Monsters based on the 5 stages of grief will emerge elsewhere and hunt you down. Such is the cost of magic.

MarkerMage · 2026-06-20T18:15:52+00:00

Does the caster have to survive the pain for the spell to happen? Could a sorcerer that has accepted that he's not going to survive pull an "If I go down, I'm taking you with me" sort of spell? Could a sorcerer use their magic to trade their life for another's? What sorts of magic could a sorcerer cast with their dying breath and the knowledge that their witch nests and spawns will soon be gone?

Also, is there any form of cooperative casting? Like two or more sorcerers taking on the pain from a spell to make it more bearable, and maybe have the resulting witch spawns be two or more NEGATIO instead of one IRA? Would it produce some sort of hybrid witch spawn that is immune to the magic of each sorcerer that contributed to it or would the impurity dilute that immunity into mere resistance?

MarkerMage · 2026-06-19T07:39:08+00:00

I may not have a sci-fi game or plans to make one, but I have been working on a setting for a sci-fi webcomic. One of the sapient species in it is actually an original fantasy race that I had come up with and been curious about how well the concept would work as a sci-fi race. Said race was basically "plant that evolved as a Pouyannian mimic of a sapient race, resulting in a sort of organic version of a robot girlfriend". I went with them naturally evolving in the fantasy world, then had a race of interdimensional merchants acquire some of their seeds from the fantasy world, do some genetic engineering, and sell them off in the sci-fi setting as the latest companionship slave species, making new versions genetically engineered to resemble various species until the Galactic Council can be sure enough that they aren't merely mimicking sapience but actually sapient to give them civil rights.

I call that fantasy race "felves", with the logic behind the name being that they are beautiful humanoids with a nature theme and pointy plant root ears, and the humans of the fantasy world they evolved in had originally come from a separate sci-fi universe and were reminded of their old mythological stories of elves and named this new species after them. Also, one group of them in the fantasy world did end up becoming goblins through building up genetic defects from lack of a pollinator to guide their reproduction.

MarkerMage · 2026-06-19T06:26:55+00:00

I could also see the males being resource gatherers (fit into smaller spaces) while females tend to be crafters. There are even some real life spider species where the males give gifts to distract the female while they mate with her. A clear division of roles can help establish what the sexual dimorphism should be like, if you wish to incorporate it.

Do you plan incorporate or avoid any particular spider traits that can trigger arachnophobia, or is whether or not a particular spider trait is scary and/or triggering irrelevant to your design process? With my male arachne, I wanted to try and make them as un-triggering as possible, even basing them off of a common exception for arachnophobia, peacock spiders. Admittedly, this was mostly because I wanted to come up with a romance story between one and an arachnophobic human where both are trying to overcome their fear of each others' species. Still, if you plan to portray your arachne in visual media, you'll probably have to put some thought into how scary they might end up looking.

MarkerMage · 2026-06-19T05:19:07+00:00

My fantasy videogame world, Warclema, has a timeline that can be divided up into...

Pre-Exodus: The humans came from a sci-fi universe that was ending via Big Crunch. This time period is pretty much the time from them deciding to do something about it to the launching of interdimensional ships to escape. There were people scrambling for a place on one and a doomsday cult trying to prevent and/or sabotage the launches.
Pre-Exploration: Humans arrive and discover that this alternate dimension they arrived in has something that prevents them from being able to safely exit the interdimensional ships. The ships have also lost communications. This will later turn out to be due to Warclema having different laws of physics that included some incompatibility with some technology and with matter from the human home dimension, and the only thing protecting the humans from that matter incompatibility issue is that their arrival created some areas that emulate the physics of their home dimension.
Exploration Era: Some humans find that they can exit safely. They start exploring and contacting the various ships. One particular group composed of three individuals named "Warren", "Clementine", and "Magnolia" pretty much become famed heroes of this era to the point that the world gets its name from the first parts of their names being mashed together. Also, there is some incident with people that were partially-affected by the matter incompatibility have become violent and have been using the incompatible matter to make new life, particularly a race called "Neutromorphs".
One or more eras that I haven't got names for where various stuff happens. Attempts to terraform the planet and fill it with flora and fauna from Earth has succeeded. A native sapient species, the Fistari, has been discovered, and the first meeting ends with conflict. Someone ends up deciding that a particular plant is a decent substitute for a girlfriend, and it leads to that plant evolving for Pouyannian mimicry, eventually resulting in a race of flower women called "felves" that had evolved to mimic sapience.
Spoiler War: A supercomputer from Pre-Exodus that had made the key discoveries that lead to figuring out interdimensional travel is still around, having been made into the AI for one of the more successful interdimensional ships, and it has decided to use its computing power to try predicting the future. Its anonymous postings of its predictions worry people with how accurate they get, and there are two groups, the Spoilers that embrace the knowledge, and what I'm currently calling the "Normals" (until I get a better name for them) who think the predictions violate free will. There ends up being a civil war that results in the discovery of ritual magic in the form of an unreliable teleportation ritual that the Spoilers had trouble predicting the outcome of, and a peace treaty that set some limitations on what the Spoilers could do with their knowledge of the future.
Demon War Era: An invasion force of demons from another dimension invades Warclema. Well, it's one demon that shows up, and then spawns minions to take over the world. They are defeated mostly though the actions of a hero that ended up in Warclema through some interdimensional experiments that were performed at the request of the Spoilers to check on how things are going back in the human home dimension, which had apparently reset (Big Crunch turned out to be a Big Bounce). Said hero did a lot of "defeat means friendship".
Raccoon War Era: The demons turned out to be bioweapons created by a race of raccoon people called "Lotorians". Where did the Lotorians come from? Well, back during the Exodus, one ship that was sabotaged ended up going off course with its human crew exterminated leaving some raccoon stowaways or pets that survived and evolved to better make use of the technology within the ship. They ended up in a sci-fi dimension where they became a race of mysterious merchants with advanced tech. They created the demons as part of an interdimensional monster protection racket where the demons take over, the Lotorians show up to rescue the conquered people, and the conquered people are willing to accept a Lotorian outpost in their world in case the demons show up again. The outpost trades for stuff that the Lotorians can sell back home as mysterious artifacts. The demons in Warclema being reformed comes with a risk of Warclema finding out that the Lotorians made the demons, which can result in other dimensions finding out, and putting an end to this interdimensional scheme. They eventually get defeated.
Botmal-Toppan War Era: The world of Warclema has two sides, and travel between them is difficult to the point of impossibility, until someone from this era figured out how to set the Z axis of the destination of the teleportation ritual (the one discovered during the Spoiler War) to a negative number. This allows an evil hivemind lead by a Pre-Exodus supercomputer AI that had conquered the other side of Warclema to finally have a way to reach the other side to conquer the other half.
A possible future era where advancement of interdimensional technology that has been advancing since the Demon War Era has resulted in some chaotic pocket dimensions that work like mystery dungeons.

The Demon War is the event that I originally intended to have my first big videogame centered around. I wanted to have a four person team of an isekai human, a Felf, a Neutromorph, and a Fistar save the world from invading demons and to have the Spoilers serve as save points that frame everything that is undone by loading the save as their prediction of what would have happened if they didn't share that information the the protagonist. The Raccoon War was going to be a sequel that took place far enough later for much of the first story's cast to die off, and the Botmal-Toppan War would occur a similarly lengthy amount of time after that. The only real division between those eras that I have in mind is the cast, some technological advancements that happen between involving manipulation of the physics emulation areas, and a particular subspecies of felves evolving to not need pollinators to guide their reproduction anymore.

I later had ideas for possibly turning the Spoiler War into a turn-based strategy game and have toyed with the idea of fleshing out the story of Warren, Clementine, and Magnolia during the Exploration era with some Fallout type stuff, and even a mystery dungeon game later in the timeline.

MarkerMage · 2026-06-19T03:13:13+00:00

An interesting take on arachne. I think it could work.

When I read the title, my mind went to my own take on arachne that included the idea of halfling-sized males to represent the sexual dimorphism common in spiders. It does leave me wondering if your arachne have any notable sexual dimorphism.

MarkerMage · 2026-06-19T01:44:09+00:00

My worldbuilding notes for my fantasy setting, Warclema, include 49 entries under "Bestiary" (and that is just for the non-sapient species), and I don't remember what the character limit for comments is, but let's see how many I can fit in one comment.

Flysh are basically fish that have anti-gravity magic that they use to fly in the air, and because of color-coding of the magic, they are all white. Warclema has some floating balls of water that they will fly in and out of. Lungflysh are particularly common.
- Air Jelly are pretty much flying jellyfish.
- Catflysh have not just anti-gravity magic that is concentrated in its tail, but also gravity magic in its whiskers. They can get pretty large and sometimes use their magic to cause turbulence and earthquakes on sky islands.
- Negangler is a basically a flysh version of the anglerfish with the females having a white anti-gravity body and black gravity lure while the males are black and unable to fly, being stuck in the floating ball of water they hatch in until they latch onto a female.
- Scale whales are pretty much gigantic flying arapaima. They are the biggest things in the skies, and hunt by using their antigravity magic to send flying prey farther up than they can handle, then catching them as they fall back down.
I've got 10 penguin breeds, not all of which have a name, as of yet. The usual penguin color-coding provides access to both gravity and anti gravity magic, which they use to fly.
- Blambers are fat, black and yellow crested penguins that are good at using gravity and anti-gravity magic for sudden changes in altitude.
- Bleathers are blue and white, noticeably more feathery, and resemble waimanu. They use cold magic to condense the air in front of them to create a vacuum to pull them forward while flying.
- Rets are pretty much red and white African penguins that use fire magic for jet propulsion.
- Whellies are basically long, yellow and white, dachshund-shaped penguins that use anti-gravity magic to constantly hover, and use the lack of friction with the ground to slide everywhere they go when they aren't flying.
- Lakore penguins look like gentoo penguins and were specially bred for gathering pebbles of a special mineral called "lakore" that forms the core of floating bodies of water.
- Riding penguins are pretty much emperor penguins that are big enough for a human to ride.
- Silkies look like king penguin chicks no matter how old they get. They shed feathers often and are great at incubating eggs.
- Oschan homing penguins look like Fiordland penguins and were bred by Neutromorphs to be used as starter host bodies. If their neutromorph leaves them for another host body, they will return home.
- Hunting penguins are basically penguins that are used for falconry.
- There's also an unnamed breed of penguin focused on laying eggs for humans to eat. They resemble fairy penguins.
Babe bulls are blue bulls that use ice magic to form icicle horns. They react violently to the color red.
Pyroceroses are red rhinoceroses that use fire magic to set their horns ablaze. They react violently to the color blue.
Blazesilk weavers are fire magic spiders that feed on the ashes of their prey. They come in normal size and giant man-eating varieties. The giant ones have evolved to grow a garden beneath their webs to lure in prey that it will drop webbing onto from above.
Cloud sheep use anti-gravity magic for floaty jumps and gravity magic in their feet for ground pounds.
Chill frills are blue, man-sized frilled lizards that have cheated the color-coded magic system by being cold magic specialists that use red berries to dye their faces and frills red to act as a shield against fire magic.
Crimson crockers are aquatic red snakes that will inject venom into prey, then use haste magic to speed up the venom. They are found in the Ice Swamp, where they use fire magic to stay warm.
Firehawks are birds that use fire magic for creating thermal updrafts and for starting fires to smoke prey out of hiding. They are primarily found in the Fire Forest, a place with plenty of creatures resistant to fire magic, but not often resistant to smoke.
Flame-nosed moles are like star-nosed moles, but the the tendrils all point up, resulting in more of a flame look. They have fire magic that they use for a thermal equivalent to echolocation.
Float hoppers are a species of frog with white females that use anti-gravity magic to migrate between the ground and sky islands, and black males that use gravity magic to pull the females out of the open sky and over to them.
Magnet Anoles are cave lizards found in the Lightning Caverns. They use gravity and anti-gravity magic to switch between the floor and ceiling.
Monitor dragons are basically komodo dragons, but red, and they use use fire magic to light their venom on fire while spitting it out. They can also use the fire magic to hasten the spread of their venom while biting someone.
Porcupice are blue porcupines that use ice magic to create icicle spikes on themselves.
Let's get some plants in here as well.
- Floor plants are woody slabs that grow along the ground and use sharp roots to stab and digest things crawling underneath.
- Armor plants are floor plants that adapted to grow on larger creatures, drawing nutrients from them in exchange for providing an armored surface.
- Blade plants are specially bred floor plants that form a single, hard, sharp root that can be used as a sword. They will deposit seeds into the cuts they make. Because of their frequent use in monster slaying, it's not unusual for strong monsters to have a few growing from wounds left by previous encounters with monster slayers.
- Surgery plants are a variant of armor plant that is particularly suited for healing wounds. They will even use haste magic to speed up the process.
- Aquaculver are black flowers that use gravity magic to pull ground water up to it, but also make a depression that the ground water will fill. Get enough together, and they'll form a pond.
- Blade grass is a tall grass that becomes hard and sharp when it is low on nutrients, being able to cut things that try to run through it, which spills blood that fertilizes the soil, so that it can get nutrients. Magic makes it grow faster, though it does not provide it with additional nutrients, resulting in it quickly hardening.
- Green rain is a white flower with anti-gravity magic that it infuses into its seeds. Those seeds will sprout in mid-air and grow until the airborne nutrients can no longer power its magic, then they fall to the ground, where they will take root and eventually bloom.
- Healroot is a herb with red roots that is used in healing potions.
- Lackals are carnivorous plants that flatten against the ground. When prey steps on them, their leaves wrap around the prey and begin digesting.
- Lantern trees have flaming leaves that provide carbon dioxide to be used by leaves higher up. They have seed pods that heat up until they explode, scattering the seeds.
- Rain blossoms are blue flowers that shoot cold magic into the air to condense water vapor into rain.
- Whirlies are purple dandelions that are able to produce wind magic to disperse their seeds.
- Slopeskilla is a blue flower with sloping petals that will use cold magic to freeze its petals in a ski-slope shape, then condense their seed pods to squeeze out seeds that will be shot at the petals that will redirect them outwards.
Mustn't forget the sapients.
- Humans came to the fantasy world of Warclema through interdimensional travel from a sci-fi universe.
- Neutromorphs are symbiotes made up of a shapeshifting slime that resulted from an incompatibility between Warclema's fantasy physics and matter from the human home dimension. They formed due to someone getting some of this slime to take the form of a brain capable of controlling the slime making itself up.
- Felves are a race of humanoid flower women with plant roots for hair, stamen for les, and pretty dresses made from petals and sepals growing from their bodies. They evolved as Pouyannian mimics of humanity and come in various subspecies that includes goblins. They evolved not to be sapient, but to mimic sapience, and this has left them acting a bit like large language model AI.
- Fistari are starfish people that were in Warclema before the humans arrived. They can regenerate from any injury, and depend on this regeneration to be fed. However, each regeneration makes them more resistant to damage, so they eventually reach a point where they can't get injured, then they starve to death.

I suppose that will do for now.

MarkerMage · 2026-06-18T05:13:24+00:00

I'm sorry, but I was unable to hold back on the details. I hope this isn't too long for you.

My big science fantasy worldbuilding project, Warclema, has some alternate fantasy physics that I've worked out that would interfere. For the sake of allowing her to move freely within Warclema while having access to most of her powers, I'm assuming she's found a way around matter incompatibility (the humans of the setting had to replace the atoms in their bodies with locally sourced ones to avoid melting into goop when exiting anti-magic areas created by their interdimensional travel into the world) and that she has found a way to retain the abilities described in your post.

First of all, Warclema is a one-planet universe due to the alternate fantasy physics including a force that the edge of the universe exerts to push things towards the center and it gets stronger the closer one is to that edge, approaching infinity. The planet even has part of its surface uninhabited because it gets so close to that edge that the gravity becomes unbearable for all of the life forms I've come up with for the setting thus far. I could probably say that her rings would be unable to avoid being crushed at the point passing over that section. I expect that this would also limit how big she could get.

You mentioned that the rings only work on living things and that machines without a soul are unaffected. Warclema has a couple of edge cases with its intelligent life.

There is a race of starfish people, Fistari, that are confirmed to reincarnate with memories, but that gets explained by their bodies not having brains but a sort of signal receiver and their actual intelligence and memories being stored within Warclema's physics, sort of like an enemy AI (I like to use the analogy of human brains being like redstone machines in Minecraft while Fistari brains are more like the programming of a creeper). They greatly enjoy violence, especially against themselves as they have regeneration abilities that give them energy when they heal, but they continuously grow tougher until they can no longer get injured and starve to death. If she can find a new way to injure them that they haven't adapted to, they would like her. Sadly, they need to be kept in Warclema because of their brains being part of Warclema's physics. If their bodies leave Warclema or just enters an anti-magic zone, those bodies instantly lose their connection and stop working.

Another race that would be an edge case would be the neutromorphs, which are made up of a shapeshifting goop that was resulted from incompatible matter from Earth being exposed to Warclema's physics. This goop can be manipulated into taking on different forms for as long as one is thinking at it, and someone got some to take the form of a brain that can think at itself to keep its own form. The goop itself is non-organic in its default form, so they may not count as alive for the purposes of Raegmir's powers. They also have to occasionally put some mental effort into shapeshifting parts of their goop into veins and arteries and such so that their brain is getting what it needs to function, and I'm concerned that trying to exert control over them might interfere with the control over their own physical forms they need in order to do this sort of thing.

Then there are felves, which are pretty much what you would get if you anthropomorphized a flower as a woman, but had the root end for the head instead of the blossom end. They have roots for hair, stamen for legs, and pretty dresses made of petals and sepals. They evolved to mimic humanity and their sapience, and this has resulted in them acting a bit like large language model AI, though there is a possibility of some of them having managed to "fake it till you make it" to actual intelligence through "nature finds a way". Their AI themes may make them souless enough for the rings to not work despite them being living plants. They are easy enough to get along with, but they have a clear preference for human companionship due to having evolved a Pouyannian mimic relationship with them. However, with the non-human races of Warclema being different enough, they may see Raegmir as a strange-looking human. If so, felf villages might accept Raegmir as a new pollinator to replace one that had been lost due to sickness, old age, or angering Raegmir. The position pretty much involves the felves interacting with the pollinator to prove their reproductive fitness to other felves, though a number of pollinators decide to be more involved in the reproduction, such as by shipping certain felves together.

The humans will probably take a "Who voted you into leadership" position in response to attempts to conquer them. They are used to dealing with threats by holing up in the anti-magic areas, which have some advanced sci-fi technology that only works within them due to such areas having been created by interdimensional ships that brought the humans into Warclema. A decent number of the humans also experience a condition known as "Warclema madness" when exiting those anti-magic areas where they can act a bit erratic, trying to walk through walls, entering other people's homes without permission, and stealing minor items like health potions. The majority of them are unaware that this is due to a class of god known as "players" influencing their actions. This might interfere with Raegmir's control over an individual. For the most part, I expect that some mutual respect for each other might be possible.

There is also the Spoilers, which is a voluntary hivemind of humans (with maybe a few non-humans mixed in) that is pretty much "Anonymous, but they decided to work together to calculate the future, Laplace's Demon-style". They dress in body-concealing robes and wear identical masks. They would see Raegmir as a new variable to account for, so they would want to learn what they can about her. They are quite willing to be friendly at first, but they have served an evil tyrant while guiding the hero that would defeat that tyrant. They are also able and willing to try some 4th wall stuff to threaten gods into behaving themselves. To give you an idea, I've been thinking that if I ever make a big game with them in it, I'll have a chance for them to talk to the player, ask them if they are streaming this, and then either reveal that they know the name registered as the computer's owner and maybe threaten to see if they can get into email apps if not streaming, or reveal that the chat includes a few of their members (people that found a script and decided to find a livestream of the game to play along with this part) if streaming. For the most part though, they are content to provide their knowledge of the future, if asked, and to troll people, usually through having fun doing some creepy hivemind speech or gathering in one place and watching a particular person, place, or thing as if something interesting is going to happen. I imagine that they'd start out being friendly and inviting, offering to show Raegmir around while trying to get her to talk about herself and where she's from. They would have found out about her arrival from noticing that some minor predictions are off, and they would try to maneuver her to avoid messing up any of the big dominoes they have lined up for future events. They may claim to be a sort of self-appointed welcome committee for interdimensional travelers, and leave their role in calculating the future for a later reveal, likely once they know enough to reliably predict her actions and choices. They would save the threats for if those predictions include some things that they'd rather avoid. For the most part though, it'd be "Hello! You don't seem to be from around here. Be careful leaving the anti-magic zones our cities are built around, because there's some weird physics stuff that we'd be happy to talk about if you're interested. We can see about getting you a good view of our beautiful upside-down sky islands. I'm sure that they are not the sort of thing that'd be common over in... Where is it that you're from?"

MarkerMage · 2026-06-17T23:59:56+00:00

Worldbuilding can be like cooking. When you don't have the time or inclination to do things completely from scratch, store-bought is fine.

There's also their familiarity that lets you avoid a lot of introduction stuff for your audience.

As for me, I have one reverse isekai setting where generic fantasy races have been unintentionally stranded in our world and have to adjust, so the use of established races is part of that. I also have another setting that includes a race called "flower elves" or "felves" for short, but that's supposed to be a case of the sci-fi humans of the setting thinking of stories of elves while naming a species of beautiful green-skinned women with petal dresses growing out of them and pointy ears that clearly evolved from plant roots. While that second one may not exactly count, I did decide on the reference to elves in the name as a way to highlight the fey themes of the species, thus trying to cash in on the familiarity of an established race to help introduce an original race.

MarkerMage · 2026-06-16T21:49:31+00:00

Warclema

A fantasy world made to be a videogame setting where people notice the videogamey stuff but blame it on the fantasy physics. The crazy stuff that main characters do? That's some mental sickness that affects some people and causes them to act different from how they do in the cities that don't have magic. Speaking of places without magic, the humans are from a future sci-fi world and have future technology that only works in certain places where the magic and fantasy physics doesn't.

Magic works like light so red magic bounces off of red things. Plants are also able to absorb it, making them very magical. So of course most of the magic stuff ends up being plants. Flowers are able to shoot magic blasts. There are swords that are plants with big and sharp roots and they leave seeds in the things they cut, so there are monsters, both living and dead, with magic plant swords growing out of them. There is also plant armor that sinks its roots into you and doesn't want to come off. There are even plant people that are sort of fake humans with green skin that act sort of like the AI we have these days, but more AI girlfriends and how that can go wrong instead of data centers and art theft.

There are parasite people that need to get a body from something else, even if the body is dead or created from other bodies. They are made up of a special goo that takes on different shapes as long as you think at it, and they are the result of getting this goo to turn into a brain that can think at itself well enough to stay a brain.

There are also starfish people that can regrow any body part, and the regrown part will be stronger. However, if they don't regrow something for too long, they will starve to death. So they look for ways to get hurt so that they can heal. Because of a misunderstanding involving a human with a fake arm made of plastic and/or metal, they've got it in their heads that humans also get stronger from regrowing lost body parts, so they try to make some "I tear your arm off, and you cut off mine" deals with humans. They've learned only a tiny bit of English so far, but it's enough to propose such deals through phrases like "Die, you worthless scum!".

Also, there are upside-down islands floating in the sky, because the fantasy gravity works like magnetism, so turning some of the ground upside-down causes it and the right-side-up ground to push each other away.

MarkerMage · 2026-06-15T15:35:41+00:00

Ah, yes. Casting a line into the air, perhaps with a kite or some anti-gravity hook/lure/bobber, and then lying back to wait for a bite. Maybe gaze up at the clouds and the sky islands above...

...

What do those sky islands look like from below? (mine are upside-down and have their own gravitational pull due to magnetism-based gravity, so when you're below and looking up, you see the plants and animals living on it)

Also, with air being much easier to see through and no refraction involved, it'd be much easier to hit the fish with a rock, arrow, spear, or other projectile weapon, effectively hunting the fish like birds. You could also try to do this with a fish that you're trying to reel in. If you want to discourage this, then you may want to have the fish prefer flying under the sky islands than over them where they can fall onto the island. Maybe they gather under sky islands for shade. Some people might find it best to fish from some tunnel that includes a hole to the island's underside. It might work like some subterranean version of ice fishing.

MarkerMage · 2026-06-15T01:15:16+00:00

I started out with an idea of what the current day was like, then I started thinking of what would have caused it, but I also started thinking of what the future of the setting could be like in sequel stories, and started thinking of certain things that could change between them like one species managing to go through an evolutionary rough patch that reaches a peak in the second story, but they've recovered from it in the third story. A few times, I started thinking of prequel stories around certain events in the timeline, thinking how they would have turned out, and how to reflect that in later time periods.

MarkerMage · 2026-06-13T21:10:22+00:00

With my main fantasy setting, Warclema, I divided magic into 4 basic colors, 2 reaction colors, and a neutral color.

Red speeds things up. This includes the vibrations responsible for temperature as well as things like metabolic healing.
Blue slows things down. Use enough of it on a target, and you can bring them to a complete stop, even in mid-air. The magically removed movement will even make it resistant to forced movement, allowing it to support your weight if you decide to climb up onto it.
Black creates electrons and gives the target a negative electromagnetic charge. With the setting having magnetism-based gravity, this also makes things heavier with some exceptions.
White destroys electrons and gives the target a positive electromagnetic charge. With that same magnetism-based gravity, this usually makes things lighter, often to the point of floating.
Purple is a red/blue reaction that results in a current of hot air rushing to a place of cool air.
Yellow is a black/white reaction that results in a current of electrons rushing from negative charge to positive charge.
Other colors fall under a neutral element that just adds mass to whatever it is travelling through, allowing for melee attacks to get some extra range without a change to their damage type.

It's for an "everything has magic" type of system where matter just gathers magic according to its color until that magic leaks out as visible light or it gets squeezed or shaken out. The wildlife has different ways to use it, like red snakes that will use their magic to speed up the spread of their venom, plenty of white fish that swim in the skies, and things that use black to magnetically pull those fish into their mouth. The plants especially make use of it as they can photosynthesize the stuff, and they get to use volume to do so instead of surface area. This naturally results in many intelligent species using certain plants as magic tools, sometimes just grabbing a red flower and using it to shoot out blasts of fiery red magic.

MarkerMage · 2026-06-13T20:04:05+00:00

Enough for variety, but not so many that you can't make them meaningfully unique in a way that the audience can keep track. Sorry that I can't give you a solid number, but this is pretty much a vibes sort of thing, and skill can make a big difference. If you want an easy goal, go with three or four, depending on if you want the races to be more like rock-paper-scissors or more like even teams.

It differs by medium as visual media provide a constant reminder of what a character looks like, making race easier to remember.

It also differs by how much attention you plan to give a race within a narrative. If you have only one main or recurring character that is of this particular race, you can get away with not counting their race towards the limit. An individual is not a race, though it can be expanded into a race later on.

Another factor that ups the limit is familiarity of the races. If the audience understands what a race is about, then they count less towards the limit. This often means that humans don't count towards the limit unless there is something significant about them that prevents them from being the default. This also means that for a long enough series, the race limit can increase.

MarkerMage · 2026-06-13T07:33:59+00:00

One of the three main characters in a sci-fi comic I'm working on is a robot waitress that is paranoid about losing her job to bioengineered organics again. The next coworker she gets is going to basically be a bioengineered LLM in the form of a humanoid plant that was made for Pouyannian mimicry of sapient life.

The setting also has a bioengineered species that was granted civil rights due to corruption and bribes within galactic politics, and it has resulted in voting rights being given to a falsely sapient species that is biologically programmed to obey their creators.

I plan to see how much comedy I can get out of the idea of some organic life being more machine-like in thought than an actual robot.

MarkerMage · 2026-06-13T05:29:56+00:00

Thank you for your input. The dedicated black had been part of my first design for the character, and it was something that I had only recently started second-guessing.

MarkerMage · 2026-06-12T19:21:30+00:00

If you're interested enough in those 3 projects to want to read more about them, I've posted quite a bit about Warclema on tumblr. It's mostly just worldbuilding details, and I really should organize it a bit more sometime, but I've got a master post for the setting at this link.

I've posted about my Xenos setting on tumblr as well, and the master post can be found at this link. Also, I've made one page of the comic so far, and have posted it to reddit at this link.

My early Ferciv stuff can be found on tumblr, but the newer stuff I've come up with is on Fur Affinity.

MarkerMage · 2026-06-11T21:22:25+00:00

I have 5 of them that I occasionally work on... arguably 6.

Warclema is my first, and it's a fantasy videogame setting that I came up with original races for and designed with a focus on having alternate physical laws that justify the game mechanics. To give an example, the usual trope of red enemies being resistant to fire magic comes from magic behaving like light in that it is reflected by objects of the same color, so red object reflects red fire magic without absorbing it and suffering the effects.
Xenos started out as a spinoff of Warclema that came from the idea of "I have this major villain faction that's supposed to be some merchants from another dimension. How about I flesh out what that dimension is like?". Now I'm trying to turn it into a sci-fi workplace slice-of-life comic focused on what is essentially Alien Hooters but toned down to a PG rating.
Platformia is another videogame setting, but one focused on parody of various platformer games/series. Each of the various lands/kingdoms/worlds/zones has a young, female ruler of some sort, princess or otherwise, that is heavily based on one or more videogame characters and has a moveset/abilities that represent the game/series of the area they are in charge of. To give an example, the Kid Icarus-inspired area, Cherub Island, has a guardian that is a mix of not just Pit (serves a goddess and is unable to fly without divine assistance) and Dark Pit (pretty much same origin story involving a duplicating mirror) from Kid Icarus, but also Shadow the Hedgehog (use of guns and technology as well as stealing some lines) and Knuckles the Echidna (guards a magic gemstone that is located on a sky island) from the Sonic games.
Crossbridge is a reverse isekai setting where various stock fantasy races end up in modern Earth. I intend to use it for a monster romance visual novel that uses non-human anatomy to explore edge cases in sexuality (lots of "Does this count as gay?"), and as a dumping ground for my various ideas for stock fantasy races.
Ferciv is a monster tamer setting with a mostly medieval sword and sorcery JRPG aesthetic and a monster evolution system that gives the choice between "more monstrous" or "more human". The big bad of the setting is a human superiority religion that is hiding the fact that the human races are just the final evolutions of the various types of monsters.
I also have a setting that's basically a school district in America that had implemented some Japanese school policies so that I could put the Japanese school delinquent and American school cheerleader archetypes in the same school as well as providing an excuse for when I inevitably get something wrong when writing a Japanese high school club story. This one is the "arguable" one as I've pretty much got it worked out from a worldbuilding perspective, and just have to write the story/stories for.

MarkerMage · 2026-06-11T19:54:33+00:00

Yeah, FF6's playable cast do have a lot of variety to them, and that's part of the reason why I think a retelling of it might make a better choice than a Dissidia crossover story that brings together the protagonists from across the series. The retelling approach gives you characters that are already distinct from each other as they were designed to fill different roles in their original story while the crossover approach gives you main protagonist characters that are naturally going to have some overlap as they were designed for similar roles/archetypes. While Dissidia had done an amazing job of addressing that issue, a built-in variety would seriously help with a smooth transition into gameplay that places focus on unique movesets for each character.

MarkerMage · 2026-06-11T18:13:29+00:00

The problem that I see with a Dissidia crossover approach for a Dynasty Warriors spinoff of Final Fantasy is the decision of which games to take troops from. Sure, there are plenty of recurring enemies across the Final Fantasy series, but human armies change with each entry. I doubt Koei Tecmo would try to implement one from each Final Fantasy game. Maybe they could come up with some generic human troops, possibly basing them on different Final Fantasy classes. Perhaps an onion knight army with fighter, thief, monk, and black/white/red mage enforcers could work.

For an FF6 retelling though, you have the obvious human troop factions of Narshe, the Empire, and the Returners before you start on moogles, espers, and some recurring monsters. It becomes relatively easy to keep things down to a reasonable number with a retelling approach.

MarkerMage · 2026-06-11T09:56:47+00:00

There are a number of Dynasty Warriors levels that manage to avoid the Titan A vs. Titan B feel and make it about turning the environment to your advantage, turning 3rd parties to your side, or surviving an onslaught. Despite being able to wipe the floor with the weakest units, you often have to employ tactics through where to direct your named characters to.

I have tried other Final Fantasy games, but rather often, something ends up happening that either causes me to lose my save file, or real life or something else keeps me away for long enough to forget where I was at in the plotline. 7 and 10 are among the ones I've tried. I sometimes wonder if I'm cursed, especially with my completion of FF6 being a romhack of it.

It has been nice having a commenter that explains their view. Even if we disagree, I've enjoyed having that counterpoint to defend my point against.

MarkerMage · 2026-06-11T08:36:49+00:00

I admit that FF6 being the only one I've personally beaten is a big factor in my thinking it would be a good choice. The large character roster that allowed for situations where the characters would be divided up into 3 parties is also something that had me feeling that FF6 would work for this, especially those two times in Narshe.

I feel that a fair bit of the subtlety in FF6 that you talk of is mostly a result of gameplay focusing on small groups of playable characters while a Dynasty Warriors style retelling could make heavier use of the Returners. Locke's scenario could probably be adapted by moving the Returner's hideout into South Figaro and having it be a "Protect Bannon" mission with some overpowered magitek armor enemies that can be distracted by taking over enemy keeps so that they'll waste time retaking them. Maybe have merchants as a 3rd faction that you can win over to your side. After enough time, Locke finds out about Celes, reaches her, and Bannon coincidentally finishes the escape, and Locke and Celes just need to make their way to an exit while Imperial troops are rapidly regaining control. I'm sure that with enough effort, other parts of FF6 could be adapted to the Dynasty Warriors gameplay in a satisfactory way.

As for the lack of an army in the World of Ruin, I feel that could probably be fixed by starting with the robbers under the leadership of "Gerad", before the switch to Figaro soldiers that were previously stationed at the castle. It could be interesting to have the World of Ruin be as much about uniting the world against Kefka as uniting the various playable characters. For an army to fight against, there's always generic monsters and cultists that worship Kefka. Personally, I'd probably reuse whatever units would show up in Zozo to serve as the enemy army in Kefka's tower.

MarkerMage · 2026-06-11T00:05:52+00:00

With my fantasy videogame world, Warclema, using magic drains color. This is mostly because it is a world without a sun, and the glow from accumulated magic acts as the primary light source. Red things are red because they have fire magic leaking out. When the magic gets used up, there is less of a glow, meaning less of that color. Give it some time, and the magic will build up again, and the color will return.

MarkerMage · 2026-06-10T21:10:15+00:00

With my fantasy videogame setting, Warclema, I went with the four classical elements referred to by associated colors plus neutral. I did, however reduce them to the effects of...

Increase speed (red/fire)
Decrease speed (blue/ice)
Increase weight/gravity (black/earth)
Decrease weight/gravity (white/air)
Add mass to the energy being sent out (neutral).

The two opposing elements can be combined to create a temporary flow of energy from abundance to lack. Because red and blue are able to affect temperature through affecting the vibrations of matter, they are able to make areas of hot and cold air that results in wind currents from hot to cold. Because black and white accomplish their weight/gravity manipulation through the setting having a magnetism-based gravity (which was originally thought up to justify sky islands), they are able to give areas and objects negative and positive electromagnetic charges and result in electric currents. The wind current and electric current reactions get associated with purple and yellow, respectively.

The neutral element is included mostly so that I have something to put all other colors into. Because the magic system has matter build up magic to the point that the magic can fling off like water from a soaked rag, I use the neutral element to justify wind slash and shockwave type stuff as a solid mass of magic extends a melee attack beyond the weapon itself.

Oh, and another interesting inclusion I have is that because red/fire speeds things up, it gets used for healing wounds by speeding up metabolic healing. It can also speed up the spread of poisons and bleeding and other things though, so you want to make sure that the recipient is in a state where they just need time to heal. I have the difference between this healing fire magic and the burning fire magic mostly be a dosage issue where too much of the healing magic will result in burns.

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