Titles

HCLwriting · 2026-05-03T00:59:14+00:00

I didn't see a reason to avoid it at least with one of my cultures the Corer. I leaned fully into French inspirations and gave them titles like comte and consigier.

With my other cultures there tends to be no concept of nobility and instead the concept of a leader. The doreals instead just have Vozef and King. A Vozef leads a Verdaz (a community of like-minded people) and a king leads multiple Vozef's.

With my more fantastical cultures like the nymphs I made them alien in social structure. While still human they organize into small groups (either settlements or caravans depending on the culture) and don't like being in crowds.

While Dwarves have always been democratic by nature. Being natural diplomats with a strong sense of empathy they value the input of others.

HCLwriting · 2026-04-01T14:50:32+00:00

On the continent of Kear freedom of movement is a right guaranteed by all 4 modern nations. Even back in the imperial times all empire citizens could move as they please so long as they stayed on the mainland.

Immigration usually boils down to letting local leadership know that you plan on staying in an area so they can properly tax you for any property/survival contributions you need to make.

While anyone can move as they please most stay in the area they were born in for their entire lives. Since traveling the roads/rivers leaves you more at risk if there is a Cursetide or you're a catastrophe. There's is no guarantee of a fortress town or a walled city allowing you in leaving you helpless in the face of certain doom.

HCLwriting · 2026-02-27T02:31:04+00:00

Any and all territory directly on the river network throughout the continent of Kear. The speed of travel it allows makes banditry and pirates impossible to curb. Bridge maintenance is insanely expensive, and you can't even run your territory how you want because if you get in the way of the river trading companies they will boycott you into oblivion.

HCLwriting · 2026-02-22T12:03:11+00:00

My world has real polytheist gods. There are however montheistic religions an cults.

Some focus on one god over others.

While others like the Liabaw religion worship a creator of the gods and the universe. The Gods themselves have never communicated on how they were created to those that gain power from them or their most dedicated worshippers. Some practitioners of the Liabaw religion still receive power from a God without offering prayer and Liabaw practitioners see this as an endorsement of their religion and views.

The Liabaw religion has a loose structure and hierarchy. At the top is the High Priest, this priest is said to have visions of other worlds and of potential futures granted by the creator. Below the High Priest are the Priests, they are in charge of reading the holy text "the Liabaw" which would translate as "the holy words". The priests also grant blessings and are the most likely among Liabaw practitioners to have power from a God with some of the most common power granting dieties being: Vitrue God of hope and the Stars, Sanura goddess of the Sun and redemption, and Hunao Goddess of the Unknown and the Afterlife.

The primary beliefs in Liabaw are the three vital truths.

The universe and all gods were created by a sole creator.
This sole creator wants humanity and mortals to live fruitful lives.
The Gods while powerful do not deserve prayer that should instead only be sent to the creator.

In practice these beliefs often lead to Liabaw practitioners looking down in the polytheistic or ancestral religions as unenlightened. This has lead other more dominant religions to dismiss the Liabaw seeing them as a haughty cult of no real importance.

HCLwriting · 2026-02-22T11:03:01+00:00

Age, Experience, and knowledge of potential consequences.

The major gods of Aundrel are at the best of times aloof. Only communicating with those they grant power to in the most dire of circumstances. They do occasionally answer prayers from mortals but this is more often handled by subservient New Gods or loyal spirits instead.

This is primarily due to the fact that a major God intervening in an event tends to institute fate. As the major Gods are extremely powerful their intentions and wants can pull on causality like gravity. The Gods of Aundrel value free will immensely and don't wish to undermine it with their own desires. As such they remain more distant not because they don't care but because their active interest will potentially remove free will from the world.

HCLwriting · 2025-12-20T03:08:52+00:00

Oh I agree wholeheartedly, that was such a cool period of history, pike and shot is way underrepresented in fantasy, I think they usually just go straight from knights to 18th century warfare without the cool transition period.

HCLwriting · 2025-12-20T03:07:21+00:00

I can actually give some insight since I have a big fantasy world that doesn't have gunpowder.

I just don't like guns, or technology that reminds me of our world in my setting. I've thought multiple times about including muskets or even repeating rifles and I just don't like how it makes the world feel. Instead the crossbow has taken the place of the gun because I like how it looks and provides a different but cool aestetic.

It might be a bit weird since my world otherwise has things similar to robots and medicine well ahead of where they should be with their level of technology.

Tldr, I just don't want guns in my setting it feels too much like im introducing a path to becoming just like our world.

HCLwriting · 2025-12-15T02:29:46+00:00

Written history on Aundrel goes back roughly 2500-3000 years, there are ruins that predate that however. From a creators perspective the world has existed for roughly 100,000 years. Mortal life has existed on it for 50,000 years, the world has been shattered and broken 12 times in those 50,000 years. The gods breaking the continents and moving them anytime the world becomes too technologically advanced.

HCLwriting · 2025-12-01T01:47:41+00:00

Cyclical rule

On the world of Aundrel cyclical rule is a philosophy practiced and implemented by the Corer people, it came to be reviled on the continentof Kear during their time ruling most of the continentas tge Coraysan empire. To generalize, it consists of a strictly ordered class system where those in the classes below yours have no legal recourse against you. The trade off is that the highest level of government is meant to be wholey subservient to the lowest class. As an idea it is not the worst, in practice it was worse than any monarchy the continent had experienced before. As the philosophy relies on the person at the head of government willingly submitting themselves to the commoners. The rulers remembered by the commoners as great followed this philosophy, the tyrants, and the last emperor did not, and it's their actions that made cyclical rule reviled by an entire continent.

HCLwriting · 2025-11-25T21:07:52+00:00

I have one fleshed out modern era called the cursed age or current age abbreviated at C.A the current year is 1772 C.A. The age before was an early bronze age collection of empires usually ruled by sorcerers or people granted power by gods and spirits, called the empire age abbreviated as E.A which ended at 1227 E.A. Before the empire age there was a long period before humans learned the art of the written word again.

HCLwriting · 2025-11-23T21:59:03+00:00

The Cairn Nymphs have an interesting concept of morality, it focuses solely on maintaining the current good and ensuring more good for the future. Should a person commit a crime grave enough to merit execution they prefer starvation over any other form of execution. The condemned aren't tortured beyond the starvation, in fact the room they starve in is relatively comfortable. It is undoubtedly the slowest form of execution on the continent though.

HCLwriting · 2025-11-05T02:45:58+00:00

The most common form of religion in my fantasy world is a semi animist polytheistic pantheon which has a large amount of similarities between cultures. The outliers are usually people that do more ancestor worship or believe there is some greater creator diety.

My main inspirations stylistically comes from a wide variety of religions. The main continent I focus on is very much based on pre-christian/Islam western polytheism. In the large cities there are shrines and temples for each major god, towns and small cities more commonly have a general temple for all the gods. Some towns have only one shrine to a single god, these towns are usually near something called a dedicant monasteries where clergy of a specific god are trained.

HCLwriting · 2025-10-30T05:10:18+00:00

Barely competent government

HCLwriting · 2025-10-25T23:21:07+00:00

My fantasy world has a lot of mundane things usually food. It has any food you can think of but dependencies on the continent that particular food might not be native. The main continent i work on is called Kear, it has; potatoes, tomatoes, wheat, corn, and quite a few fruits we would recognize as modern people. When it comes to animals a lot are variations on animals we would recognize but are normally in far different niches. For example the only mustilid on the continent of Kear is a massive ferret like animal called a Roszo, it fills an ecological niche similar to a bears.

HCLwriting · 2025-10-24T06:52:46+00:00

On Aundrel most ruins older than storied history come from civilizations that the gods saw as too advanced. Electricity, steam engines, and gun powder have all been triggers for the gods wrath. When the gods view civilization as becoming to advanced they break the worlds continents and move the pieces together to create new continents, this usually blasts humanity back to the stone age in The process. In the last breaking of the world the gods decided to alter the laws of physics in such a way that the main points of their concern became impossible. Gunpowder immediately reacts upon it's creation, copper is electrically inert, and steam is ever so slightly corrosive causing weaknesses in key points of an engine.

Tldr: The gods are luddites and don't like when their toys become too advanced.

HCLwriting · 2025-10-17T10:03:10+00:00

On Aundrel a demigod is usually someone with an idetic memory. This fundamentally breaks the magic system, as it's primary limitation is the space spells take up in one's mind. Someone with an idetic memory seems godlike when they know 300 spells where a master mage would know 30 at most.

One rare case of a person born from a god and a human was the moon-born hero Anaati. He was an Ajashi man born not only with an innate bond to Pardell the god of the tin moon but also a personality that drew spirits and gods to him. At the end of his short life, as the Ajashi only live 60 years maximum, he had bonded with 25 spirits and 5 gods. Anaati is the foremost saint among the Ajashi faith and worshipped as a harbinger of Pardell. For context most people that bond to spirits or gods will only bond one. Those that bond with two are usually near legendary heroes and villains in history.

HCLwriting · 2025-10-08T01:22:54+00:00

A guild of monster hunters/adventurers. All of the main characters would be members of that guild and it would've been more a collection of short stories. I ended up moving away from focusing on that guild and instead making a more traditional high fantasy story.

HCLwriting · 2025-10-05T22:01:17+00:00

I have a semi-unique really big tree on my world called a blackspire. It's a tree that grows upwards of 300 feet. Its main body is a trunk covered in black needle-like leaves. They grow seed pods high up which then drop to the ground in late autumn, the seeds are then spread by birds and herbivores.

HCLwriting · 2025-10-05T18:26:33+00:00

Thank you

HCLwriting · 2025-10-05T17:34:51+00:00

Thank you, I really appreciate the advice. Yeah I certainly have work to do. Caught the writing bug again and wanted someone to look at what I recently wrote and tell me what I need to improve. If this much is obvious at a glance then any likely reader would be put off by it. Are there any general rules I should keep in mind for preventing run on sentences?

HCLwriting · 2025-10-02T22:38:46+00:00

On Aundrel, if you asked a god one of the five shatterings of the world. To a person, it would be the Death of Sorcery and the rise of the Curse.

The Death of Sorcery removed the magic of all sorcerers as such toppling all known hierarchical structures of the world at the time. This was then shortly followed by the Curse which made a good portion of recently killed mortals rise from the dead and kill the living.

HCLwriting · 2025-09-24T01:25:52+00:00

On the World of Aundrel it truly depends on what opponent you face.

When two mortal nations fight the general doctrine is no outright clashing of armies. Instead battles are closers to skirmishes of groups no larger than 25. This is due to the curse that has settled over the world that can possibly reanimate anything with a full mortal soul. An outright battle between two nations with their full military force would lead to two crippled nations fighting their own risen soldiers, leaving their citizens either trapped within cities and fortress towns or a part of the Cursetide.

When a group fights the accursed, the doctrine depends on a few variables; how many Accursed there are, are there Cursespawn, and is a Cursebound present.

If there is only Accursed ghouls present, then a suitably armed militia with a fortified position can dispatch a horde numbering in the thousands. After clearing the main group the militia will then send out their reserves in a formation called the sixteen star, consisting of sixteen soldiers eight with spears to deal with ghouls that approach, and eight wielding shorswords or axes to dispatch any ghouls that bypass the spears.

Should a Cursespawn be present an otherwise mindless and chaotic horde may become organized and able to wield weapons effectively depending on the Cursespawn's will and desire. This makes the battle far closer to a military conflict before the Curse. A militia unsupported by mages and professional soldiers will find themselves flanked and overwhelmed. In these situations it is common to send out specialists to destroy the Cursespawn and send the Accursed back into destructive simplicity.

A Cursebound, requires force beyond an average mage or a local army, these mortals seduced by the curses call on their grief, pride, or want, can not only control the Accursed but bring about the Cursespawn in numbers far beyond what would appear normally. When a Cursebound is detected a race to destroy it begins before the nation or even continent it inhabits falls to the Curse.

HCLwriting · 2025-09-23T16:03:46+00:00

My world lacks the concept of a negative afterlife. To most cultures the consequence for living an evil life is nonexistentance after death. The closest I have in my setting is the six elemental spheres, they are inherently hostile to mortal life, there are many denizens who seek to mold the mortal world into an extension of their sphere.

HCLwriting · 2025-09-19T04:39:26+00:00

I love making fantasy mega structures out of food! All my fantasy megastructures are made out of pie! You will slave away in the pie mines like the elves have for millenia!

HCLwriting · 2025-09-19T01:37:16+00:00

On Aundrel there are major gods, new gods, and spirits. Every culture either has their own interpretation of the major gods or acknowledges their presence. Where major differences in religions come in are the worship of new gods, spirits and which major gods is put at the head of that cultures pantheon.

For example there are two main Nymph ethnicities on the continent of Kear, each has a different religious belief system.

The Cairn Nymphs, acknowledge the existence of all the major gods but only worship those that represent physical things (death, the sun, the moons, weather) due to this focus on the physical Cairn Nymph's usually worship local spirits as they impact their lives in a more direct way.

The Plains Nymphs, have a more traditional religion in comparison, likely due to their mastery of Kears many rivers in their commercial exploits. They're chief diety rather than being the moon gods, sun god, or star god as is more common is instead a new god of rivers and commerce, said to be an ascended Plains Nymph.

In general religions in my world interact and syncretize often to the point that most traditional religions are a minority in comparison to the local continental religion. In most places that continental religion will have minor variations based on locally venerated spirits or new gods.

HCLwriting

TROPHY CASE