/tg/ discusses interesting things in their settings

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>>51934736
*Cough*

>>51934859

I was inspired by that, to some extent, but the Greys in my setting aren't genocidal, they're just extremely aggressive towards trespassers, and want to go home. Also, that game is criminally underrated.

I like Greys, I think traditional Greys are underused, they can be very sinister if used right. I think the 3e doppelgangers had a very Grey look to them, gangly and weird, always liked that. Are your Greys looking to regain their level of power again through nefarious alien means?

I came up with a small idea the other day on /tg/ I ended up liking about a semi-nomadic people who travel between various ancient strongholds which they camp in for weeks at a time, different tribes often end up in the same strongholds and they trade, swap stories, celebrate festivals, marry off, make alliances and maybe even fight each other. If a tribe comes across an empty stronghold, they'll remain there til another tribe comes along, as they dislike a stronghold being empty, and believe the ancestors stopping over there would be lonely.

The stronghold thing comes from a long tradition dating back to their creation myth, of when the first people were around, their people split off and decided to live how they pleased, making temporary houses on stormy nights or in places they liked - these became the strongholds. They decided to revisit them at times and thus came about the semi-nomadic tradition that persists to this day.

>>51936064

> I like Greys, I think traditional Greys are underused, they can be very sinister if used right. I think the 3e doppelgangers had a very Grey look to them, gangly and weird, always liked that. Are your Greys looking to regain their level of power again through nefarious alien means?

Of course, while the majority of them are perfectly live their lives in their lands far away from those "Zof damned sorce-rers and pale skins" and mind their own business, a conniving secret society of intelligent, genetically pure, (relatively speaking) Greys calling themselves the Grey Consortium seeks to gather enough functioning parts to rebuild a flying saucer and use the magnetic ley lines to replicate the feat that transported them to the world, to go back home so they won't have to associate with any of the inferior "Irthlings" anymore.

Their scheme requires an extensive amount of technology, advanced to the point it might as well be magic. The Grey Consortium figures magic is just as good as technology and that it would be most efficient to use it, of course, Greys aren't able to tap into Irth's magnetic ley lines to actually apply any magic, and their knowledge of magic is practically nonexistant, neccesiating extensive research. Which means kidnapping and probing native lifeforms and magic users, among other things.

Your semi-nomadic stronghold culture is interesting. Do they have any other ancient traditions?

>>51936590

*are perfectly content

Pardon the error, I'm phone-posting on transit.

>>51936590
I almost feel like magic-using Greys are part of a real world conspiracy (possibly Satanic Greys, who knows). Regardless, magic-using Greys could be very neat. I also appreciate the idea of a secret cabal with an already shady collection of sinister creatures. There's a lot of potential creepiness to how they might make magic work for them, mind-enslavement, bio-engineering, how would they actually go about using it?

As for my stronghold nomads, they're honestly a pretty fresh idea and I'm still trying expand on them. Logically, I feel they're very pragmatic and have no particular stigma against magic or sorcerors. In fact, I think they're a great source of trade for wizards, as the nomads tend to harvest important ritual materials and magical ingredients on their travels. Although this carefree interaction with wizards might give the nomads a stigma with certain peoples as dabblers in black arts.

Other traditions would vary from tribe to tribe. Within this very loose society there's many different tribes of wanderers, but also probably a pretty strong continuity as they meet up a lot of exchange experiences and knowledge. They venerate their ancestors, they don't particularly worship them but revere their knowledge, experiences and guidance and at strongholds might invoke their wandering spirits to aid them in dangerous times or guide them along the right path. Any worship probably is of nature spirits and such things you might meet in the wilderness and they would naturally show respect to the gods of local areas they pass through.

>>51934736
Er, let's see

>half of the undead aren't true undead, they're just corrupted living who can no longer enter the afterlife, and can spread the corruption to other living like a virus
>this corruption can be caused by a number of things, usually an excess or desire of something that takes someone over so strongly it starts damaging their very soul
>about 1200 years ago, 200 years before the gods came into being, someone attempted to create a "cure" for this corruption, basically by creating a counter-virus of sorts, using a clean soul as a template of sorts to repair the corrupted one
>it worked as planned, and ate away at the corruption, repairing it with the template to fill in the blanks
>it worked too well unfortunately, and destroyed the rest of the soul as well, also filling in with the template, until the "fixed" soul was just a carbon copy of the original
>because the soul's condition affect's a person's body and mind, this quickly turned the person into a clone of the original person
>most knowledge of this was destroyed, as the people who worked on it thought it was too dangerous
>only one of the gods knows the specifics of the "cure" and gave that knowledge to one of his followers to take over the world with
>when people die, their souls go to the god they "aligned" with. This makes the god even more powerful bit by bit
>with all the souls being converted into copies of one of his most zealous followers, all those souls would start going to said god, bolstering his power enough to overthrow the others
>the other gods can stop him, but the one neutral god doesn't want to interfere, and the two "good" gods are too busy fighting each other to put any effort into stopping him

Dwarves are all a single gender of sexless dudes. They reproduce by carving new dwarves from stone and precious materials, using magic to turn them to flesh.
New dwarves are animated without hair, and so beard length is the primary indicator of seniority as dwarves start out looking as old as they ever will. When dwarves reach advanced age they will begin to petrify, eventually turning back to stone, their hair falling out. With some restoration work a petrified dwarf can be reanimated into a "son", who shares some of the memories and skills of their "father" but only vaguely. It's typical for dwarves to wear clothing made with their past selves beards.

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I have an isolationist city that has super future looking tech (think Jack Kirby New Gods/Celestials type stuff). Essentially, they are human husks, practically mummified, in their glowy armor. They're the primary antagonists in the campaign I'm running considering they're in league with the invading illithids.

In my host setting, each race is tied to the survival of the fourteen creator deities. Every time one of the creator deities and their two demigod children dies, a race in the world instantly goes extinct. Every time a race goes extinct on its own, its creator deity and its two demigods die instantly. There's only three demigods left, two races total, and the afterlives are permanently shuttered because there's no longer divine power enough left to sustain them. However, the three demigods are all very nice people and hold town hall meetings everywhere, and pay people well to find contaminated ancient relics for them to destroy.

Demons are all extinct too, killed off by the psychic backblast by the deaths of the gods. Demons, however, were generally lovely people, and had nothing to do with the hells. They were ascendant mortals. In life, they had come to exemplify some aspect of culture (constraint, love, discretion, self-reliance, etc) to such an extent that their word became interchangeable with the law on that topic, and when they died, they were given the chance to return to life as all-powerful spirits that live in geophysically-defined spaces in the world. These shrines contain a fountain of holy water and a few donation urns, and you could get blessings or cures there.

>>51939694
Actually, while Im talking about this, I can also mention my Undead.

Undead in my setting are seperated into 3 catagories.

>"Natural" Undead, aka Corrupted Living
These are what I talked about earlier: someone's soul becoming so corrupted by something that it causes permanent damage to their soul like a virus. Most Naturals can infect other people and create more of themselves, typically via bite. Vampires are the most well-known of these. Most Naturals go insane from their mind being damaged by the corruption, though it's possible to eventually regain sanity, though Naturals are basically always exterminated on sight, barring rare occasions(like a god harboring them to dick over another god somehow).

>"Unnatural" Undead, aka Raised Dead
These are your typical corpses raised by Necromancer style of undead. However, a soul must be placed into a corpse to raise it. Control spells must be placed on the body, or the raised dead will simply be free-willed, sometimes insane if the body wasn't preserved(causing the undead to be in pain), and almost always hostile towards the Necromancer for trapping their soul in the first place. These undead are fairly fragile, and not infectious like the first type. These undead consist of your average raised undead: Skeletons, Zombies, sometimes stronger ones depending on the soul you placed into it(stronger souls result in stronger undead, though require stronger control spells)

Cont

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>its a "post your wall of text and ignore everyone elses" thread

>>51940334
>Empty Vessels, aka Feral Undead
These are more of a subtype of the Unnaturals, but worth noting separately. Empty Vessels can only be created on the Dead Isles. This is done by a Necromancer raising a corpse the same way they would to create an Unnatural Undead, but without having a soul. The unique properties of the Dead Isles just has...something fill the space. Unless controlled, these undead are always hostile to everything. They're typically tougher than most other Unnaturals.

>Burning Zombies
The last time of undead, only found in one location called the Blasted Lands, where a meteorite fell from the skies about 300 years ago, with Burning Zombies appearing shortly after. They are both the most dangerous, and at the same time least feared of the undead. In the outer reaches of the Blasted Lands, you can go around freely and the Burning Zombies do little more than just stare at you. You could even walk up to one and make silly faces at it and it won't react. Attempting to travel too far into the Blasted Lands towards where the meteorite fell causes them to get hostile, as will attacking one. Burning Zombies are much more durable and physically powerful than other Undead. Burning Zombies are named as such because of deep red glowing lines running along their bodies that look like they're on fire inside. Burnign Zombies tend to stay in the Blasted Lands, though every so often one will wander out. Strangely they will carry rare and valuable jewels found in the BL, and take them to shops nearby to purchase metal objects.

Burning Zombies aren't actually undead however, in the traditional sense. The meteorite that landed was a space ship, and the Burning Zombies are simply the ship's AI creating golems using whatever resources are nearby to both protect it and find resources it can use to repair itself and eventually leave.

>>51940356
Then read and reply to some, anon. It was happening earlier on.

>>51939694
>>51940334
>>51940502
>this corruption can be caused by a number of things, usually an excess or desire of something that takes someone over so strongly it starts damaging their very soul

Funny, this is actually how my vampires work, excessive - truly mind-consuming - desire or greed or will to dominate messes people up inside. I always like undead like that being a little more vague in how they come to be.

Also, the Burning Zombies sound really cool, I like those. Who, or what, does the ship belong to?

>>51940974
>Who, or what, does the ship belong to?

I'm still working out specifics on that one. Current plan is it was an exploratory ship charting new worlds and crash landed in the setting world after either it hit a meteor or was shot down by another ship from an opposing space empire or something. Being able to make golems like that was a dual-use mechanism for mapping out planets and safeguarding itself whenever whenever it would have to physically go down to a planet(like if there was atmospheric conditions preventing it from simply scanning).

My setting is basically Eador, a bunch of variously continent-sized chunks floating in space, but the inhabitants aren't aware that they're not the only shard.

The PCs' main 'quest-giver' type character is actually an immortal being competing in a giant game with other immortals. Each world has several artifacts hidden across it, and if you gather them all you become the god of that shard, and can incorporate it into your domain with the other shards you've conquered.

The immortal is pretending to be the Dumbledore/Gandalf figure, encouraging the heroes to go out and find the macguffins to save the world when really he just wants to take over. (The rules of the game, to keep masters from ruining every world fighting for the artifacts, stipulate that masters can't directly intervene to get the artifacts, and they can't force mortals to do their bidding. They ahve to ask/cajole/trick.)

The double bamboozle is that he's actually not that bad of a master, but on the other side of the sea is an empire ruled by a triumvirate of masters more of the Black Company stripe who don't play by the rules. They're childish power-hungry maniacs who hate each other and constantly try to fuck each other over and weasel out of their power-sharing contract, and if they win the contest they'll assuredly tear the world apart fighting over it.

>>51939780
>With some restoration work a petrified dwarf can be reanimated into a "son", who shares some of the memories and skills of their "father" but only vaguely. It's typical for dwarves to wear clothing made with their past selves beards.

This is neat, good way around asexual fantasy reproduction.

>>51939780
Love this approach to dwarves.

My elves are essentially humans who settled an enchanted forest centuries ago. They discovered that they do not age as long as they stay within the limits of the forest, and the elders are many centuries old. There are some subtler changes to their philosophy and physique, but mostly because of their extremely long lifespans and not magical influence. As long as people born within the realms of the elven kingdom stay within, they don't die from old age and don't get decrepit with age - they still grow older, but remain in good health, never becoming weaker than a middle aged human even after thousands of years.

Those who live the forest age normally, if not at a faster rate. Every generation, many young adults leave the elven lands and are forgotten.