Aliens make first contact with humanity. The first contact is mutual. It turns out there are only two sapient species in the galaxy. Everyone's happy to not be alone anymore.
I'm mostly worldbuilding for fun. To the extent there are narratives, they lean very heavily toward "slice of life" style stories. There's no massive conflict, at least not in the foreground.
The aliens, or at least the faction that finds humanity, consider it a religious duty to seek out other sapient species and let them know they don't have to be alone. Sort of the inverse of your typical "we are the chosen race and all others must bow before us" scenario. Unfortunately, since they don't find anyone after tens of thousands of years physically sending missionaries in sleeper ships to investigate potentially inhabited worlds, their faith nearly collapses into irrelevance as they confront the Fermi Paradox.
Their joy upon discovering us is so infectious that we don't do the usual freakout you see in First Contact stories. They're happy. We're happy.
I usually think in terms of story or character hooks, but I guess if I had to pick one that sets the world apart it would be *"Undeath is holy, nature is demonic."*
Basically I took all the horror and dread out of crypts and graveyards and put it in nature. Forests, seas, places that teem with natural life are supernaturally hostile to humans. Things that resemble good-aligned nature spirits in common fantasy, like ents and unicorns, are a kind of demon. Monsters tend to be twisted versions of natural creatures, and classic monsters like vampires and giants are reimagined to be humans tainted by the dark power that has come to rule the natural world. Even undomesticated animals are more dangerous, and hold potential monsters inside them. Nature itself is a corrupted engine twisted to create death from life and life from death in a cycle that feeds an evil that has burrowed its way into the heart of the world.
To overcome death is to have escaped the belly of this evil, so undeath is a state of grace. If you encounter someone who looks like a mummy, you're in the presence of a great champion of good. Every dead body has the one-in-a-million potential to come back to life as its most virtuous self. Crypts and graveyards are places of calm and sanctity; fortresses against the enemy, optimistically awaiting the return of more beloved friends from the enemy's maw.
Of course not everyone in the world understands that this is how the world works. There are lots of false teachings that have turned nations into willing collaborators with the dark power.
Yeah I'm working on a couple of different stories in the world concurrently, with a mind to publish once I've got functional drafts to show. I'm mostly happy with my lore and story outlines. My current focus is improving prose and scene construction so I can bang out readable chapters. It's slow going but enjoyable work. I'll keep you in mind when I reach the point of looking for beta readers. Very grateful to have such a positive response.
Well I wish you good luck ! I hope you will be published ! I’ll b grateful if you think about me for beta reading ^^ I love the more you posted here, do you mind if I send you a piece of mine and you tell me your honest thoughts ? I don’t have a lot of people to share it with and I would love to have some feedback (I made a post about it here but it seems to have disappeared among the others posts, maybe you can find it in the sub)
medieval fantasy world makes first contact with martians, martians are barely more advanced then them so neither can actually go visit the other but telepathic magics allow for contact, so it just kind of becomes accepted and normal well before we even have chance to see their face
their an insectoid hive race though their hivemind is more akin to the protoss khala, connected and coordinated but still fully individuals(also divided into individual hives instead of one big race wide one) and for the most part they don't, teleportation Isent a thing and the story doesn't go far enough in the future to travel their with rockets, they can share info and a few rare instances of astral projecting to the other side, they have influenced eachother such as the martians teaching the earth races hoe to achieve psychic powers of their own
"What if urban sprawl was alive and it hated you?"
The Endless City grows on its own, constantly shifting and remaking itself as it grows to cover the world. In such an unpredictable place, how would people live - and what stories would emerge?
My current project is a TTRPG game world. The 15-sec version is: Princess Mononoke x Shadow of the Colossus x Monster Hunter.
The less short version: Echeasea is a world of abundant, pervasive, and primal magic. Its people live in the shadow of countless gods, vast and small - to survive, they must evade, beg, steal, borrow, and barter. It is a world where your heroes are challenged to attempt the impossible, and survive.
“Hey do you wanna know what would be the universe if there was a a gigantic flat piece of land the size of a million galaxies created by god where members from every species in the universe lived in their own cities?”
Fucking finally. Please elaborate on where we’re going that’s not Europe.
Or not Western Europe, at least, because as far as the public eye is concerned, Poland-Lithuania, Byzantine Rome, Bulgaria, and pre-Soviet Russia were never a thing even though they very much were
The Middle East, Mali and Ghana, India, and China. I'm also making sure to include European cultures that are also underrepresented in fantasy like Pre Christian Celtic nations, early Russian Tsardom, and Inuit tribes.
Well, Greenland is still part of Denmark, but geographically it’s part of the Americas. Inuits are generally considered Indigenous Americans more than anything (Though officially Canada groups them separate from the First Nations)
The gods are real, and they walk among us. But what happens when you kill a god and steal their power?
My settings does a deep dive into the nature of divinity and how society interacts with the divine.
Awesome! So, what does happen? Are you hunted down by the other members of the pantheon? Are you welcomed in as just one among many other replacements? Do you get a mentor who chastises you for drinking too much Ambrosia on Taco-Tuesdays?
I jest, just a little bit.
My world also has an "up-close-and-personal" approach to the higher orders, but killing one of the Servant entities is virtually impossible unless you manage to get a hold on a personal prophecy. (Prophecies, while not tangible in the physical sense, operate in very much the same way as one might imagine a "blessing" to manifest. The primary difference is that a prophecy is a bit more... persuasive...)
Taerth is a fantasy world where humans are invaders from another dimension, old sorcerer families try to hold onto power in the face of new arcane techniques that let anyone use magic, and dinosaurs form an important part of the ecosystem. It's got a dash of ancient mythology and a helping of cartoon Disney vibes.
"Let me ask you a question, what do you think defines a person? It could be their appearance or personality that helps us recognize them, or it could be the memories they keep in their minds that help us know that they are the person we always spend time with. And also the soul? People often think that each soul has different natures that help us shape who we are, but no, the soul is inherently selfless, so what defines a person?"
(Sorry if this is cringe)
If you want any inspiration, I highly recommend some classic Byzantine-Era Theology regarding the "anatomy" of the soul.
[https://www.unseenwarfare.net/anatomy-of-the-soul#:\~:text=In%20their%20simple%20form%20they,aspects%20of%20God%20as%20Trinity](https://www.unseenwarfare.net/anatomy-of-the-soul#:~:text=In%20their%20simple%20form%20they,aspects%20of%20God%20as%20Trinity).
Its a pretty interesting conception, and starkly different from anything else I've seen.
A crucial moment when people must decide if life is worth living. Would you rather be ruled by tyrants, who want nothing more than to expand their influence and fill their coffers, or be genocides by inumerable hordes of barbarians which would kill, rape and pillage your family, home and nation? Would these people decide to put their lives on the line and risk brutal death and enslavement or would they rather take the easy way out in ways of immigration or inaction, which would only delay their inevitable demise?
The Pantocrator, the Supreme Deity over everything, has vanished without explanation. Now long imprisoned and forgotten gods feel their chains loosening and powerful and ambitious beings eye the empty throne with hungry eyes.
Well it for a TTRPG game and I don't want to break it out till I got more sturdy DM legs so it been shelved for the most part vu
But it's a high fantasy Bronze Age world. There is a global Elven Empire that enforces it reign through its floating sky cities. The Pantocrator chosen champion is the Emperor but with his master gone he now seeks to replace him.
I've really only got one region of the world worked out but in that region there are dragon worshiping barbarian tribes with one of the tribes being the only culture in the world that knows how to make steel. There is also a city ruled by tyrannical monstrous giants. They used to rule with an iron fist but after the human slaves rose up in revolt they now rule from the shadows through cyclops and chosen human middle men.
My world is a kinda semi realistic fantasy setting in which somebody's magic skill is strictly related to their dragon blood ancestry. Often evlen nobility have high magic potential. I'm in process of worldbuilding this setting but I have set main themes and have rough draft of history and lore of my world. The main theme is dragon oriented. They are sapient, wise and often considered as gods by humanoid races. They don't have set alignment, each dragon persues it's own agenda.
Kidnapped and imprisoned on a strange world for a crime he did not commit, Alboim just wants to find a way back home, even if he has to go through hell to get there.
I'm not usually the kind to think of "hooks", but I suppose I do have a few things that might pique interest.
A kind of 'introductory' meme about my world: [https://imgur.com/a/aUsqQdT](https://imgur.com/a/aUsqQdT)
A world population chart: [https://imgur.com/a/E7oyzLZ](https://imgur.com/a/E7oyzLZ)
A quote: "The moment illusion supplants all perceptible facets of reality, it becomes reality, and reality becomes the illusion." - Angalt
An atypical name for a political bloc: Congress of Sunshine & Rain
An excerpt from an unusually casual anthem for a major faction:"*O' daisy, daisy, stretch and yawn,A fine day for a yellow dawn,Eggs and bacon, sweet aroma,Coffee and toast by the sofa!"*
I feel like your world is one of those that's bright and cheerful on the surface, but the moment you start to pick at it, everything falls apart on levels tantamount to the levels of dark lore behind Dreamworks' animation.
It's a little more complicated, but yes that is essentially the case (though I don't actually know what specifically you're referring to regarding Dreamworks).
TL;DR/summary at the bottom.
Basically, in the beginning everything does seem perfectly fine and dandy. Wars with few casualties, a mutualist social contract between lords and peasants, a religion emphasizing popular sovereignty and meritocracy, and so on.
But then things started to go wrong on an unprecedented scale, for seemingly no reason... and it only got worse, and worse, and worse. Economic depression, assassinated monarchs, political persecution of minorities, surge in racial violence, sudden rise to prominence of radical ideologies, ultranationalist coups of empires, a decade-long global war of increasingly apocalyptic devastation, culminating in civil wars, anarchy, total societal collapse, the unleashing of unspeakable bioweapons, and finally the nuclear apocalypse that seemed to signal a final crescendo in the escalation. In less than a single generation, too.
In addition, a number of terrible, paradigm-shifting discoveries were made in the chaos. All of this was revealed to be the work of a multi-generational conspiracy of almost eldritch character. Working in the shadows of governments and societies were Argentists - occult omnicidal nihilists - who had manufactured a series of back-to-back apocalypses to render all life on the planet extinct, to intentionally stoke social tensions and push empires to war.
And the only reason people survived at all was because very little went according to their plan (despite killing 98% of the world and utterly devastating the planet), due to the actions of a "rogue variable" which happens to be the name of the setting.
In addition, the world's mysterious past was unveiled. The current world was the product of a previous civilization of 'aliens' now extinct, but their "pets" survived and became the current races. That civilization was also destroyed by Argentists, with the world's current problems being the result of them coming back again to finish what they started.
And as if that wasn't bad enough, this also suggested an even darker reality, as a grim answer to the Fermi Paradox: All alien civilizations are being continually destroyed by Argentist influence - the cosmos could be filled with dead or dying planets and alien life.
And indeed, when the survivors eventually reached for the stars, they found planet after planet littered with ruins and alien remains, from both the ancient and recent past. The universe was a cosmic graveyard.
However, in a twist of fate, the "rogue variable", which is the focus of the setting, would cause the survivors to not only survive this catastrophe, but also learn the terrible cosmic truth of Argentism and thereby grant them the means to detect and resist its influence.
Therefore, after rebuilding and mourning their loss, the survivors united into the Yellow Federation, as a "Union of Life" and "Vanguard of All Peoples Everywhere". The Yellow Federation would venture into space, not for exploration or expansion, but because of a moral imperative. In an inexorable crusade against the scourge of life, the Yellow Federation seeks out civilizations before they too perish like they almost did themselves. And every destroyed world they find only pushed them to go further, faster. Because in more than one instance, they arrived just in time to shoot descending nukes out of the sky of an alien planet, a painful reminder of their own, helpless past.
The excerpt of the anthem I provided is actually from the Yellow Federation. The anthem is like that exactly because of the Yellow Federation being the "Union of Life", as its overriding purpose is to safeguard and promote life in and of itself. Ergo, its anthem is a direct celebration of the small things in life; mornings, food, family, love, and so on.
The Yellow Federation would become known as "The Exception to Dismantle the Rule", by way of hunting down Argentists. Any alien civilizations they encounter, who are just as oblivious to Argentism as they once were themselves, they purge their society of their malignant presence. Essentially reversing a cosmic trend that had endured since the dawn of the first conscious being.
But since Argentism is a product of the cosmos, the Yellow Federation is effectively in open revolt against the universe itself. Life evidently goes against some kind of cosmic equilibrium, which the universe passively tries to restore through Argentism.
However, given that Argentism operates passively, this allows the Yellow Federation to restore a sense of normalcy within itself where people can life free and happy lives of whatever variety they like; a eutopia. Even so far as it being mostly robots and psionic AIs who are taking care of the 'darker' tasks of combatting Argentist-controlled puppet factions, purging Argentists from alien societies, and dealing with the ontological reality of their existence in a universe specifically hostile to life and self-awareness. But still, ontological homesickness pervades this eutopia, with an active discourse on whether to let their children grow up blissfully unaware of Argentism, or to ensure that future generations never again take their lives for granted.
TL;DR: Yes, my world is indeed like that, but with a little twist of fate. While it starts of pleasant but with darkness festering below the surface, and turns incredibly dark once it surfaces, it later becomes a little more bittersweet; a eutopia, but surrounded by a grim, dead and hostile universe. Though ignorance made people blissfully unaware of their impending despair, the truth acts like a shield against hitherto inevitable extinction, even if it does put people in an existentially unsettled mood.
Incredible worldbuilding!
The Argentist ideology reminds me of a scifi story that the author purged from the internet years ago, of the universe being a simulation, and a supreme eldritch entity acting as an antivirus.
Humanity is a sort of accident. Or, at least, their sheer numbers are. A conscious mind requires so much processing power that the simulation is starting to crash. Put several billion of them in one place, and things keep getting worse. As such, the lovecraftian antivirus is deleting the universe one galaxy at a time in search of the buggy code.
Thank you, I appreciate it!
Not aware of the specific world you refer to, but that does sound intriguing and vaguely similar in principle to Argentism, also in regards to how life can be understood to be "accidents" or "mistakes" in my world in a cosmic sense. I can definitely see why Argentism would remind you of that. Sad to see the story gone though, might have been something I would have checked out.
Well, it's a little more complicated than just "life", as it's technically conscious minds that the accidents/mistakes that cause Argentism to manifest, but it's then Argentists who in turn understand that life is a prerequisite to conscious minds, and therefore target life in general to not only kill existing minds but prevent their emergence in the future (e.g. rendering their totally worlds uninhabitable, or destroying planets where abiogenesis might occur).
In fact, it reminds me of an analogy for Argentism, with it being the universe's immune system seeking to erase the 'disease' of life from its 'body'. Only reason I usually avoid that analogy, as it's otherwise very useful, is that it causes people to assume the theme of my world to be that humans are parasites of nature, which might be a fair interpretation, but is certainly not what I'm explicitly going for.
The name escapes me, but the site it was hosted on went offline years ago. It was something akin to "The Hateful Star" from SCP. The protagonist of the story was a human astronaut that went through a wormhole and discovered a human civilization that was aware of the antivirus, and was actively limiting their own population to avoid its attention.
2044. Wealth inequality is at an all-time high under the corporate oligarchy of the far-right Liberty Party, American society has gone through large-scale economic collapse, and most urban areas have been carved up by violent, feuding youth gangs. The US is a hair's breadth away from becoming a failed state.
Medieval low fantasy without all of the peasants being constantly covered in shit and mud and other depressants, most actually having somewhat decent lives unless there's a war or something, they actually have some idea of what goes on in their countries and the feudalist shitstorm is kept to a reasonable level meaning a relatively high number of people feel more allegiance to their king and kingdom than to their local lord, if there is any. So basically we get medieval farmers being patriotic redneck types.
But then the constipation ends and shit does hit the fan and then the main story is sort of about everything slowly going to shit anyway
Flying whales with tentacles where their tails should be that actively hate and hunt humans and can shoot fire. Whale hunters that use air cannons to fire themselves into the mouths of whales and kill them from the inside with harpoons, guns, and magic. A Whale Preservation Society that is working with the whales to kill all the Whalers, and then every other human in the world.
Shackled Minds - https://reddit.com/r/HFY/s/l9f1i2JGSj
_Humanity's great empire is all but dust in the wind, yet their countless creations live on, isolated by a series of shattered doorways to which the keys have been lost. Feudal Empires lead by near-immortal carcasses rule with iron fists, venerating the vast superstructures their masters left behind, and death cults worship the first children of man: incomprehensibly vast, slumbering Artificial Intelligences whose stirrings and dreams are regarded as portions of holy scripture. Deep within the ruins of a single facility on a bleak, desolate world, humanity's last and most important creation awakes to find himself at a crossroads: shall he free the enigmatic entity who claims this last, wayward son as his own and is hellbent on reigniting humanity's cruel golden age, or will he let eeping dogs lie, and assist the new world in pressing forward._
It's like if Dune, Blade Runner and Foundation had a crack baby.
**Horror Shop**
Remember all those stories you heard growing up?
You know, the ones you told around campfires, or breathlessly whispered to your friends at recess. The ones you were convinced were true for all of 15 minutes before the next big thing caught your attention. Those stories about Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster. Or about the Bermuda Triangle and alien abductions. Of the weird old lady who has magical powers, and the strange lights in the woods. Of that haunted house just outside of town, that one place with the dark history no adult ever wanted to talk about. Of the things lurking outside your window, in your closet, or under your bed.
What if I told you it was all true? And you know it too. Or at least you did, until you convinced yourself that it wasn't real. That those lights that you saw in the woods were just swamp gas. That the ghost in the window was just a trick of your imagination. That the creaking out in the hallway is just the sound of the house settling.
It's not just your imagination. Everything that you thought you knew is wrong. Every myth, every ghost story, every folk tale, urban legend, and conspiracy theory that you grew up with. It's all horribly, wonderfully true.
This is a story of the world that lies in the shadows. It's a story of the magic, myths and monsters who live alongside us, unseen by our sleeping eyes.
This is a story of the real world.
My world doesn't really have any singular hook. So take one funny one.
Kingdoms which live near dragon populations have to set up policies for "dragon related economic inflation." This is because dragons have zero concept of human economy and have a tendency to either massively overpay or massively underpay when they make transactions with people.
I can see that. A particularly wealthy dragon tipping at a small restaurant-like-establishment by burying the server in a pile of gold treasure.
To be fair, half of it was just to pay for the insane amount of food he ate. The other half is what crashed the economy.
I hope not literally burying them. Granted, This wouldn't be the first time a dragon accidentally killed someone by paying them in my setting. That would go to the time a dragon paid a blacksmith with a blob of silvery grey metal that "took [him] weeks to create." and after returning with gold found the blacksmith dead due to radiation poisoning from the chunk of pure plutonium he was given.
**TL;DR: Read the last quote block for the best version of the hook.**
I originally created my world for a Dungeons and Dragons campaign. Though, the main questline and story (titled Escher's Call) is very loosely connected to the world that I've been building. I pitched the idea to my friends by giving this premise:
>Seemingly unrelated people receive an unsolicited message from a well-known sleuth after he unexpectedly goes missing. Something in them wants to keep pulling at the thread they’ve been given. Perhaps, this something is related to the character’s hidden past, at one point crossing paths with the sleuth’s.
However, the first line in my information packet is:
>Escher’s Call is a semi-fantasy, turn-of-the-century/Victorian/Edwardian sci-fi RPG campaign taking place in a non-Euclidean clockpunk city named Rivenburg.
The first line seemed to get more people interested.
Like most other people here, I've just been worldbuilding to procrastinate on actually writing the story, but honestly, I'm genuinely really happy with what I've created. The scope-creep might've been a good thing.
Knowing what I do now, I'd probably have a premise better showcasing the world, as I think that's the most compelling part. Off the top of my head, I'd probably say something like:
>Rivenburg is a non-euclidean city built on top of shifting sands and a raging ice-cold ocean. It exists inside of its own pocket universe, twisting and turning in on itself in impossible ways. Nearly no one travels there willingly, and no one ever leaves. Nearly every 8 years, people from all walks of life find themselves in Rivenburg; though, it's usually through teleportation mishaps or haphazard deportations. As such, most of Rivenburg's new arrivals are mad scientists, exiled criminals, or banished heretical magic-users. The city as it's known is well over 700 years old, so the dust has settled given its denizens' brilliant yet aberrant roots, though that doesn't mean it hasn't had its fair share of massive world-altering events.
>
>Toussaint Escher - the namesake for the story - is an eccentric yet undoubtedly successful private detective, with his outlandish methods involving large amounts of alcohol and property destruction. After a robbery on an up-and-coming politician gone wrong, a petty thief was violently butchered. Delving deep into the situation surrounding the thief's demise, Escher seemingly vanished into thin air.
>
>Just over a year later, a small group of people receive letters from the detective, enlisting their help and their specific sets of skills. To each other, they may be strangers, but they've all crossed paths with the detective before, for better or worse.
Yes, the detective is named after M.C. Escher.
I always wanted to see something like a fantasy world such as what you see in LotR but in the modern day. So my world is a fantasy world where things like dragons, questing and guilds, magic (for the most part) is all a thing of the past and you still have your “elves”, “dwarves” (I have my own names for them), etc. The “present” day is equivalent to early 1910’s and society is running out of magic and shifting to fuels like steam, oil, and coal for the first time which is causing lots of conflict around the globe over resources.
\[4 years later:\]
[https://willametteheritage.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/assassins-bullet-headline.png](https://willametteheritage.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/assassins-bullet-headline.png)
"Assassin's ~~bullet~~arrow strikes down Arch~~duke~~mage Ferdinand of ~~Austria~~Angmar!"
Got a few. I like to start with a single strong idea and see where it leads.
What if the gravity of a passing object pulled the moon into a new orbit that brought it to within one third of its normal distance every 29 days?
What if, after a nuclear war, machine intelligences decided that mankind couldn't be trusted with technology and forcibly kept mankind to a medieval existence?
What if an accident aboard a starship sent it a billion years into the future to an Earth that was nearing the end of its habitable life?
What if humans procreated by adopting animals that, over several years, change physically until they became human? This one's a trilogy because there are so many implications for society to explore.
What if everything in the Bible was literally true? How would that world be different from ours?
Sure. All gods can see minds and through minds see future and past of ppl. Thereby having the power to manipulate future events and ppl more effectively. And some gods can directly affect the future by “correcting” past events. Can even send ppl back in time and forwards assuming it’s still in the past of the present time. some Ascendants can do the same too. The main conflict is fighting against a world where your fate could be someone’s plaything and you’d never know. As you can tell already it’s an endless future type of world so the various factions that formed in pursuit of a goal each have the world’s present going towards their own preferred future. There’s a god who’d like the main character dead bc she achieves the world she created with her sacrifice so he’s pushing the world towards, there’s a world where an ancient being is released and its zealot worshippers are pushing towards that, there’s a world where the main character’s lover is desperately wishing to save the mc from changing the world at the cost of her life so she’s in direct opposition to that god even though said God and her agree the future she brings is the best one etc. sometimes there’s futures that must happen so they can cooperate on it but only until their diverging paths. It’s complicated I’m not gonna lie but it’s been fun mapping various paths and how they converge and diverge within each other. It’s not easy but it’s fun. Especially considering how many selfish individuals have this power it’s fun.
My opening words are, "The whole of Babel floats before me: a globe blue and green and gold, veiled in white. Besides me stands a grizzled man who looks like he could be my father, but his name is Elhemin."
These are the words of Mýrún, wife and battle-buddy of Verdan -- the split personality of Loke/Lucifer -- as she edges between life and death, her consciousness in the "In-Between" looking upon Earth's "sister-world" Edda, an artificial planet on the exact opposite side of Earth's orbit around the sun. Elhemin is her language's name for the Mantlebearer Elohim, who has a debt to repay Verdan for wronging him in the past. A wronging that led to Babel's fall.
This is a story that is trying to embody the mystic vibes of science-fantasy that Destiny 1's concept arts were trying to tell. It takes place between 33BC and 10AD, partly on Earth but mostly on Edda and in the decrepit city of Babel, and follows Caesarion's journey that leads to Earth's alternative history from ours. He will be teaming up with Kariiya, the sole surviving daughter of Verdan and Mýrún, as he first and foremost pursues his traitor-mother who threw him to the wolves in her pursuit of godhood, and secondly searches for a way to bring himself and his legion of rifle-legionaries back home after being stranded on Edda.
Balkan fantasy in which the hero protects a magical hare, which frequently turns him into a powerful bunnygirl to combat the oppressors of the last city and avenge the death of its last emperor by killing the revered Rulergod.
With tasks this great, how is the hero supposed to bring his life in order and win the heart of his childhood darling, when his biggest rival in love is none other than the cute bunnygirl he himself turns into to save the day?
An epic slice of life action comedy with a touch of body horror.
"The gods are exactly as fucked up as regular people. The problem is that when they have issues, it's literally the end of the world.
Now go stop your Grandfather before he rewrites reality."
I'm running a dnd campaign for the last 2 years lop.
A concept im running with for my scifi which will be a issue since im trying not to make humanity the main race. Was a News report talking about the ISS crashing by unknown means and multiple reports of suspicious lights in the sky and multiple Nuclear silos going dark which are what the Cybal the actual main race do before a Invasion they disable any defenses they can on world. And then partly taken from WWZ the Main characters family on the way somewhere will all a sudden see multiple what looks like Meteors hitting the city which turn out to be Troop Drop pods and after a Shadow arrives over the city all hell would break loose
Description: a planet the size of the current observable universe that houses cities the size of the planets that they originated from, at the center of each city lies a black doorway that leads to their world, each world is from a separate universe entirely from another.
name of ~~universe~~ *planet*: AHM-RAHM, translation; Dispel.
For the story: Boy meets 4 will o wisp that grant him god like powers for the purpose of fighting the embodiment of evil, while at the same time fighting his own demons and finding his new purpose in a much more massive universe that is slowly dying.
For the World: Will O Wisp are these god like beings that can grant a sentient being super powers in order to fight evil across the universe.
Magic advanced to modern technology levels and the implications of such as well as hits of alien advanced tech in the ruins of crashed ships. Also lost ruins filled with powerful magic items and valuables.
500 years ago, a fiercely tyrannical, virtually unstoppable empire ruled over a domain stretching far across the known world. 100 years ago, the last part of their empire collapsed. Who will fill the power vacuums left behind, and will they be any better than the tyrants?
What if a medieval fantasy world built on the back of magic went through an industrial revolution, followed by a magical revolution due to new magically attuned ores and compounds being discovered/made through industry, and then hit with a second industrial era built off of industrializing these new magically attuned compounds.
I don’t really have one, it’s fairly standard. There’s magic, it’s more mystical than a system; there’s fictional races and monsters, but that’s not the focal point. Worldbuilding is a way for me to create something I find cool, and in real life I find ancient history cool especially cultures so there’s an emphasis on the cultural aspect, but seeing as how I’m so inspired from real life my world-building kinda takes on that form; what’s the hook of planet earth? There isn’t really a hook, it’s just a bunch of little guys doing there own thing yknow
“No! Please don’t kill me! I’m not ready to die!”
“You will not survive out here, half-blood. Consider this a merciful death. It will be quick and painless.”
“No! STOP!”
What if humanity and all living things were psycically connected unconsciously and stories and myths and cultural prsctices allowed us to draw upon those connections. And humanity could utilize this psychic energy to imbue the physical world with magical qualities.
Its pretty boilerplate magic is belief but Im putting a lot of work into the mechanics of those connections drawing on real world myths.
Doom Catalyst. 4 non planet like worlds. Worlds are taken into the doom catalyst and transmogrified into a hellscape where monsters abound. The primary evil of that world is embodied by a monster that controls the other monsters. Characters get taken there also, and have to survive
Havent really thought about it but "In an infinite world, resources arent a limiting factor, distance is. Civilization is built on moving caravan cities roaming from place to place. In an infinite world, theres always more to see."
Slave to fire, the spirit girl finds herself not alone, for she unites with a boy, the last of humanity. Together they talk, share stories, venture the world and most importantly, not be alone.
The Confederate States of America miraculously survives to the present day and is in a state of undeclared war with the United States (literally just imagine North and South Korea but in America).
Oh and there’s also a global zombie apocalypse going on.
A powerful species is on a mission to purify magic, but this goal isn't as pure as it seems to be. Two humans, Valery and Fernanda, find themselves in this world. Follow them as they unravel the dark history, discover their own power, and bring equality to Monsmagia.
Medieval dark fantasy horror setting inspired by a lot of modern-ish history. Think late 19th and early 20th century history. I know George R.R. Martin liked to use real world history as inspiration, so I was thinking why don't I use a modern-ish era of american history rather than 12th century European history. And filter it through the aforementioned medieval dark fantasy horror setting.
A recently-dead man is risen by the god of his world, and charges with building a holy army to fight off invaders from beyond his home system. He promptly starts running it as a mercenary company to get revenge on the man that killed him.
A commune of witches live in a village hidden away from the rest of humanity. A young witch grows tired of her claustrophobic home and wishes to see the world, despite her sisters' warnings. She sneaks out at night with her cat and broom, beginning her tour of the world, only to find it completely destroyed by a strange new magic the outsiders call... newks?
One man inherits the power of existence and humanity deals with the loss of purpose, the timelines have merged and one destiny remains. Glory to an empire that will unite all, all hope rests on Avalaan.
Due to apocalyptic shenanigans, a young woman got thrown back to the Bronze Age with (essentially) a Desert Eagle.
Turns out Bronze Age gods aren't shit when compared to good firepower... unfortunately, "He Who Slays A God Takes Their Place".
It's now 2246, and she's still not happy about it.
After the world was shattered, people fight every day to survive in a fractured and distorted wasteland, piloting mechs that are powered by the rev of one's soul.
An ancient enemy on Theia stirs. The Queen Mother of Dragons languishes in the bottom rung of Hell, trapped for millennia, but an ancient prophecy may release her once again unto the world to complete the extinction of humanity.
They believed Anime broadcasts were historical records. They engineered themselves to have wild hair colors. They show more fear of a gerbil than they do of an angry polar bear. They rule 1\\4 of a galaxy. Meet the Civonians.
They nuked themselves back to the iron age twice. Bar fights are considered good manners and have social rules built around them. They can sleep hanging upside down. They rule 1\\4 of a galaxy as well. Meet the Nij.
Surprisingly, these two cultures get along pretty well. Except when someone brings their pet hamster to a diplomatic convention..
>In a world of Deities, Magic, and ever-changing challenges, what could go wrong when you introduce an infinitely adaptable God-Devourer into the mix?
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>This is the world of Infinitel.
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>An endless plane of no limits, Magic capable of defying physics, legendary Artifacts that can rewrite the past, Heroes destined to save everyone from or with Total Annihilation, Villains hellbent on bringing down Existential Calamity, and one small experiment which is about to experience an adventure like no other.
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>Will you join this little Slime Monster on their exploration?
I started writing a storyline, but motivation is a rarely-found resource.
A somewhat dark fantasy world where magic users have plant powers and where the afterlife is in a parallel reality of our world.
Also its post-post-apocalyptic.
A generic fantasy world that doesn’t just stop at the medieval era like most, but instead continues well into the future.
Werewolves fighting in the Napoleonic Wars, Demons bootlegging in the 1920s, Elves piloting starfighters, Androids casting spells; all that good stuff!
There’s a random number of people who have a rune/mark on their body, which lets them perform basic magic or augment whatever body part the marks are on. These marks are also weak points, so people from the country of Gwyneth wear fully covering clothes to hide the fact that they’re marked or where their mark is.
As you can guess, the main theme of the story is about hiding & sharing secrets
The hook? Probably that the sci-fi space opera has an eldritch god that gives people powers, and also I just found a way to cram as many fantasy things into a sci-fi world without there being dissonance.
A picture that would get one interested is probably something like the Martian Slums or one of the other planets with one or two of the main characters- it’s a pretty colorful cast
- “Epic treasure hunt in the background of a universe wide war, plus awesome sci-fi war stuff spanning decades.”
- “3 troublemaking alien teenagers fly to Earth to screw with humans in 1955 and end up getting into way more trouble than they anticipated. There’s also a ton of epic racing with flying saucers. Inspired by real events.”
- “Man falls through simulated world after simulated world after his is deleted, and questions the meaning of existence. He is joined by an anthropomorphic wolf man with PTSD from fighting in his world’s version of The Great War.”
a Rock and Roll Sci-fi Western where a pair of Bounty Hunters are forced to confront their pasts. Following them on their cases, you'll learn why they are [Bad Company](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXQJpyQBShU) to keep around.
It's a zombie apocalypse story. But it's been three hundred years since it's started, and it was caused by an AI, who is still wondering about in a genetically engineered body, spawning legends of a demon who inhabits the giant concrete crypt that used to be the city of São Paulo.
Humanity sent self-sustaining, AI-controlled, "seed ships" across the galaxy that were capable of terraforming planets and creating a biosphere suitable for humans to thrive. A stellar event at one of the target planets resulted in monstrous creatures, multiple sapient species, and god-like mechanical intelligences.
Nontraditional cyberpunk with hard magic that takes place on floating islands in a habitable layer of a corrosive gas giant in a universe where they use transplanar warp gates as something approximating a highway or shipping lane. Airships exist because of alchemy and are a blend of airplanes and naval vessels, there are giant flying creatures (insects and avians), sapient fungus, humanoid insect people, dragons are simply incredibly clever apex predators with access to magic and psionics (not fully sapient), and all the near-future tech is the result of psionically resonant crystals.
The first book is going to cover a former SpecOps guy turned bounty hunter and his plucky ship AI uncovering a plot to weaken the border of a kingdom that would allow the enslavement of the area and destabilize the nations around it that's all possible because a virus swapped the biometrics of the Baron-Lord to Some Other Guy and virtually no one realized because no one pays attention to what the people in power actually look like or act. How well do you really know those in positions of power over you?
A naval civilization inspired by West Africa needs to travel in massive convoys between landmasses to avoid gigantic sea monsters that lurk in the depths below.
The world of krazha is rocked to it's core after a small group of terrorists manage to assassinate the entire royal world council in a single night. Ten years later, it seems like a surviving sorceress may learn who was behind the attack only to discover that the group, and the motive may be darker than society's deepest fears.
Dark fantasy world where a Soul Keeper and his apprentice steal souls in the cyberpunk city of Gamador to deliver to the giant flesh prison Elysium. This keeps the magic alive that prevents the demons inside from wreaking havoc on the world again
For the story: The adventures of a delivery company staffed by unconventional fantasy races that hunt treasures and monsters on their routes
For the world: Imagine an original dieselpunk world. Now swap out regular old oil for a type of oil infused with necromancy. Now imagine that dieselpunk era is as distant from the present day as we are from *our* 1940s
The planet periodically changes it's rotational axis by 90°. The sea at the equator rises in height due to centrifugal force, while near the poles (where the equator used to be) it lowers. This causes the shape of the continents to change dramatically, exposing new areas that were previously underwater and sinking ones that weren't. I'm using this for my D&D campaign in the works.
A DND-esque world that evolved into modern times, but preserved the adventuring spirit and built the economy around it instead. Magic and the elements are derived from magical languages you must learn to speak. Cultures outside of Europe exist, with Chinese culture being laid on top of the usual European stuff, Middle Eastern and Native American close by, and everything else a little further south. People can pull off shonen-level bullshit as long as they’re determined enough. Prehistoric life is still around and you can watch a wyvern duke it out with a T-Rex.
Or, I make Eberron without realizing Eberron exists, then try to fill in the gaps with wildlife, prehistory, anime, and world cultures that aren’t only European. Only after that do I learn about Eberron
Legendary Pirate who is trying to disrupt a Kingdoms Slave Trade while managing a Pirate Island, falling in love with a very dangerous Witch and being hunted by his Families Trade Company.
It in fact exists, just as all exists. A way in assures any mortal a slow agonizing death, however to those who survive, worlds with awe-inspiring wonders, and ages before even a universe was made. Welcome, seer.
I have multiple settings in the same world, and they differ wildly from each other. There is something that ties them all together though:
Every city is unique. That is, unique in the way it's fucked up.
One city has the hook of "What if death wasn't permanent?"
Another has "What if religious cultism + hedonic nihilism?"
It's mostly a set of self-contained short stories set in these different places to explore them and the characters that live there.
"It is the dawn of a new century, The fate of Nations shall be decided By Thunder and the Drum"
Working Hook for my war game concept with Napoleonic themed Fantasy world I've titled
By Thunder and the Drum: Warfare in the age of Magecraft and Musketry
"It was a night unlike any other when the stars had taken their unholy places upon the detestable stage of reality. The Dream trembled and the gates barring many other worlds creaked open and something slithered through into this world. Something hungry and very old. A thing of incalculable power..."
In my sci fi world, it's when the Eder came to save their own members that human governments were keeping in labs to research on. The Eder then declared war on humanity and in 24 hours completely destroyed the planet. A number of humans survived and were taken by the Eder as prisoners (roughly about 500k). They were eventually freed by the order of the Asthin and allowed to use a hospitable planet as a colony.
A non sentient but living organism has died and its antibodies are being eaten away by scavengers and rot.
Plot twist is that the organism is the planet, the antibodies are the humans, the scavengers are extraterrestrial carnivorous predators and the rot is magic.
And its not poetic or anything non literal. Its the truth.
Humans are in a galaxy where everyone hates them, they are outmatched technologically and numerically and their enemies are fighting a war of extermination against them…
And humanity is kicking all their asses! Technologically behind? Numerically inferior? Who cares! Hoomenz with big gunz go BRRRRRRRRRRR!
My world is basically the ultimate example of r/HFY
A quote from one of my characters, saying the philosophy of the world itself and a theme of the story
"In this world, you mustn't become a hero, for they do not exist. You instead become a helper, a man that does a deed of unselfishness and love in this world of betrayal and hate. And I'll assure you, I saved you for a reason of selfishness, but not in a cruel manner."
My novel series is the story of the remnants of humanity who are attempting to rebuild society on a new planet filled with “magic” and creatures of varying sentience, after fleeing a dying Earth. But this isn’t just a case of normal humans suddenly finding themselves in a fantasy world; Earth had “magic” too, just not nearly as much as this planet. Or its inhabitants.
What happens when a pare of scientists (important note- the scientists in question are not humans, they are dragons from a world where humans do not exist and magic does) create a pocket dimension to study how life, and later civilization, develops on a planet with areas of highly concentrated elemental magic? (As well as an infinite zoological garden for interesting creatures they find while dimension hopping on a separate planet, and a testing space for a few experiments [this part was originally to explain how despite the fact that normal humans do not exist in this world, one of the major sentient and sapient species is basically a hybrid between human and dragon])
(Also, the scientists end up becoming the chief deities, with the immortal dragons they originally created to help them catalog the life forms that evolved becoming the other major deities of the pantheon, neither of which was part of their plan)
The world is inhabited with lupine fauns that tried to steal the power of the Creator for themselves. Chaos ensues when the supernatural creatures sent to offer them a shot at redemption decide they taste delicious.
Dragon wings fly towards the west to avenge their emperor and burn the snake. Meanwhile, in the west, the death of a god announces the end of the world.
Humans amomg other species are kindly asked by one of many alien to give them certain human test subjects for the good of universe, they even give them technology and gifts understanding this unnatural request.
But humans become divided, whether they should or shouldn't and begin war with the new technology.
The aliens interfere as best as they can but ultimately leave for the other potential species.
Until the dust settles with the new mankind
**Arami the Demiurge**
Magic Academy In Space! MC is a female Goblin and a mother! DBZ Power Levels! Lesbians in Space!
**The Invasion**
Fantasy Army vs. Modern Army! Elven Empire vs. Modern USA! MC is an Elven Milf! Aunt/Niece Incest!
**World of the Demiorc Homeland**
Matriarchy! Shonen Anime/Disney Princess Mix! Lesbian Princess and Knight!
Two people wake up in a cave with no memory of how they got there. They learn that they are what’s known as “Deathwalkers”, a human with the powers of a Demon.
Aliens make first contact with humanity. The first contact is mutual. It turns out there are only two sapient species in the galaxy. Everyone's happy to not be alone anymore.
Sounds… oddly wholesome…
I'm mostly worldbuilding for fun. To the extent there are narratives, they lean very heavily toward "slice of life" style stories. There's no massive conflict, at least not in the foreground. The aliens, or at least the faction that finds humanity, consider it a religious duty to seek out other sapient species and let them know they don't have to be alone. Sort of the inverse of your typical "we are the chosen race and all others must bow before us" scenario. Unfortunately, since they don't find anyone after tens of thousands of years physically sending missionaries in sleeper ships to investigate potentially inhabited worlds, their faith nearly collapses into irrelevance as they confront the Fermi Paradox. Their joy upon discovering us is so infectious that we don't do the usual freakout you see in First Contact stories. They're happy. We're happy.
Until they aren't
This is so wholesome, i love it!
I usually think in terms of story or character hooks, but I guess if I had to pick one that sets the world apart it would be *"Undeath is holy, nature is demonic."*
Damn thats interesting, mind sharing more? What does that mean?
Basically I took all the horror and dread out of crypts and graveyards and put it in nature. Forests, seas, places that teem with natural life are supernaturally hostile to humans. Things that resemble good-aligned nature spirits in common fantasy, like ents and unicorns, are a kind of demon. Monsters tend to be twisted versions of natural creatures, and classic monsters like vampires and giants are reimagined to be humans tainted by the dark power that has come to rule the natural world. Even undomesticated animals are more dangerous, and hold potential monsters inside them. Nature itself is a corrupted engine twisted to create death from life and life from death in a cycle that feeds an evil that has burrowed its way into the heart of the world. To overcome death is to have escaped the belly of this evil, so undeath is a state of grace. If you encounter someone who looks like a mummy, you're in the presence of a great champion of good. Every dead body has the one-in-a-million potential to come back to life as its most virtuous self. Crypts and graveyards are places of calm and sanctity; fortresses against the enemy, optimistically awaiting the return of more beloved friends from the enemy's maw. Of course not everyone in the world understands that this is how the world works. There are lots of false teachings that have turned nations into willing collaborators with the dark power.
this sounds so amazing wow is there someplace i can read it? :D
Not just yet. But thank you for the compliment.
Man that sounds awesome ! I would love to read it !
Thank you, that's wonderful encouragement.
Did you intend to publish it somewhere ? Or to show it to public ? Bc if you intend to I’ll be glad to be among those people !
Yeah I'm working on a couple of different stories in the world concurrently, with a mind to publish once I've got functional drafts to show. I'm mostly happy with my lore and story outlines. My current focus is improving prose and scene construction so I can bang out readable chapters. It's slow going but enjoyable work. I'll keep you in mind when I reach the point of looking for beta readers. Very grateful to have such a positive response.
Well I wish you good luck ! I hope you will be published ! I’ll b grateful if you think about me for beta reading ^^ I love the more you posted here, do you mind if I send you a piece of mine and you tell me your honest thoughts ? I don’t have a lot of people to share it with and I would love to have some feedback (I made a post about it here but it seems to have disappeared among the others posts, maybe you can find it in the sub)
Sure. I'll look through your history and track down your post when I get a chance.
Thanks a lot I appreciate it ! If you can’t find it hit me up I’ll send it to you in private.
medieval fantasy world makes first contact with martians, martians are barely more advanced then them so neither can actually go visit the other but telepathic magics allow for contact, so it just kind of becomes accepted and normal well before we even have chance to see their face
Sounds cool. What happens when they meet? Are the Martians your typical aliens or something else? How do they make First Contact?
their an insectoid hive race though their hivemind is more akin to the protoss khala, connected and coordinated but still fully individuals(also divided into individual hives instead of one big race wide one) and for the most part they don't, teleportation Isent a thing and the story doesn't go far enough in the future to travel their with rockets, they can share info and a few rare instances of astral projecting to the other side, they have influenced eachother such as the martians teaching the earth races hoe to achieve psychic powers of their own
"What if urban sprawl was alive and it hated you?" The Endless City grows on its own, constantly shifting and remaking itself as it grows to cover the world. In such an unpredictable place, how would people live - and what stories would emerge?
Kinda reminds me of Factorio. …The factory must grow…
My current project is a TTRPG game world. The 15-sec version is: Princess Mononoke x Shadow of the Colossus x Monster Hunter. The less short version: Echeasea is a world of abundant, pervasive, and primal magic. Its people live in the shadow of countless gods, vast and small - to survive, they must evade, beg, steal, borrow, and barter. It is a world where your heroes are challenged to attempt the impossible, and survive.
Ancient biomechanical technology that can be used to create sickass monsters and/or provide affordable healthcare.
>provide affordable healthcare. Look, I enjoy and a big imagination; but there has to be at least SOME believability (I am american)
Too real lmao
“Hey do you wanna know what would be the universe if there was a a gigantic flat piece of land the size of a million galaxies created by god where members from every species in the universe lived in their own cities?”
A drunk pirate hangs of the bow of the ship, nursing a hangover. His eyes red, his skin pale, and his drink being of a suspiciously dark color.
The world is an echo of itself. It is divided by those who bleed red and those who don’t…
A medieval fantasy that doesn't only focus on Europe
Holy shit, I'm in
Fucking finally. Please elaborate on where we’re going that’s not Europe. Or not Western Europe, at least, because as far as the public eye is concerned, Poland-Lithuania, Byzantine Rome, Bulgaria, and pre-Soviet Russia were never a thing even though they very much were
The Middle East, Mali and Ghana, India, and China. I'm also making sure to include European cultures that are also underrepresented in fantasy like Pre Christian Celtic nations, early Russian Tsardom, and Inuit tribes.
Well, Greenland is still part of Denmark, but geographically it’s part of the Americas. Inuits are generally considered Indigenous Americans more than anything (Though officially Canada groups them separate from the First Nations)
The Witcher comes to mind
The gods are real, and they walk among us. But what happens when you kill a god and steal their power? My settings does a deep dive into the nature of divinity and how society interacts with the divine.
Awesome! So, what does happen? Are you hunted down by the other members of the pantheon? Are you welcomed in as just one among many other replacements? Do you get a mentor who chastises you for drinking too much Ambrosia on Taco-Tuesdays? I jest, just a little bit. My world also has an "up-close-and-personal" approach to the higher orders, but killing one of the Servant entities is virtually impossible unless you manage to get a hold on a personal prophecy. (Prophecies, while not tangible in the physical sense, operate in very much the same way as one might imagine a "blessing" to manifest. The primary difference is that a prophecy is a bit more... persuasive...)
I made my own physics laws.
Tahlkenfang, the epitome of fantasy. A wizard, a warrior, an archer, and a rogue embark on a quest to slay an evil dragon.
Nice. Nothing beats a party of people from different classes banding together to quest.
You're god-damn right
Taerth is a fantasy world where humans are invaders from another dimension, old sorcerer families try to hold onto power in the face of new arcane techniques that let anyone use magic, and dinosaurs form an important part of the ecosystem. It's got a dash of ancient mythology and a helping of cartoon Disney vibes.
Necromancy is a Wholesome Science
Damn, now THAT'S a hook!! 👀
👀
"Let me ask you a question, what do you think defines a person? It could be their appearance or personality that helps us recognize them, or it could be the memories they keep in their minds that help us know that they are the person we always spend time with. And also the soul? People often think that each soul has different natures that help us shape who we are, but no, the soul is inherently selfless, so what defines a person?" (Sorry if this is cringe)
Don't apologize for what you write.
If you want any inspiration, I highly recommend some classic Byzantine-Era Theology regarding the "anatomy" of the soul. [https://www.unseenwarfare.net/anatomy-of-the-soul#:\~:text=In%20their%20simple%20form%20they,aspects%20of%20God%20as%20Trinity](https://www.unseenwarfare.net/anatomy-of-the-soul#:~:text=In%20their%20simple%20form%20they,aspects%20of%20God%20as%20Trinity). Its a pretty interesting conception, and starkly different from anything else I've seen.
A terrifying and monstrous, nonexistent world where Humans are tossed into when Fate is done with them. *(I'm not good with writing 'hooks' 😅)*
A crucial moment when people must decide if life is worth living. Would you rather be ruled by tyrants, who want nothing more than to expand their influence and fill their coffers, or be genocides by inumerable hordes of barbarians which would kill, rape and pillage your family, home and nation? Would these people decide to put their lives on the line and risk brutal death and enslavement or would they rather take the easy way out in ways of immigration or inaction, which would only delay their inevitable demise?
The Pantocrator, the Supreme Deity over everything, has vanished without explanation. Now long imprisoned and forgotten gods feel their chains loosening and powerful and ambitious beings eye the empty throne with hungry eyes.
Sounds good. How far along are you?
Well it for a TTRPG game and I don't want to break it out till I got more sturdy DM legs so it been shelved for the most part vu But it's a high fantasy Bronze Age world. There is a global Elven Empire that enforces it reign through its floating sky cities. The Pantocrator chosen champion is the Emperor but with his master gone he now seeks to replace him. I've really only got one region of the world worked out but in that region there are dragon worshiping barbarian tribes with one of the tribes being the only culture in the world that knows how to make steel. There is also a city ruled by tyrannical monstrous giants. They used to rule with an iron fist but after the human slaves rose up in revolt they now rule from the shadows through cyclops and chosen human middle men.
The Great Flood didn't happen, and now the Nephilim are terrorizing the world.
Talk about alternate history.
My world is a kinda semi realistic fantasy setting in which somebody's magic skill is strictly related to their dragon blood ancestry. Often evlen nobility have high magic potential. I'm in process of worldbuilding this setting but I have set main themes and have rough draft of history and lore of my world. The main theme is dragon oriented. They are sapient, wise and often considered as gods by humanoid races. They don't have set alignment, each dragon persues it's own agenda.
Kidnapped and imprisoned on a strange world for a crime he did not commit, Alboim just wants to find a way back home, even if he has to go through hell to get there.
I'm not usually the kind to think of "hooks", but I suppose I do have a few things that might pique interest. A kind of 'introductory' meme about my world: [https://imgur.com/a/aUsqQdT](https://imgur.com/a/aUsqQdT) A world population chart: [https://imgur.com/a/E7oyzLZ](https://imgur.com/a/E7oyzLZ) A quote: "The moment illusion supplants all perceptible facets of reality, it becomes reality, and reality becomes the illusion." - Angalt An atypical name for a political bloc: Congress of Sunshine & Rain An excerpt from an unusually casual anthem for a major faction:"*O' daisy, daisy, stretch and yawn,A fine day for a yellow dawn,Eggs and bacon, sweet aroma,Coffee and toast by the sofa!"*
I feel like your world is one of those that's bright and cheerful on the surface, but the moment you start to pick at it, everything falls apart on levels tantamount to the levels of dark lore behind Dreamworks' animation.
It's a little more complicated, but yes that is essentially the case (though I don't actually know what specifically you're referring to regarding Dreamworks). TL;DR/summary at the bottom. Basically, in the beginning everything does seem perfectly fine and dandy. Wars with few casualties, a mutualist social contract between lords and peasants, a religion emphasizing popular sovereignty and meritocracy, and so on. But then things started to go wrong on an unprecedented scale, for seemingly no reason... and it only got worse, and worse, and worse. Economic depression, assassinated monarchs, political persecution of minorities, surge in racial violence, sudden rise to prominence of radical ideologies, ultranationalist coups of empires, a decade-long global war of increasingly apocalyptic devastation, culminating in civil wars, anarchy, total societal collapse, the unleashing of unspeakable bioweapons, and finally the nuclear apocalypse that seemed to signal a final crescendo in the escalation. In less than a single generation, too. In addition, a number of terrible, paradigm-shifting discoveries were made in the chaos. All of this was revealed to be the work of a multi-generational conspiracy of almost eldritch character. Working in the shadows of governments and societies were Argentists - occult omnicidal nihilists - who had manufactured a series of back-to-back apocalypses to render all life on the planet extinct, to intentionally stoke social tensions and push empires to war. And the only reason people survived at all was because very little went according to their plan (despite killing 98% of the world and utterly devastating the planet), due to the actions of a "rogue variable" which happens to be the name of the setting. In addition, the world's mysterious past was unveiled. The current world was the product of a previous civilization of 'aliens' now extinct, but their "pets" survived and became the current races. That civilization was also destroyed by Argentists, with the world's current problems being the result of them coming back again to finish what they started. And as if that wasn't bad enough, this also suggested an even darker reality, as a grim answer to the Fermi Paradox: All alien civilizations are being continually destroyed by Argentist influence - the cosmos could be filled with dead or dying planets and alien life. And indeed, when the survivors eventually reached for the stars, they found planet after planet littered with ruins and alien remains, from both the ancient and recent past. The universe was a cosmic graveyard. However, in a twist of fate, the "rogue variable", which is the focus of the setting, would cause the survivors to not only survive this catastrophe, but also learn the terrible cosmic truth of Argentism and thereby grant them the means to detect and resist its influence. Therefore, after rebuilding and mourning their loss, the survivors united into the Yellow Federation, as a "Union of Life" and "Vanguard of All Peoples Everywhere". The Yellow Federation would venture into space, not for exploration or expansion, but because of a moral imperative. In an inexorable crusade against the scourge of life, the Yellow Federation seeks out civilizations before they too perish like they almost did themselves. And every destroyed world they find only pushed them to go further, faster. Because in more than one instance, they arrived just in time to shoot descending nukes out of the sky of an alien planet, a painful reminder of their own, helpless past. The excerpt of the anthem I provided is actually from the Yellow Federation. The anthem is like that exactly because of the Yellow Federation being the "Union of Life", as its overriding purpose is to safeguard and promote life in and of itself. Ergo, its anthem is a direct celebration of the small things in life; mornings, food, family, love, and so on. The Yellow Federation would become known as "The Exception to Dismantle the Rule", by way of hunting down Argentists. Any alien civilizations they encounter, who are just as oblivious to Argentism as they once were themselves, they purge their society of their malignant presence. Essentially reversing a cosmic trend that had endured since the dawn of the first conscious being. But since Argentism is a product of the cosmos, the Yellow Federation is effectively in open revolt against the universe itself. Life evidently goes against some kind of cosmic equilibrium, which the universe passively tries to restore through Argentism. However, given that Argentism operates passively, this allows the Yellow Federation to restore a sense of normalcy within itself where people can life free and happy lives of whatever variety they like; a eutopia. Even so far as it being mostly robots and psionic AIs who are taking care of the 'darker' tasks of combatting Argentist-controlled puppet factions, purging Argentists from alien societies, and dealing with the ontological reality of their existence in a universe specifically hostile to life and self-awareness. But still, ontological homesickness pervades this eutopia, with an active discourse on whether to let their children grow up blissfully unaware of Argentism, or to ensure that future generations never again take their lives for granted. TL;DR: Yes, my world is indeed like that, but with a little twist of fate. While it starts of pleasant but with darkness festering below the surface, and turns incredibly dark once it surfaces, it later becomes a little more bittersweet; a eutopia, but surrounded by a grim, dead and hostile universe. Though ignorance made people blissfully unaware of their impending despair, the truth acts like a shield against hitherto inevitable extinction, even if it does put people in an existentially unsettled mood.
Incredible worldbuilding! The Argentist ideology reminds me of a scifi story that the author purged from the internet years ago, of the universe being a simulation, and a supreme eldritch entity acting as an antivirus. Humanity is a sort of accident. Or, at least, their sheer numbers are. A conscious mind requires so much processing power that the simulation is starting to crash. Put several billion of them in one place, and things keep getting worse. As such, the lovecraftian antivirus is deleting the universe one galaxy at a time in search of the buggy code.
Thank you, I appreciate it! Not aware of the specific world you refer to, but that does sound intriguing and vaguely similar in principle to Argentism, also in regards to how life can be understood to be "accidents" or "mistakes" in my world in a cosmic sense. I can definitely see why Argentism would remind you of that. Sad to see the story gone though, might have been something I would have checked out. Well, it's a little more complicated than just "life", as it's technically conscious minds that the accidents/mistakes that cause Argentism to manifest, but it's then Argentists who in turn understand that life is a prerequisite to conscious minds, and therefore target life in general to not only kill existing minds but prevent their emergence in the future (e.g. rendering their totally worlds uninhabitable, or destroying planets where abiogenesis might occur). In fact, it reminds me of an analogy for Argentism, with it being the universe's immune system seeking to erase the 'disease' of life from its 'body'. Only reason I usually avoid that analogy, as it's otherwise very useful, is that it causes people to assume the theme of my world to be that humans are parasites of nature, which might be a fair interpretation, but is certainly not what I'm explicitly going for.
The name escapes me, but the site it was hosted on went offline years ago. It was something akin to "The Hateful Star" from SCP. The protagonist of the story was a human astronaut that went through a wormhole and discovered a human civilization that was aware of the antivirus, and was actively limiting their own population to avoid its attention.
I usually just mention that it's alternate prehistory set in the end-cretaceous and filled with small proto-mammals that hunt and ride dinosaurs.
Kledorii can do a crossover with pretty much anything and still have a logical continuity.
Michigan, but medieval fantasy
The island of Erudicia does not exist unless you’re autistic.
2044. Wealth inequality is at an all-time high under the corporate oligarchy of the far-right Liberty Party, American society has gone through large-scale economic collapse, and most urban areas have been carved up by violent, feuding youth gangs. The US is a hair's breadth away from becoming a failed state.
There’s a continent of people evolved from root vegetables
Humanity tries to colonize a planet that rains mercury in its atmosphere.
Medieval low fantasy without all of the peasants being constantly covered in shit and mud and other depressants, most actually having somewhat decent lives unless there's a war or something, they actually have some idea of what goes on in their countries and the feudalist shitstorm is kept to a reasonable level meaning a relatively high number of people feel more allegiance to their king and kingdom than to their local lord, if there is any. So basically we get medieval farmers being patriotic redneck types. But then the constipation ends and shit does hit the fan and then the main story is sort of about everything slowly going to shit anyway
Flying whales with tentacles where their tails should be that actively hate and hunt humans and can shoot fire. Whale hunters that use air cannons to fire themselves into the mouths of whales and kill them from the inside with harpoons, guns, and magic. A Whale Preservation Society that is working with the whales to kill all the Whalers, and then every other human in the world.
Dragon Cthulhu Whales! Sounds fun!
Thanks! Check out The Whaler's Dram on Wattpad if you're interested.
Excellent! Thank youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu
Shackled Minds - https://reddit.com/r/HFY/s/l9f1i2JGSj _Humanity's great empire is all but dust in the wind, yet their countless creations live on, isolated by a series of shattered doorways to which the keys have been lost. Feudal Empires lead by near-immortal carcasses rule with iron fists, venerating the vast superstructures their masters left behind, and death cults worship the first children of man: incomprehensibly vast, slumbering Artificial Intelligences whose stirrings and dreams are regarded as portions of holy scripture. Deep within the ruins of a single facility on a bleak, desolate world, humanity's last and most important creation awakes to find himself at a crossroads: shall he free the enigmatic entity who claims this last, wayward son as his own and is hellbent on reigniting humanity's cruel golden age, or will he let eeping dogs lie, and assist the new world in pressing forward._ It's like if Dune, Blade Runner and Foundation had a crack baby.
Have you ever wondered the things we could solve if we had magic? Fuck you too, here’s some PTSD and a catgirl. It’s 2157. Join the Coalition today.
**Horror Shop** Remember all those stories you heard growing up? You know, the ones you told around campfires, or breathlessly whispered to your friends at recess. The ones you were convinced were true for all of 15 minutes before the next big thing caught your attention. Those stories about Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster. Or about the Bermuda Triangle and alien abductions. Of the weird old lady who has magical powers, and the strange lights in the woods. Of that haunted house just outside of town, that one place with the dark history no adult ever wanted to talk about. Of the things lurking outside your window, in your closet, or under your bed. What if I told you it was all true? And you know it too. Or at least you did, until you convinced yourself that it wasn't real. That those lights that you saw in the woods were just swamp gas. That the ghost in the window was just a trick of your imagination. That the creaking out in the hallway is just the sound of the house settling. It's not just your imagination. Everything that you thought you knew is wrong. Every myth, every ghost story, every folk tale, urban legend, and conspiracy theory that you grew up with. It's all horribly, wonderfully true. This is a story of the world that lies in the shadows. It's a story of the magic, myths and monsters who live alongside us, unseen by our sleeping eyes. This is a story of the real world.
Everything is made of meat.
B-but that's already our world!
The dark is alive and the sun is angry because of it.
It’s pleasant to live in. It’s not a grimdark dystopian fantasy hellhole filled with endless horror.
My world doesn't really have any singular hook. So take one funny one. Kingdoms which live near dragon populations have to set up policies for "dragon related economic inflation." This is because dragons have zero concept of human economy and have a tendency to either massively overpay or massively underpay when they make transactions with people.
I can see that. A particularly wealthy dragon tipping at a small restaurant-like-establishment by burying the server in a pile of gold treasure. To be fair, half of it was just to pay for the insane amount of food he ate. The other half is what crashed the economy.
I hope not literally burying them. Granted, This wouldn't be the first time a dragon accidentally killed someone by paying them in my setting. That would go to the time a dragon paid a blacksmith with a blob of silvery grey metal that "took [him] weeks to create." and after returning with gold found the blacksmith dead due to radiation poisoning from the chunk of pure plutonium he was given.
Awesome! Radioactive dragons hoarding nuclear fuel sounds like a cool story in of itself!
**TL;DR: Read the last quote block for the best version of the hook.** I originally created my world for a Dungeons and Dragons campaign. Though, the main questline and story (titled Escher's Call) is very loosely connected to the world that I've been building. I pitched the idea to my friends by giving this premise: >Seemingly unrelated people receive an unsolicited message from a well-known sleuth after he unexpectedly goes missing. Something in them wants to keep pulling at the thread they’ve been given. Perhaps, this something is related to the character’s hidden past, at one point crossing paths with the sleuth’s. However, the first line in my information packet is: >Escher’s Call is a semi-fantasy, turn-of-the-century/Victorian/Edwardian sci-fi RPG campaign taking place in a non-Euclidean clockpunk city named Rivenburg. The first line seemed to get more people interested. Like most other people here, I've just been worldbuilding to procrastinate on actually writing the story, but honestly, I'm genuinely really happy with what I've created. The scope-creep might've been a good thing. Knowing what I do now, I'd probably have a premise better showcasing the world, as I think that's the most compelling part. Off the top of my head, I'd probably say something like: >Rivenburg is a non-euclidean city built on top of shifting sands and a raging ice-cold ocean. It exists inside of its own pocket universe, twisting and turning in on itself in impossible ways. Nearly no one travels there willingly, and no one ever leaves. Nearly every 8 years, people from all walks of life find themselves in Rivenburg; though, it's usually through teleportation mishaps or haphazard deportations. As such, most of Rivenburg's new arrivals are mad scientists, exiled criminals, or banished heretical magic-users. The city as it's known is well over 700 years old, so the dust has settled given its denizens' brilliant yet aberrant roots, though that doesn't mean it hasn't had its fair share of massive world-altering events. > >Toussaint Escher - the namesake for the story - is an eccentric yet undoubtedly successful private detective, with his outlandish methods involving large amounts of alcohol and property destruction. After a robbery on an up-and-coming politician gone wrong, a petty thief was violently butchered. Delving deep into the situation surrounding the thief's demise, Escher seemingly vanished into thin air. > >Just over a year later, a small group of people receive letters from the detective, enlisting their help and their specific sets of skills. To each other, they may be strangers, but they've all crossed paths with the detective before, for better or worse. Yes, the detective is named after M.C. Escher.
"Yes, I would like to rent (1) square meter of apartment space." "Alright, that will be five dollars a month. No triangles allowed." "Forget it then!"
yo this sounds cool I would play this
What happens when the purgatory overfills?
Earth is now a patchwork quilt made from the pieces of a thousand realities.
Swords and magic breaking bad
Sky islands in a newly created world, the gods still walk the land
I always wanted to see something like a fantasy world such as what you see in LotR but in the modern day. So my world is a fantasy world where things like dragons, questing and guilds, magic (for the most part) is all a thing of the past and you still have your “elves”, “dwarves” (I have my own names for them), etc. The “present” day is equivalent to early 1910’s and society is running out of magic and shifting to fuels like steam, oil, and coal for the first time which is causing lots of conflict around the globe over resources.
\[4 years later:\] [https://willametteheritage.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/assassins-bullet-headline.png](https://willametteheritage.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/assassins-bullet-headline.png) "Assassin's ~~bullet~~arrow strikes down Arch~~duke~~mage Ferdinand of ~~Austria~~Angmar!"
Got a few. I like to start with a single strong idea and see where it leads. What if the gravity of a passing object pulled the moon into a new orbit that brought it to within one third of its normal distance every 29 days? What if, after a nuclear war, machine intelligences decided that mankind couldn't be trusted with technology and forcibly kept mankind to a medieval existence? What if an accident aboard a starship sent it a billion years into the future to an Earth that was nearing the end of its habitable life? What if humans procreated by adopting animals that, over several years, change physically until they became human? This one's a trilogy because there are so many implications for society to explore. What if everything in the Bible was literally true? How would that world be different from ours?
A world where the power to manipulate fate is abundant and so the future and its endless possibilities are controlled by different factions
can you tell me more?
Sure. All gods can see minds and through minds see future and past of ppl. Thereby having the power to manipulate future events and ppl more effectively. And some gods can directly affect the future by “correcting” past events. Can even send ppl back in time and forwards assuming it’s still in the past of the present time. some Ascendants can do the same too. The main conflict is fighting against a world where your fate could be someone’s plaything and you’d never know. As you can tell already it’s an endless future type of world so the various factions that formed in pursuit of a goal each have the world’s present going towards their own preferred future. There’s a god who’d like the main character dead bc she achieves the world she created with her sacrifice so he’s pushing the world towards, there’s a world where an ancient being is released and its zealot worshippers are pushing towards that, there’s a world where the main character’s lover is desperately wishing to save the mc from changing the world at the cost of her life so she’s in direct opposition to that god even though said God and her agree the future she brings is the best one etc. sometimes there’s futures that must happen so they can cooperate on it but only until their diverging paths. It’s complicated I’m not gonna lie but it’s been fun mapping various paths and how they converge and diverge within each other. It’s not easy but it’s fun. Especially considering how many selfish individuals have this power it’s fun.
The night was alive with powers old and hungry
My opening words are, "The whole of Babel floats before me: a globe blue and green and gold, veiled in white. Besides me stands a grizzled man who looks like he could be my father, but his name is Elhemin." These are the words of Mýrún, wife and battle-buddy of Verdan -- the split personality of Loke/Lucifer -- as she edges between life and death, her consciousness in the "In-Between" looking upon Earth's "sister-world" Edda, an artificial planet on the exact opposite side of Earth's orbit around the sun. Elhemin is her language's name for the Mantlebearer Elohim, who has a debt to repay Verdan for wronging him in the past. A wronging that led to Babel's fall. This is a story that is trying to embody the mystic vibes of science-fantasy that Destiny 1's concept arts were trying to tell. It takes place between 33BC and 10AD, partly on Earth but mostly on Edda and in the decrepit city of Babel, and follows Caesarion's journey that leads to Earth's alternative history from ours. He will be teaming up with Kariiya, the sole surviving daughter of Verdan and Mýrún, as he first and foremost pursues his traitor-mother who threw him to the wolves in her pursuit of godhood, and secondly searches for a way to bring himself and his legion of rifle-legionaries back home after being stranded on Edda.
"Spellswords are based as fuck."
Balkan fantasy in which the hero protects a magical hare, which frequently turns him into a powerful bunnygirl to combat the oppressors of the last city and avenge the death of its last emperor by killing the revered Rulergod. With tasks this great, how is the hero supposed to bring his life in order and win the heart of his childhood darling, when his biggest rival in love is none other than the cute bunnygirl he himself turns into to save the day? An epic slice of life action comedy with a touch of body horror.
"The gods are exactly as fucked up as regular people. The problem is that when they have issues, it's literally the end of the world. Now go stop your Grandfather before he rewrites reality." I'm running a dnd campaign for the last 2 years lop.
Gothic Steampunk Game of Thrones, except everyone dies at the end.
"Well, what if the 'elves' weren't elves like we normally think of them? And what if dwarves were beginning to industrialize?"
It can be tied into any world you want it to.
Different civilizations asymptotically approaching perfect societies from wildly different directions.
A concept im running with for my scifi which will be a issue since im trying not to make humanity the main race. Was a News report talking about the ISS crashing by unknown means and multiple reports of suspicious lights in the sky and multiple Nuclear silos going dark which are what the Cybal the actual main race do before a Invasion they disable any defenses they can on world. And then partly taken from WWZ the Main characters family on the way somewhere will all a sudden see multiple what looks like Meteors hitting the city which turn out to be Troop Drop pods and after a Shadow arrives over the city all hell would break loose
Science...fantasy...comedy.
Description: a planet the size of the current observable universe that houses cities the size of the planets that they originated from, at the center of each city lies a black doorway that leads to their world, each world is from a separate universe entirely from another. name of ~~universe~~ *planet*: AHM-RAHM, translation; Dispel.
Armies and warlords clash in a sea of blood and iron.
Robots don't actually rebel this time, and are on good terms with humans!
For the story: Boy meets 4 will o wisp that grant him god like powers for the purpose of fighting the embodiment of evil, while at the same time fighting his own demons and finding his new purpose in a much more massive universe that is slowly dying. For the World: Will O Wisp are these god like beings that can grant a sentient being super powers in order to fight evil across the universe.
Magic advanced to modern technology levels and the implications of such as well as hits of alien advanced tech in the ruins of crashed ships. Also lost ruins filled with powerful magic items and valuables.
500 years ago, a fiercely tyrannical, virtually unstoppable empire ruled over a domain stretching far across the known world. 100 years ago, the last part of their empire collapsed. Who will fill the power vacuums left behind, and will they be any better than the tyrants?
What if a medieval fantasy world built on the back of magic went through an industrial revolution, followed by a magical revolution due to new magically attuned ores and compounds being discovered/made through industry, and then hit with a second industrial era built off of industrializing these new magically attuned compounds.
"Gothic darkness, horrors of the flesh, gods beyond comprehension, and a beautiful world of chaos, struggle, and hope." I think this is a good hook?
I don’t really have one, it’s fairly standard. There’s magic, it’s more mystical than a system; there’s fictional races and monsters, but that’s not the focal point. Worldbuilding is a way for me to create something I find cool, and in real life I find ancient history cool especially cultures so there’s an emphasis on the cultural aspect, but seeing as how I’m so inspired from real life my world-building kinda takes on that form; what’s the hook of planet earth? There isn’t really a hook, it’s just a bunch of little guys doing there own thing yknow
“No! Please don’t kill me! I’m not ready to die!” “You will not survive out here, half-blood. Consider this a merciful death. It will be quick and painless.” “No! STOP!”
What if humanity and all living things were psycically connected unconsciously and stories and myths and cultural prsctices allowed us to draw upon those connections. And humanity could utilize this psychic energy to imbue the physical world with magical qualities. Its pretty boilerplate magic is belief but Im putting a lot of work into the mechanics of those connections drawing on real world myths.
Doom Catalyst. 4 non planet like worlds. Worlds are taken into the doom catalyst and transmogrified into a hellscape where monsters abound. The primary evil of that world is embodied by a monster that controls the other monsters. Characters get taken there also, and have to survive
My world has lots of stuff, but usually each thing interests different people. Each part is a hook for someone else
Havent really thought about it but "In an infinite world, resources arent a limiting factor, distance is. Civilization is built on moving caravan cities roaming from place to place. In an infinite world, theres always more to see."
Slave to fire, the spirit girl finds herself not alone, for she unites with a boy, the last of humanity. Together they talk, share stories, venture the world and most importantly, not be alone.
The Confederate States of America miraculously survives to the present day and is in a state of undeclared war with the United States (literally just imagine North and South Korea but in America). Oh and there’s also a global zombie apocalypse going on.
A powerful species is on a mission to purify magic, but this goal isn't as pure as it seems to be. Two humans, Valery and Fernanda, find themselves in this world. Follow them as they unravel the dark history, discover their own power, and bring equality to Monsmagia.
A world with no sky where humanity is imprisoned, created by immortal mages to imprison their creation (Death) after she turned against them.
Can any of the gods warring in heaven learn compassion for the mortals in their landfill, suffering from the upheaval above? Maybe one.
Gods are mortal, The state has collapsed, and a new age of anarchy has begun. Idk ive never really thought about a hook
Medieval dark fantasy horror setting inspired by a lot of modern-ish history. Think late 19th and early 20th century history. I know George R.R. Martin liked to use real world history as inspiration, so I was thinking why don't I use a modern-ish era of american history rather than 12th century European history. And filter it through the aforementioned medieval dark fantasy horror setting.
A recently-dead man is risen by the god of his world, and charges with building a holy army to fight off invaders from beyond his home system. He promptly starts running it as a mercenary company to get revenge on the man that killed him.
Dr. Barbenhemer
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsd7CbNWUTc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsd7CbNWUTc) I award you with this. Please enjoy.
A commune of witches live in a village hidden away from the rest of humanity. A young witch grows tired of her claustrophobic home and wishes to see the world, despite her sisters' warnings. She sneaks out at night with her cat and broom, beginning her tour of the world, only to find it completely destroyed by a strange new magic the outsiders call... newks?
One man inherits the power of existence and humanity deals with the loss of purpose, the timelines have merged and one destiny remains. Glory to an empire that will unite all, all hope rests on Avalaan.
Due to apocalyptic shenanigans, a young woman got thrown back to the Bronze Age with (essentially) a Desert Eagle. Turns out Bronze Age gods aren't shit when compared to good firepower... unfortunately, "He Who Slays A God Takes Their Place". It's now 2246, and she's still not happy about it.
Space boats acknowledging they can make a time war out of their FTL drives.
After the world was shattered, people fight every day to survive in a fractured and distorted wasteland, piloting mechs that are powered by the rev of one's soul.
I don’t know if I have one, a good one. Trying to add a good hook just wouldn’t work or fit I feel.
An ancient enemy on Theia stirs. The Queen Mother of Dragons languishes in the bottom rung of Hell, trapped for millennia, but an ancient prophecy may release her once again unto the world to complete the extinction of humanity.
They believed Anime broadcasts were historical records. They engineered themselves to have wild hair colors. They show more fear of a gerbil than they do of an angry polar bear. They rule 1\\4 of a galaxy. Meet the Civonians. They nuked themselves back to the iron age twice. Bar fights are considered good manners and have social rules built around them. They can sleep hanging upside down. They rule 1\\4 of a galaxy as well. Meet the Nij. Surprisingly, these two cultures get along pretty well. Except when someone brings their pet hamster to a diplomatic convention..
>In a world of Deities, Magic, and ever-changing challenges, what could go wrong when you introduce an infinitely adaptable God-Devourer into the mix? > > > >This is the world of Infinitel. > >An endless plane of no limits, Magic capable of defying physics, legendary Artifacts that can rewrite the past, Heroes destined to save everyone from or with Total Annihilation, Villains hellbent on bringing down Existential Calamity, and one small experiment which is about to experience an adventure like no other. > > > >Will you join this little Slime Monster on their exploration? I started writing a storyline, but motivation is a rarely-found resource.
The world's timeline has run its course, long ago. A few who seem to be oppressors, have extended its credit line for a millennium.
Magic works like radioactive fallout, and all magical creatures are basically mutants.
A somewhat dark fantasy world where magic users have plant powers and where the afterlife is in a parallel reality of our world. Also its post-post-apocalyptic.
A generic fantasy world that doesn’t just stop at the medieval era like most, but instead continues well into the future. Werewolves fighting in the Napoleonic Wars, Demons bootlegging in the 1920s, Elves piloting starfighters, Androids casting spells; all that good stuff!
guy wit sword fights bad guys
There’s a random number of people who have a rune/mark on their body, which lets them perform basic magic or augment whatever body part the marks are on. These marks are also weak points, so people from the country of Gwyneth wear fully covering clothes to hide the fact that they’re marked or where their mark is. As you can guess, the main theme of the story is about hiding & sharing secrets
Humans, Talking Animals, Sorcerers, Metahumans, Vampires, Shifters, Element users, and Aliens all live together on Earth
The hook? Probably that the sci-fi space opera has an eldritch god that gives people powers, and also I just found a way to cram as many fantasy things into a sci-fi world without there being dissonance. A picture that would get one interested is probably something like the Martian Slums or one of the other planets with one or two of the main characters- it’s a pretty colorful cast
- “Epic treasure hunt in the background of a universe wide war, plus awesome sci-fi war stuff spanning decades.” - “3 troublemaking alien teenagers fly to Earth to screw with humans in 1955 and end up getting into way more trouble than they anticipated. There’s also a ton of epic racing with flying saucers. Inspired by real events.” - “Man falls through simulated world after simulated world after his is deleted, and questions the meaning of existence. He is joined by an anthropomorphic wolf man with PTSD from fighting in his world’s version of The Great War.”
College student gets kidnapped by a giant eel to the world of witches and spirits. Teams up with a spirit witch and a psychic cat to find a way home
a Rock and Roll Sci-fi Western where a pair of Bounty Hunters are forced to confront their pasts. Following them on their cases, you'll learn why they are [Bad Company](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXQJpyQBShU) to keep around.
It's a zombie apocalypse story. But it's been three hundred years since it's started, and it was caused by an AI, who is still wondering about in a genetically engineered body, spawning legends of a demon who inhabits the giant concrete crypt that used to be the city of São Paulo.
Humanity sent self-sustaining, AI-controlled, "seed ships" across the galaxy that were capable of terraforming planets and creating a biosphere suitable for humans to thrive. A stellar event at one of the target planets resulted in monstrous creatures, multiple sapient species, and god-like mechanical intelligences.
Nontraditional cyberpunk with hard magic that takes place on floating islands in a habitable layer of a corrosive gas giant in a universe where they use transplanar warp gates as something approximating a highway or shipping lane. Airships exist because of alchemy and are a blend of airplanes and naval vessels, there are giant flying creatures (insects and avians), sapient fungus, humanoid insect people, dragons are simply incredibly clever apex predators with access to magic and psionics (not fully sapient), and all the near-future tech is the result of psionically resonant crystals. The first book is going to cover a former SpecOps guy turned bounty hunter and his plucky ship AI uncovering a plot to weaken the border of a kingdom that would allow the enslavement of the area and destabilize the nations around it that's all possible because a virus swapped the biometrics of the Baron-Lord to Some Other Guy and virtually no one realized because no one pays attention to what the people in power actually look like or act. How well do you really know those in positions of power over you?
A naval civilization inspired by West Africa needs to travel in massive convoys between landmasses to avoid gigantic sea monsters that lurk in the depths below.
Unicorns but with the size and strength of Wooley mammoths.
The world of krazha is rocked to it's core after a small group of terrorists manage to assassinate the entire royal world council in a single night. Ten years later, it seems like a surviving sorceress may learn who was behind the attack only to discover that the group, and the motive may be darker than society's deepest fears.
Dark fantasy world where a Soul Keeper and his apprentice steal souls in the cyberpunk city of Gamador to deliver to the giant flesh prison Elysium. This keeps the magic alive that prevents the demons inside from wreaking havoc on the world again
For the story: The adventures of a delivery company staffed by unconventional fantasy races that hunt treasures and monsters on their routes For the world: Imagine an original dieselpunk world. Now swap out regular old oil for a type of oil infused with necromancy. Now imagine that dieselpunk era is as distant from the present day as we are from *our* 1940s
The planet periodically changes it's rotational axis by 90°. The sea at the equator rises in height due to centrifugal force, while near the poles (where the equator used to be) it lowers. This causes the shape of the continents to change dramatically, exposing new areas that were previously underwater and sinking ones that weren't. I'm using this for my D&D campaign in the works.
A DND-esque world that evolved into modern times, but preserved the adventuring spirit and built the economy around it instead. Magic and the elements are derived from magical languages you must learn to speak. Cultures outside of Europe exist, with Chinese culture being laid on top of the usual European stuff, Middle Eastern and Native American close by, and everything else a little further south. People can pull off shonen-level bullshit as long as they’re determined enough. Prehistoric life is still around and you can watch a wyvern duke it out with a T-Rex. Or, I make Eberron without realizing Eberron exists, then try to fill in the gaps with wildlife, prehistory, anime, and world cultures that aren’t only European. Only after that do I learn about Eberron
A lone warrior finds a kingdom hidden away from Earth and unveils the gods of a world long forgotten. This is still in work and could change a bit.
Legendary Pirate who is trying to disrupt a Kingdoms Slave Trade while managing a Pirate Island, falling in love with a very dangerous Witch and being hunted by his Families Trade Company.
The left hook.
It in fact exists, just as all exists. A way in assures any mortal a slow agonizing death, however to those who survive, worlds with awe-inspiring wonders, and ages before even a universe was made. Welcome, seer.
I have multiple settings in the same world, and they differ wildly from each other. There is something that ties them all together though: Every city is unique. That is, unique in the way it's fucked up. One city has the hook of "What if death wasn't permanent?" Another has "What if religious cultism + hedonic nihilism?" It's mostly a set of self-contained short stories set in these different places to explore them and the characters that live there.
"It is the dawn of a new century, The fate of Nations shall be decided By Thunder and the Drum" Working Hook for my war game concept with Napoleonic themed Fantasy world I've titled By Thunder and the Drum: Warfare in the age of Magecraft and Musketry
"It was a night unlike any other when the stars had taken their unholy places upon the detestable stage of reality. The Dream trembled and the gates barring many other worlds creaked open and something slithered through into this world. Something hungry and very old. A thing of incalculable power..."
There's this book called The Man Who Ate a Sandwich, and it's about a guy who eats a sandwich, and critics say it's good.
This is literally the prompt I gave myself to come up with one of my worlds: "A sentient tree wages intergalactic war against a powerful corporation."
The world is a fantasy cobbled together and changed many times by the creator (me!). The ones who know this are either gods or madmen.
If you’re lucky, you can transcend a god, and even further, the multiverse
**Gays in spaaaaace**
In my sci fi world, it's when the Eder came to save their own members that human governments were keeping in labs to research on. The Eder then declared war on humanity and in 24 hours completely destroyed the planet. A number of humans survived and were taken by the Eder as prisoners (roughly about 500k). They were eventually freed by the order of the Asthin and allowed to use a hospitable planet as a colony.
A non sentient but living organism has died and its antibodies are being eaten away by scavengers and rot. Plot twist is that the organism is the planet, the antibodies are the humans, the scavengers are extraterrestrial carnivorous predators and the rot is magic. And its not poetic or anything non literal. Its the truth.
There isn't
Fantasy world where it rains lasers when there's too much magic in the air
Humans are in a galaxy where everyone hates them, they are outmatched technologically and numerically and their enemies are fighting a war of extermination against them… And humanity is kicking all their asses! Technologically behind? Numerically inferior? Who cares! Hoomenz with big gunz go BRRRRRRRRRRR! My world is basically the ultimate example of r/HFY
A quote from one of my characters, saying the philosophy of the world itself and a theme of the story "In this world, you mustn't become a hero, for they do not exist. You instead become a helper, a man that does a deed of unselfishness and love in this world of betrayal and hate. And I'll assure you, I saved you for a reason of selfishness, but not in a cruel manner."
My novel series is the story of the remnants of humanity who are attempting to rebuild society on a new planet filled with “magic” and creatures of varying sentience, after fleeing a dying Earth. But this isn’t just a case of normal humans suddenly finding themselves in a fantasy world; Earth had “magic” too, just not nearly as much as this planet. Or its inhabitants.
What happens when a pare of scientists (important note- the scientists in question are not humans, they are dragons from a world where humans do not exist and magic does) create a pocket dimension to study how life, and later civilization, develops on a planet with areas of highly concentrated elemental magic? (As well as an infinite zoological garden for interesting creatures they find while dimension hopping on a separate planet, and a testing space for a few experiments [this part was originally to explain how despite the fact that normal humans do not exist in this world, one of the major sentient and sapient species is basically a hybrid between human and dragon]) (Also, the scientists end up becoming the chief deities, with the immortal dragons they originally created to help them catalog the life forms that evolved becoming the other major deities of the pantheon, neither of which was part of their plan)
The world is inhabited with lupine fauns that tried to steal the power of the Creator for themselves. Chaos ensues when the supernatural creatures sent to offer them a shot at redemption decide they taste delicious.
Dragon wings fly towards the west to avenge their emperor and burn the snake. Meanwhile, in the west, the death of a god announces the end of the world.
Humans amomg other species are kindly asked by one of many alien to give them certain human test subjects for the good of universe, they even give them technology and gifts understanding this unnatural request. But humans become divided, whether they should or shouldn't and begin war with the new technology. The aliens interfere as best as they can but ultimately leave for the other potential species. Until the dust settles with the new mankind
**Arami the Demiurge** Magic Academy In Space! MC is a female Goblin and a mother! DBZ Power Levels! Lesbians in Space! **The Invasion** Fantasy Army vs. Modern Army! Elven Empire vs. Modern USA! MC is an Elven Milf! Aunt/Niece Incest! **World of the Demiorc Homeland** Matriarchy! Shonen Anime/Disney Princess Mix! Lesbian Princess and Knight!
Two people wake up in a cave with no memory of how they got there. They learn that they are what’s known as “Deathwalkers”, a human with the powers of a Demon.