Write something about your setting, and the rest of us will help you develop it

Discussion in 'Setting Development' started by GrottyStatute74, Nov 15, 2016.

  1. isaac223

    isaac223 Senior Member

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    That's true. There could be communities who are, for perhaps cultural reasons, all descendants of the same two ancestral Arcanes and this rule is maintained for generations -- inbreeding, much like the royals of olde supposedly did. It could also contribute to a mystery similarly to how I stated before: illegitimate child. Should a male Arcane have an illegitimate child with a human female and had a daughter, then there'd be a girl walking around with abilities only males should have. Or if a male Arcane had an illegitimate child with a female Arcane who wasn't apart of this community, then their daughter would have a set of skills that she just simply shouldn't have. And if those abilities are such that they can be used in a way that they look like the abilities she should have, and she uses them as such to commit the murder, then part of solving that mystery would be figure out what discrepancies that the murder's abilities, as exhibited by the crime scene, have between what the normal female's abilities are. Such as... if someone is able to telepathically murder somebody from outside of their house, and the crime scene shows a dead body who could be murdered as such, why did the killer have to force their way into the house?
     
  2. archer88i

    archer88i Banned Contributor

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    My world is recognizably familiar, and could easily be mistaken for our own. It is, however, inhabited by gods and devils made flesh, and whose petty squabbles and screwed up love triangles endanger the lives of hundreds of millions of people, or possibly even the existence of the human species.

    These beings act covertly; they don't tend to smash things by hand, but let's say one of them invented the black plague and was the architect of the Spanish flu, among other things.
     
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  3. Sclavus

    Sclavus Active Member

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    Do diseases like you mentioned occur naturally as well, or can I blame a god or demon for my maladies all the time?
     
  4. archer88i

    archer88i Banned Contributor

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    Most of them are also naturally occurring; she mostly orchestrates and recombines.

    That said, while I can't speak for the character in question, I believe quite firmly that allergies are 100% the work of the devil. :)
     
  5. isaac223

    isaac223 Senior Member

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    In a way, yes, but disease actually stems from the angry god Ra, who is ashamed of his creations believing an entity such as "the devil" truly exists. Give yourself to Ra and you shall live.
     
  6. halisme

    halisme Contributor Contributor

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    Why do they act covertly?
     
  7. Sclavus

    Sclavus Active Member

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    In my setting, the American military and National Guard are stretched thin by a long war with several nations. No one wants the war to go nuclear, for moral, political, and/or economic reasons. Consequently, when the zombie apocalypse starts, the governor of Colorado has to reach out to a third party to bolster the assistance the National Guard can offer. The Pantheon Group--a conglomerate of private military contractors--picks up the job, moves into Colorado Springs, and eventually takes over the city.
     
  8. SanderPander

    SanderPander Member

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    In my setting, we're about 50 years into the future. All climate change projections severely underestimated how quickly temperatures would rise, due to some sort of feedback loop which wasn't accounted for in any of the climate models. This led to a lot of the non-sea ice in Greenland and Antarctica to rapidly melt, raising average sea levels by about 40 meters in the span of about 20 years. Consequently, many coastal cities across the globe had to be abandoned and billions of people were displaced and had to relocate further inland. Some countries stopped existing almost entirely as they were covered by the sea. In the US, Washington DC was abandoned and Denver became the new capital, and almost all of the major cities on the East and West coast were abandoned; Florida disappeared entirely. In China, Beijing was abandoned, and Chongqing (one the large industrial cities much farther inland) became the new capital. The Netherlands (what little was left of it) merged with Germany and formed the Nether-German Republic. The EU disintegrated and several independent alliances were formed throughout Europe, except for France. And so on for many other nations.

    This led to an economic catastrophy and created a power vacuum that was quickly filled by large multinational conglomerates, essentially consolidating power with corporations, away from governments. Governments were really just there for symbolic reasons now, but they were essentially owned by corporations.

    Trends we see in today's world of privacy erosion, self-indulgence (such as with social media and this like-obsessed culture) have continued on and people have very little privacy left and everything, but for one's thoughts, is monitored and recorded.

    Anti-capitalism / anti-corporatism is on the rise as some people are turning against the absolute power of the large conglomerates.

    Does this seem like a plausible setting? I intend to write my story not necessarily about what happened here, but it serves as the backdrop for the story and why some of the things happening in the story, happen.
     
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  9. Gadock

    Gadock Active Member

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    Zombie apocalypse? Not a bit overdone? Is it caused by a virus?


    Oi oi oi! I used to live in Nijmegen, about 10 km from German border. And okay, we might lose more than 90% we'd never succumb to bloody Germany! :p Further great story though. Any reason to pick Denver for US' new capital? I don't know that much about the US tbf.

    I also like it how you've pushed it further with big companies, it annoys me like crazy how they get away with everything already. Is a part of the story going to rebel against this?
     
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  10. Sclavus

    Sclavus Active Member

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    They're not zombies precisely, but they are infected by a bioweapon. They retain some of their more human aspects, and can be killed like you or me. But they do stagger, twitch, and attack with their hands and teeth. I haven't read a zombie story quite like the one I'm writing. My story is less about the zombies and more about the main character's personal struggles with bipolar disorder and PTSD and his physical disability.
     
  11. Gadock

    Gadock Active Member

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    My settings is like most others post apocalyptic. It's a world where magic is all normal, but has been banished for over 800 years (people were unable to use magic). Before the banishment there was only one country, people rarily died of diseases or complications and further more, well being of the average human was relatively high. Yet the most powerful mages were so strong they were able to destroy large parts of lands with ease, and to prefend a total wipe-out they had to take the extreme and prefend all from using magic, causing the country and that world to fall apart, leaving significant traces behind to 800 years later when the banishments wears-off. My story takes place after re-emergence of magic in a world that's in an industrial revolution; they learned to adapt and use different ways without using magic. However the uses of magic brings quite some chaos once again within the world, smaller insignificant countries can suddenly become quite powerful, weapons are suddenly inferior and so on.
     
  12. SanderPander

    SanderPander Member

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    So a bit of a steampunk type setting? With magic? I always like the use of magic where it always has real consequences. Kind of like Isaac Newton's phrase, where every action has an equal and opposite reaction. That could work well.

    And, it's prevent by the way, not prefend ;)
     
  13. Gadock

    Gadock Active Member

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    I often mix similar words up, I am dyslexic but mainly I make these errors by not re-reading properly :p but non the less, thanks for pointing it out ^^

    I do think it would be considered steampunk, but I didn't really deliberately did this. Where it could be considered from a same era, and usage of some steam-powered and oil-powered machinery, I won't have any clothing or retro-futuristic inventions (as Wikipedia discribes it quite nicely). I didn't want People to have a to high understanding of the world. I also would like to have a world where weapons like guns and swords are still commonly used. And I liked the mentality where people would still get their hands dirty to test their wild ideas, even though they couldn't scientifically provide the theory first, like we do today.
     
  14. Gadock

    Gadock Active Member

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    Bipolar, PTSD and physical disability? Wow, definitely won't be the standard zombie survival story. Does your MC need daily medicine, or how severe are his/hers disorders/disability?
     
  15. Sclavus

    Sclavus Active Member

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    He needs painkillers, and medication for his mental health, yes. He has severe scars down his left side and waddles with a severe limp. He has also been prone to substance abuse in the past, so he has to be cautious about that. He can't run as fast as most people, and it puts him in debilitating pain to do it. Some of the pain is alleviated when he uses a cane.

    For the most part, his job is to observe, report, and occasionally do some sniping to break the morale of the mercenaries hunting him and his "family." There are times he'll have to engage an enemy at close range, which will make him less than a happy camper.
     
  16. 8Bit Bob

    8Bit Bob Here ;) Contributor

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    My world has a continent called 'Elderath' in it. Elderath is split into four lands, Derkier, Dwemeria, Keldera, and Elvana. Derkier is split into 5 kingdoms, the Bronze Kingdom, the Silver Kingdom, the Gold Kingdom, the Ruby Kingdom, and the Black Kingdom, all of which are ruled by humans. Dwemeria has the great Skeri desert in it where nomads live. Keldera is a cold, desolate, mountainous region dominated by giants and other evil creatures. Elvana is split by the mountains in the North and the Great Forest in the South. The White Elves live in the mountains, while the Wood Elves live in the forest. The White Elves all live in a couple of large cities carved into the side of the mountains, while the Wood Elves are split into two factions that are constantly fighting for control of the Great Forest.
     
  17. Gadock

    Gadock Active Member

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    Substance abuse is not entirely uncommon with bipolar disorder, you seem to know a fair deal about these things. I wish you good luck since I don't think it would be something easy to write.
     
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  18. Sclavus

    Sclavus Active Member

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    My MC's struggles mirror my own, which makes it easier.
     
  19. Lindsay Rowan

    Lindsay Rowan New Member

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    I would suggest making Skeri a colder desert. A lot of people's images of a desert land in fantasy are usually akin to a Sahara setting, and in rarer cases a southeast-US/northern-Mexico image, but I find that that kind of setting isn't as common in the high fantasy genre. Making Skeri a cold desert would help separate it from what you see in most fantasy environments, where there's a Sahara equivalent that's located in the southern reaches of the map.

    You could possibly draw inspiration from the Mongolian Gobi or the Kazakh steppes. Both of those would create an interesting environment that would add some uniqueness to your continent. It would also make more sense if the desert has a colder temperature from being located next to Keldra, since (if I'm remembering correctly) deserts are formed from dry pockets next to high mountains.
     
  20. Lazzamore

    Lazzamore Member

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    This looks like fun, I would like to throw my hat into the ring, if you all don't mind.

    In a mostly Human country called Naerlon there's a shire/county/etc (word pending) called Bane. When thew now king Orwend Half-man conquered the Naerl tribes (humans of the region) and unified them into a kingdom, the Bane Clan sided with the new king and as such was given the entire swamp of Abane to have their own Lord-Governor. This lord rules out of a small military fort called Old Agi's Rock, named after and built by his father, Old Agi. Most of Bane shire/county/etc's residents live in a dry bar of land called 'Wynn's Row', after this lord's uncle, a cartographer of renown. There are three villages in Wynn's row, with Old Agi's Rock on the northernmost point.
     
  21. Almighty Paxus

    Almighty Paxus New Member

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    Here's part of the setting I made.

    In the year 2100, more than half of the human population is kidnapped by demonic hybrid creatures from another dimension called the Girok. Only a few countries still stand on this Earth (Japan, China, Russia, Great Britain, United States, and Korea), and now they must make an alliance to keep the human race from becoming extinct and save the kidnapped humans that are still alive. The areas that have been completely wiped out by the Girok have become overrun have become uninhabitable for humans to live there. These areas have either become too hot, too cold, too gaseous, and there are even some areas where gravity is non-existent and there is a complete vacuum (space).


     
  22. halisme

    halisme Contributor Contributor

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    Why haven't France and Germany survived, considering they have some of the largest militaries in Europe?
    Considering Russia's main strength is it's landmass, why hasn't their population scattered?
    Why did the Girok do it?
     
  23. SanderPander

    SanderPander Member

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    Why are some areas too hot, or too cold, or too gaseous? How did that happen? How does that work?
    How can some areas be a complete vacuum on a planet? You'll really want to explain some of the physics behind that, or make it very plausible. At first glance, I don't buy it.
     
  24. Almighty Paxus

    Almighty Paxus New Member

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    The reason for some of the harsh conditions in certain areas is simply due to the type of Girok that invaded that area. For example, the Fire Girok, Ice Girok, Gravity Girok, ect. They are responsible for the change of climate in certain areas after invading them.

    There has also been constant nuclear warfare between several of countries prior to the invasions, which could lead to unusual climate

    Now I might change 'gaseous' to 'radioactive' since that seems more logical.
     
  25. halisme

    halisme Contributor Contributor

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    If there had been nuclear war, why would the US and UK still be up, considering they are both nuclear powers?
     

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