and the low sign of his breath that came with every exhalation.

Gol luxuriated in this for a long time, standing in the center of the cave, before he relit his torch and climbed back out. The light was almost painful after the complete darkness, the daylight even more so. But he was smiling now, ear to ear, almost possessed with joy over the knowledge that he had just uncovered.

(2/3)
His visits to the cave became more frequent after that and after he doused his torch and sat down on the cool stone, he stared into the void ahead of him. In that void he saw shapes. At first they were little more than random dots and lines, orange and blue and red. The surviving edifices of the light, he told himself. If he remained in the darkness and the silence for long enough then they would fade.

And for a time they did. With enough concentration Gol found that his field of view cleared to a smooth and inky black, unmarked by any artificial blemish. He felt at peace until, one day, he found that his vision refused to clear. The lines and dots and shapes remained, but somehow they felt different.

There was an order to them that Gol did not understand. He felt like a man washed down a river and deposited upon the banks of some new and dark continent, entirely unknown to him. And so he stared.

The shapes remained in the same order with each day he came, and while a very familiar fear of the unknown briefly possessed him, he knew with a sick sort of dread that he would not be able to stay away.

Gol’s visits to the cave became longer, he hunted less, he trapped less, he gathered less firewood and saved less for the winter. His life above the ground seemed more and more like an illusion, the periods of silence and shapes in the darkness felt more like his actual life. Was that bright and noisy hell above his head even real?

And still the shapes continued to form a great and unsettling order. Dots and lines and geometry too abstract to rationalize grew closer and more interconnected, the silence somehow heavier. Gal began to spend the night in the cave, one day he left so weak from dehydration that he was nearly unable to climb back out.

After that incident he moved supplies down, water, dried meat, everything needed for longer and longer stays. His shack remained underprepared for the coming winter and Gol ignored the frost beginning to tinge the ground as he mechanically checked traps and snares that hadn’t been baited for weeks.

He had come to know every inch of the cave and did not light a torch anymore. He knew where his things were, he knew where to sit and where to stare for the shapes to show up more clearly. They surrounded him now and seemed to pulsate. The air felt warmer now, the reality of the place almost fluid. When Gol stood he felt like he was floating and were it not for the touch of the stone on his feet he might have been.

He began to wonder if perhaps he had found his way to the very womb of the earth. Was he being imbued with knowledge that he had no way of comprehending? He tried to touch the shapes and symbols sometimes, but they were both close and far away. They appeared to him whether his eyes were open or shut, growing in brightness and solidity.

(3/3)
In their own strange way Gol supposed that they were talking to him, even if he didn’t know what they wanted to say. His supplies ran out and slowly, reluctantly Gol made his way back to the brightness of above to get more water and the last of his food.

He did so hastily, eyes screwed against the brightness, and returned to the solitude and silence of his new home. He wondered how he had ever put up with life amidst the chaos, noise and stabbing spears of light that permeated the world above him. In the cave it was safe, and silent, and there were the shapes to ponder.

They continued to shift and after a long time Gol realized that they were forming pictures, like the ones that he had seen on the walls of old abandoned shacks while hunting back in his half forgotten life of before. Their crudity and abstractness was a shock to the senses, almost obscene, but Gol welcomed it. He was glad that they were beginning to make sense to him, it was like waking up from a deep and unhappy slumber. His mind felt even clearer now, and he examined the pictures that the shapes had coalesced into.

They seemed questioning, almost interrogative, showing crude images of him and the light that lay above. There were pictures of sleep and strange architecture of a type that Gol had never seen before. The night sky was scarlet where the architecture was and in the streets Gol could see men and women bowing to some distant and misshapen mound, their eyes melted in their sockets and pouring down their cheeks. He saw a great image of a man sitting upon a throne of living flesh and looked upon great and terrible abstractions that hinted at pestilence and death.

The images were confused, scrambled and unclear and Gol felt a powerful dread begin to flow through him. For the first time since he had put out his torch so many days and nights before, he was scared.

He fled the cave and burst into the daylight, crunching haphazardly through frost and light sprinklings of snow. But even as his vision began to recover from the influx of light he realized that the spots and lines and dazzling dots that splashed his eyes were not going away. Indeed they seemed to be moving together to form a great and terrible common shape.

Whatever he had awoken in the cave had found him, and it was interested.

>>5704462
That's pretty spooky m8, good job.

>>5704140
You say that like it's a bad thing.

I think The Wake by Paul Kingsnorth would be a great help in this project.

Also, I've only scanned most of the posts itt, but it seems like the gods are actually real. Is anyone planning on writing an atheist segment, or does everyone in this world wholeheartedly believe in the spirits? Why not just the barbarism of nomadic tribe against tribe, and though the victors can credit their win to the sacrifice/ritual/whatever the night before, the reader can see that there are no gods, or if there are they aren't listening?

>>5704833
There are those who believe in God, those who hold themselves as God, and nihilists. It's supposed to be existentialist horror, where the more the protagonist learns about the true nature of God, the more he loses his grasp on sanity.

>>5704848
Right on. But what is the true nature of the God in the story? Is it Lovecraftian, or is the mc driven madder by the revelation there are no gods watching over them? Looks really interesting anyway.

>>5704914
I think we agreed upon a cosmology based loosely on Gnostic duality/Zoroastrianism. Abstract, primal entities diametrically opposed to each other that permeate though all of existence. There would also be lesser beings that have a more direct role in the affairs of humanity.

Op here, I'll be going to class soon so I think that we should agree on the stories that will be in the pastebin for now.

>>5704914
It's a cosmic horror story where a pantheon of gods exist but they're all malevolent and bloodthirsty.

Not every story in the anthology needs to be on a cosmic scale or involve gods though. Stories can be about more mundane and down to earth spooky things.

Just as long as it's spooky and fits the setting, anything goes.

>>5705791
oh yeah also this >>5704922

The pantheon of gods are all lesser beings and not the true "gods" so to speak, but they have more direct interaction with the world than the entities that are above them. Those higher entities aren't benevolent either though, at best they're amoral and uninterested in human affairs.

>>5705223
People've only written like 3 though.

What is the url?

>>5704833
I think supernatural elements help the horror theme, as long as it doesn't go too much into actual religious stuff.

Has anyone given credence to the idea of a utopian novel? It's easy to make the rusted gates and beaten down people of dystopia, but what about swinging shit the other way? (Muh 2 cents)

>>5705863
Nobody wants to read utopian stories though.

There's a reason Huxley's most famous work is Brave New World and not Island.

>>5701884
if this is the thing we def need to do smth with cannibals
people eating other people are spooky as fuck
like in eaters of the dead/13th warrior

>>5705874
Write it then, it's an anthology. Just read the thread to get an idea of what the setting is like and then write a story about cannibals to add to the collection.

>>5705878
ayy i didnt read the op properly
i still think that a story about mc's village having a shitty hunting&gathering season/harvest(?) and leaving for another even SPOOKIER village where people have resorted to eating each other could be pretty good
too bad i can't write for shit

>>5705886
None of us can write for shit m8, just do it.

>>5705886
>>5705893
Yeah none of us can write, go for it man. The more stories in this collection the better.

Having read the first fifty posts (and skimmed the rest) I see you're falling into the same trap as most neolithic fantasy - you're assuming people are stupid. Your average human of twenty thousand years ago is no less capable of intelligence than your average human today, he is merely less knowledgeable. Anything that existed at the time would have been carefully examined, categorised under this belief or that, and taught by rote to the next generation. I noticed a post earlier that a tribe failed because: "They didn't understand the concept of contagious disease" - that's ludicrous. Basic observation and correlation would suggest to even the most primitive (yet modern) mind that being near the sick caused sickness, the only gap in understanding would have been the method of transmission. Neolithic elders/shaman who treated disease would have had a primitive understanding of sickness, and a primitive understanding of protecting themselves from illness, even if such methods as preventing infection by fluids by swathing oneself in patterned cloth was adhered to only to scare away the spirit of sickness.

>>5705938
This is true. We might view the people of the past as stupid because of their methods, while completely ignoring the fact that we would have acted exactly the same if put into their position.

In a thousand years the humans of the future will be moaning about lead based gasoline and carbon emissions and asking 'why were our ancestors SO GODDAMN STUPID?!' The cycle never ends...

And speaking of disease outbreaks, I'd assume that he sick would be walled up in a cave somewhere and quarantined until they either recovered or died of sickness/starvation. I really wish we had more archeological evidence of the neolithic era so we could know more about how they dealt with outbreaks.

hi guys.
just found this thread and am kinda overwhelmed. Is there some pastebin of all the texts put in the right order? I would really like to read it. (and maybe write a critique, based on the comcept of>>5702028
)

>>5704462
That's pretty good. Doesn't seem finished or refined, but nice job

>>5706085
OP has said he'll put up a pastebin but hasn't yet. There's only like 3 or 4 actual stories ITT. The rest is mostly discussion about plot/world building stuff.

>>5704510
>>5706086

Thanks. I dashed that out one the course of an hour and decided that it might make a pretty decent origin story for an antagonist. I'll fix it up as soon as we get to actually writing this whole thing.

>>5706105
ok, ill lurk
ty

>>5705835
Ill post in a while I have a doc for it.

>>5706105
Sorry dude I'll have my computer in less than an hour ill post my doc then, it doesnt work on my phone.

this wont work, memes are the glue that holds the story together. More memes!

>>5701884
also, the protagonist doesn't understand his ego yet and so cannot use the words "I," "me," "my," etc

>>5706369
no go away

>>5706372
go to bed ayn rand

>>5705938
>>5705984
Yep.
In the neolithic, there were only homo sapiens sapiens. They are literally us. Take a neolithic baby and give him our education and knowldege and he won't be more stupid or anything.

So the characters don't have to act like gurgling cavemen.

whens the paper due prof
where do i drop it off

also, is it ok if i have grammar and spelling erros

Heres the link faggots, i enabled comments for now not sure if i should allow everyone to edit.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ViEHscvAF0wQji2UOqxrJKwJ3pYgtQOEOOPowsGgWCI/edit?usp=sharing

>>5706403
It's ok we'll fix it later

>>5706401
We're doing it in the late Neolithic/early Bronze age.

So it's like, less Flintstones and more ancient Sumeria and Babylon. Maybe a bit earlier than that but yeah you get the idea.

>>5704462
I like this
I like this alot

>>5705938
Well, the original idea was Neolithic, but everyone has just been going with generic cavemen, so why don't we just change it to cavemen?

>>5706429
I don't mean to sound like a faggot, but was my story not good enough to get in? Or not long enough?

>>5706757
Cavemen are boring. I agree with the late Neolithic/early Bronze Age setting. That way we have some forms of early civilization being formed. It allows for more interesting settings and complex characters.

>>5706793
I think it should still be very early neolithic. The very earliest of civilizations

I've skimmed through the thread but why not have a central story told from multiple points of view from those affected by it?

>>5706928
Im sorry mate show me the post and I'll post it. I must have overlooked it.

>>5706789
>>5707029
Ment for.

>>5706928
We'd all have to agree on a central story first

>>5705938
The point is mostly that in this world almost everything is new and puzzling. Everything that has already happened is categorized, but plenty of new stuff happens and sometimes it's brutal enough to wipe out an entire tribe in a few days. The cluelessness of the protagonists only had to the horror.

Now that doesn't mean we can't have human ingenuity as a running theme. I'd love the idea of a primitive human outwitting a God, or of some guy discovering counting, writing or astronomy and leading a revolution/becoming mad/being excluded/changing the lifestyle of his tribe.

Also we need romance.

>>5706606
We can imagine and extended and vaguely defined period, so everything to first silexes to tiny bronze-age cities is possible.


>>5706757
It's a bit of a cliché and people didn't even live in caves.

>>5706828
That would be paleolithic. But seriously as long as we imply
>this important stuff didn't exist back then and we're going to see what happens when it first appeared

we should be fine. There no reason a vast land with varying climate and sneaky gods playing around with laws of nature should have homogenous technology.

>>5704452
>>5704462
>>5704458
The Gollum is strong in this one, but it's pretty good.

>>5707029
>>5707039
It's here:
>>5704069
I mean, feel free to leave it out if it's too short or it's shit.

>>5707194
Its cool I'll add it as soon as I can. Theirs no word requierment or limit.

>>5704462
I liked it but I think he shouldn't have a name.
Just call him "he".
Also Gol is a stupid name.
I mean, not particularily stupid, but I'm sure most names we could think of for such a period would still sound stupid.

>>5701884
clark ashton smith already did it with the hyperborean cycle

Haven't read all the way through the thread yet, but it's good stuff so far. Keep it up, /lit/.

One thing I would keep in mind is that ancient languages are much more compact than modern languages. The older languages are, the more complex ideas they expressed in a shorter sentence, or even single word.

I'll use my favorite word in latin to show you: amabamur, which means "we were being loved [by terrorists]"
Lots of meaning, one word.

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So how large are we envisioning the civilizations in this world to be?

>>5706383
fuck off

>>5707359
Depends on how you want to express it in your story. So far they all deal with seperate tribes.

>>5707364
no you, we don't want any memes in our book

we want something serious this time. if you want le epic memes go write a book with /b/

>>5704069
You don't have to incorporate anything supernatural if you don't want, not all the stories have to revolve around that. Just as long as it's spooky it's ok.

They all take place in the same world, but not everything spooky that happens in that world is necessarily of supernatural origin.

>>5707399
>we don't want any memes in our book
Yes we do, you're the minority.
>we want something serious this time
no we fucking don't fuck off back to >>>/b/
or yet
>>>/v/

>>5707420
>Yes we do, you're the minority.

You're literally the only person who wants memes, nobody else in this thread has been talking about le epic memes but you.

/lit/ wrote a meme book already, if you read the thread you'll see that we're trying to write a serious book this time.

>>5707427
>literally
>>>/v/
Proof that you're retarded.
>>>/v/
We're having memes and that's final.
If it doesn't have memes then it doesn't have a right to have /lit/'s name on it.

>>5707437
It won't have /lit's name on it.

>>5707450
Good, it better fucking not, it better not have any mention of /lit/

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28KB, 533x605px

>>5707380
Good. An aspect I wanted to include was social hierarchies beginning to form in this world. Obviously the horror element will be in the forefront, with the social aspect being weaved into it.

>>5707437
please go nobody wants memes in this

the OP literally says that the goal is to create something actually good that isn't filled with memes

>>5707494
+1 for please no memes. Or at least understated ones.

>>5707494
>>5707638
Fuck off, we do want memes

>>5707701
Only you do.

Everyone please ignore this troll.

>>5707704
Only you don't.

Everyone please ignore this troll.

>>5707701
Holy shit guy, just ignore this asshole.
You can tell he's just some underage retard from /b/.

>>5707791
Holy shit guy, just ignore this asshole.
You can tell he's just some underage retard from /b/.

Whats the bump limit on /lit/? I might make a general soon.

>>5704349
>my feet hurt

Not really reading the whole thread. You're going down a genre that doesn't interest me enough to get involved, but I just wanna say the overall idea and working structure you're setting up is great. /lit/ needs more people like you gusy.

We already did Totalitarian Tundra, let's go for another book, and then another and another.

>>5708210
>I could be one Bearhill fighting young males

>>5708004
300 I think. Someone should make a new thread with a recap and one thing to work on (like concepts for tribes). Would do it, but it's nearly 3 am in my country and I'm lazy. Will do it tomorrow if nobody does.

>>5702043
He said neolithic. That is preliterate, not pre-fire, or even pre-agriculture. By the neolithic there were cities, even kingdoms, just nobody to put their endeavors in clay and stone (let alone paper).

I always enjoyed this anthropological snapshot by aronra. I still remember it (even though I left the rest of the new atheist shit behind), this video remains as a favorite:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWjtRFNSl2s

>>5708253STONE GENERAL: Thread #2:
Get in here and work on /lit/'s new upcoming book Stone. A Neolithic, horror story involving early mans, survival in a unknow world ruled by cruel and unforgiving gods.


What we have so far:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ViEHscvAF0wQji2UOqxrJKwJ3pYgtQOEOOPowsGgWCI/edit?usp=sharing


You think this is ok? Should I put the requirements? Amd the archives of this is?

>>5708289
Put in that it's an anthology.

>>5708289
My suggestion is that if this is a neolithic horror, we should be using leviathanic symbolism. It should stalk early man, as civilization and history would soon pounce upon him.

>>5708304
>>5708294


Better?

STONE GENERAL: Thread #2:
Get in here and work on /lit/'s new upcoming book Stone. A Neolithic, horror story involving early mans, survival in a unknown world ruled by cruel and unforgiving gods, men who try to be gods and a new dawn of civilization within cities. It's an anthology of various stories, in order for yours to be accepted you must post it on the thread and it must be approved by all the other anons.


What we have so far:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ViEHscvAF0wQji2UOqxrJKwJ3pYgtQOEOOPowsGgWCI/edit?usp=sharing

Test
http://boards.4chan.org/lit/thread/5701857#bottom

>>5708378
NEW THREAD
>>5708405