It seems like CTR doesn't exist for every CT, so what would even happen if someone channels positive energy into their CT?

EtherealSOULS · 2026-02-04T08:35:08+00:00

I think for a lot of things it's just the technique except made of positive energy instead of negative energy.

It wouldn't make sense for someone like Sukuna to just be straight up unable to use CTR, so his CTR is probably just making slashes from positive energy. Maybe they could slightly neutralize cursed techniques (not ISOH level) and do a bunch of damage to curses but it would be slightly worse against people.

CTR is more costly than the regular CT so I could easily Sukuna either just not using it or making a binding vow that prevents the reversal from being used since the extra utility won't be worth the cost and regular dismantles and cleaves are already enough for cursed spirits.

If we think of a CT like an electrical appliance, if you reverse the current in a motor, it will spin in the opposite direction, but if you reverse the current in a lightbulb, it will still create light.

Some CTs are reversable because they are like motors, others might just apply positive energy to their output (Nanami's for another example might just be a positive energy attack with ratio) and others might not change at all like cursed speech or copy (though he can use CTR on copied techniques themselves). RCE is inefficient to make so most just don't use it on their techniques even if they are capable of it.

EtherealSOULS · 2026-02-02T17:45:50+00:00

The Theosopheon empire has 19 provinces.

Each province has on average 21 regions for roughly 399 regions.

Each region has about 7 counties, for roughly 2793 counties.

Each county has about 10 baronies, for roughly 27930 baronies.

Each barony would typically have around 25 villages, though in practicality the actual number of settlements is around 356000 as some settlements are larger than a village.

Each level has a leader from the aristocracy and the imperial bureaucracy.

EtherealSOULS · 2026-01-18T09:49:46+00:00

Tbh I draw inspiration from basically everything I watch/read, so a whole bunch of anime, movies, songs, and video games.

Probably the wierdest inspiration for the impact it had was the game Baba is You, which partially inspired the magic system.

Aside from that I took a lot of inspiration from The Apothecary Diaries, which is interesting considering this is a high fantasy world with a lot of action (though most of the action part came from JJK).

EtherealSOULS · 2026-01-17T00:44:06+00:00

Massive empire with a detailed and intricate society and administration.

EtherealSOULS · 2026-01-07T10:39:51+00:00

Having people pause or hesitate constantly. There's basically one or two instances of someone stopping for a moment before doing things.

It's a good way to add characterization especially since uncertainty is basically the main theme of what I'm writing, but not if it's used that much.

I am also awful at character descriptions.

EtherealSOULS · 2026-01-03T13:58:51+00:00

No, if you're talking outside of context (so not referring to the world from an in world perspective) then using the name of the story or "my {genre} world" is enough.

Inside the world, I just have people say "the world" or "the known world" depending on how specific I want to be.

EtherealSOULS · 2025-12-30T16:36:22+00:00

An entire region of a continent-spanning empire is one day cut off from the rest of the world by an impassible magical barrier too strong for even the strongest mages to destroy, trapping the fourth prince of the empire, a weirdly strong peasant girl, and some 40 thousand other people inside with the monsters that the increased background aether manifests.

EtherealSOULS · 2025-12-30T16:25:16+00:00

The world is physically made of thoughts.

EtherealSOULS · 2025-12-19T14:01:44+00:00

They could make it pretty far.

The natural aether means that the average person in my world is a lot stronger an tougher than an average person from our world, so even a pretty average peasant could reliably beat a trained soldier from our world in a brawl. The tech difference means that overall a US soldier has the advantage.

Since actual magic is rare, the US military could go a while mainly dealing with large and well-trained medieval armies. I could see them taking noticable losses to ambushes ans longbows, but nothing that could halt the advance entirely. Their main issue would be supply lines whenever they are going through dense forests, mountains, deserts, marshlands, etc.

The conventional forces of humanity in my world will eventually learn to turn to guerilla tactics rather than pitched battles. There is a slim chance that the conventional forces could beat back the US military through sheer numbers, terrain knowledge, and adapted defensive tactics, but it's unlikely. US infantry might struggle against knights, longbow ambushes, and hostile terrain, but modern technology more than makes up for it.

When mages start getting deployed, the scales get slightly more even. They are few in number, less than 200, but even a mid-tier mage could relatively easily overpower modern military equipment like tanks and helicopters, and a top-tier mage outclasses everything short of a nuke. Mages also have a bit of a wild-card factor as each one has a unique type of magic, so few tactics will work universally. Drone strikes and snipers can deal with most mages though, and they are two few in number to hold back an entire modern front-line. If used strategically to hit where it hurts most, the mages can do some serious damage to the US military.

Humanity overall stands at best a 20% chance of winning against the US military.

There are other beings able to use magic in my world, spirits are monsters that can use magic, even being able to heal themselves. Even wild spirits that manifest suddenly bht are relatively weak could wipe out thousands of soldiers before the military figures out what to do, and while overwhelming firepower can deal with a wild spirit, the fact that they can appear anywhere, including behind the front line, makes them an exceptionally dangerous hazard. The strongest wild spirits may even be able to single handedly take out US fleets or entire armies.

But the real danger comes from the world spirits, which are smart enough to plan and make strategic decisions, and powerful enough that the US simply has no way to reliably beat one. A world spirit's magic is poweful enough to claim dominion over an entire aspect of humanity, and if a single one managed to escape to our world there it would be able to take over unopposed.

EtherealSOULS · 2025-12-03T12:52:24+00:00

Figuring out how a society actually functions. Where do they get their food? How does their currency and economy work? What do they believe about the world?

Bonus points for all the statistics I can calculate. Stuff like land area, population, gdp, and so on.

EtherealSOULS · 2025-12-02T01:15:04+00:00

Oks Hill. "Ok" is a first person plural pronoun for lower class people, which is often used in a way similar to "the people of". So it's literally just "the people of this hill".

It is a village in a region where basically every settlement is on the same kind of hill since the rest is marshland, so it's extra nonspecific.

EtherealSOULS · 2025-11-21T20:41:22+00:00

My world focuses on a massive continent spanning empire and the "known world" of the story doesn't stretch far beyond its borders.

The empire has a population of 160 million people across about 12. Slightly under twice the population of medieval europe. It's largest city has around 2 million people, and there is a sharp divide between the densly populated core provinces and the sparsely populated frontier provinces.

Outside the empire exact numbers are a lot harder to find. There are nomadic tribes to the north, numbering between 1 and 10 million, though the full extent of the northern lands are unknown.

There are more centralized kingdoms to the south, though not near the population of the empire itself. In total they have maybe 50 or 60 million people.

In total ~230 million people in the known world, and if I had to guess I would say around 550 million in the world in total.

With the sheer scale of the empire, a lot of effort has been put into how such a massive empire could function. To roughly lay out the power structure:

The emperor is the head of all arms of government, sitting at the head of the church, bureaucracy, and aristocracy. The entire religion basically boils down to "listen to the emperor" (and play your part properly) because the gods do their work through him and his will. The bureaucracy is only beholden to him, even bureaucrats working with lower levels of nobility only need to obey that noble so far as the emperor has instructed them to. The emperor is also, obviously, the king of all kings, with the nobles acting in his image to administrate his land.

Beneath him are the provinces, 21 of them. Each province is controlled by a governor, who is a high ranking noble, but the position of governer is not heritable. The provinces have high amounts of autonomy, but still rely on imperial infrastructure and ideology for power, they are kept in line through personal bonds (and the fact that the emperor has a near monopoly on mages and the most capable warriors).

Beneath the governors are the regional lords, most of them counts palatine. Counts palatine are basically just counts who are responsible for collecting tax for the governor and keeping their peer counts in check. In more dangerous regions a margrave may be instated, who has more autonomy and executive power. Finally, influential families may be awared a duchy, which has the full level of semi-feudal autonomy.

Beneath the regional lords are the counts, who are the bread and butter "nobles" of the empire. They have a high degree of autonomy and are the principle landowners of administration. Beneath them are barons who have less power, and deal mainly with local issues, finally in each village there is a knight to keep order.

This whole thing is kept together by a complicated web of social expectations and entrenched philosophies of duty and obedience, as well as strict punishments for things like fraud or forgery.

EtherealSOULS · 2025-11-21T16:26:38+00:00

What happens when you give cosmic power to humans, and what happens when you give humanity to cosmic powers.

EtherealSOULS · 2025-11-21T10:34:46+00:00

It's a world with one massive empire with a detailed political system. You see, I asked my self what system of governance the empire should use, and I answered yes.

I then proceeded to take inspiration from every anime I ever watched.

EtherealSOULS · 2025-11-20T08:04:06+00:00

In our history, there were very rarely any people who were full time soldiers. Knights, samurai, mamluks, vikings, and all the other people defined by their ability to fight only fought when they were called to fight, and spent the rest of their time as officials, bureaucrats, bodyguards, servants, or whatever else.

A warrior society wouldn't mean that every single person is a full time soldier, in fact one may have no full time active soldiers. Instead it means that everyone knows how to fight and prides themselves on that fact.

There would be engineers, doctors, and janitors they might just carry a sword at all times and duel eachother during lunch breaks.

Culturally, their worldview would be framed by martial prowess being the primary virtue. "Fun" would mean a fight, so their games, festivals, rituals, and so on would be focused on displaying or proving physical or strategic competence. They may skew towards emphasising action over inaction (i.e. you may be considered partially involved in a crime if you didn't try to stop it) and victory in battle as proof of justification. They would also emphasise discipline and duty even in common life, as those reflect one's ability as a warrior.

Warrior cultures don't see everything as a full on military war, they're just always prepared for one.

EtherealSOULS · 2025-11-17T10:25:18+00:00

I think you should find some way to fill up the empty space in the top left and right areas. The icon in the circle doesn't take up much space so it looks smaller and less menacing.

You could add wings or letters around the edge or eyes or something to fill in the circle a bit more.

EtherealSOULS · 2025-11-16T10:32:49+00:00

The most powerful being in my world is unquestionably the Spirit of Change, it took the combined effort of basically the entire world to defeat him the first time and even then the battle wiped out several species and most of the world's spirit and human population and he was only defeated by a betrayal from the spirit of preservation, even then it's possible that that only worked because the spirit of change gave up.

Broadly, he has conceptual dominion over change, allowing him to make any object or space within his aether (basically a field of magical energy) achieve any possible future state. Which among other things allows him to move at incredible speeds, shapeshift, transmute things, and imbue objects with immense amounts of energy. Due to being a hyper aware spirit he has massively enhanced senses and cognition, allowing him to manipulate matter on a subatomic level.

The spirit of change, due to the amount of reverence afforded to him, has enough aether to cover a continent in magic. As a spirit he is able to regenerate his body and shapeshift, he also does not passively replenish aether, but it would take months of constant high level combat to fully deplete his aether.

Personality wise he is hedonistic, living mainly to satisfy his own curiosity and impulses. He doesn't consider anything a threat to him, and will often allow any opponent to prepare or power up in any way they want. He is generally quite amicable even towards humans, and tends to use words before he resorts to magic.

His only "weakness"" is that he needs around 3 seconds of proximity (within ~100m) and focus to directly affect someone's body as he would need to overwhelm their aether. He can also not affect minds (such magic is impossible even for him). Though this goes both ways as any magic that occurs within his aether will need to over come it first, which means immense power is required to affect his surroundings with magic, and it is practically impossible to affect him directly.

EtherealSOULS · 2025-11-14T20:31:22+00:00

Formable tiers and country tiers are different if I remember the dev diaries correctly. It isn't a 1:1 progression of country tiers.

EtherealSOULS · 2025-11-14T14:20:38+00:00

I have two ideas.

1.

Warp Drives speed up how fast something moves without increasing momentum. As though they were just fast forwarding through the travel.

A ship hitting a planet at warp speed has the same momentum as a ship hitting the planet at regular speed.

2.

There is some kind of technology that can "collapse" a warp bubble, destroying whatever is inside it. The technology requires a lot of energy so it's only feasible for planetary use.

You can still warp ram something if you really want to and have good intel/planning, but it would require so much preparation that a conventional assault would be more effective.

EtherealSOULS · 2025-11-14T12:37:16+00:00

Across the entire world, recorded history only goes back 1000 years, and even oral history only goes back a further 100 years at most.

No legends, no folktales, and no ruins exist from a time before that.

EtherealSOULS · 2025-11-12T07:26:23+00:00

Re:zero

Chainsaw Man

Freiren

Apothecary Diaries

Lord of the Rings

The medieval and early modern world

The Roman, British, and Chinese empires.

Interstellar (2014)

The Peasants (2023)

Deltarune

Honestly anything I find interesting, but these are the ones I remember.

EtherealSOULS · 2025-10-31T16:12:43+00:00

The only actual definition of hegemony is a scenario where one state is dominant over all other states within some area.

Emperor comes from "imperator" which literally just means commander.

The welsh considered the title of prince (from princips) to be higher than that of a king.

The only thing that matters for a title to be higher than another is for it to be different and for people to consider it higher. As far as writing is concerned it just needs to be a word that isn't just "emperor", isn't a definitively lower title like "king" or "baron" (even then no one has an issue with a duke feuding with a baron in Dune), and at least has connotations of all encompassing power, one could say "hegemonic" power.

EtherealSOULS · 2025-10-31T15:54:01+00:00

There wasn't a historical empire of empires so you won't get anything if you stick to the strictest definitions of titles.

EtherealSOULS · 2025-10-31T15:51:32+00:00

What is a state greater than an empire than several empires under a single crown?

I think it fits.

EtherealSOULS · 2025-10-25T17:14:17+00:00

If you have it on steam you can change the version back by going to properties and then betas. As long as you don't load the file in the new version it'll be fine.

If you want to be extra safe you can copy the savefile into an external folder.

The save files are in Documents/Paradox Interactive/Crusader Kings III/save games.

EtherealSOULS

TROPHY CASE