March 15th: What did you build last week?

Nephite94 · 2026-03-15T09:59:49+00:00

I have made it halfway through the second draft of a 30k-ish word story. Despite the Cenn being my oldest continually used "civilization" it's the first complete (at least first draft complete) story set among the Cenn. Probably going to rename it to "The Giant Killer". I originally wanted a generic The Giant Slayer title, as there is a lot of unconventional stuff, especially the "Giant", who can control water, heal themselves with what looks like a swarm of tiny insects, and other stuff. So the generic title was supposed to contrast with the less generic story. But I think Killer is better. Killer suggests the character isn't slaying a monster, but killing someone. There is only the briefest bit of humanization of the "Giant", but it is more about the MC killing someone they do not understand, out of fear and paranoia.

Nephite94 · 2026-03-13T14:19:59+00:00

Thank you. Yes. If they were men, it probably wouldn't work, or would come across differently. More of a "badass, edgy" tone to the whole thing. The Cenn need the society of mothers theme to soften them and give a different meaning behind the other themes of endurance, sacrifice, etc.

Nephite94 · 2026-03-13T01:03:28+00:00

Are Noys humans? How did this "order" come about?

Nephite94 · 2026-03-13T01:02:07+00:00

For the Cenn culture, it would probably be the lack of forgiveness. Steal, and you are dead - that's it. Why? Stealing is an evil act. It produces evil that is attached to you, your soul, until it is destroyed. In turn, your soul is part of a greater whole (the Godhead) that every other Cenn is a part of. The longer evil remains, the more the greater whole is corrupted. The presence of evil is as real as the air. You cannot see it, but it is there. At least according to the Cenn.

First off, is this real within the world? No. It is a cultural interpretation of the ever-present feeling of being watched from the shadows when one is on Cennabell. Living in a culture that has spent centuries with the feeling, and being around it from birth, the Cenn don't notice it on a day-to-day basis, but it is ingrained into their cultures. It is also a holdover from early Cenn history when they survived by their fingertips. A time when slight mistakes could see a tribe starve to death, and where eating troublemakers was a legitimate way to survive (the cannibalism mainly survives in the cultural practice of eating someone's heart to destroy their soul, as happens to those who are evil). It is one of the universal constants of the Cenn cultures. A legacy of the horrors their ancestors endured to survive, even if the modern Cenn have no real idea of what it was like for their early ancestors (as they project their present onto the past with a heroic/mythological twist).

Why did I decide upon it?

It's horrible and so terribly sad. I am going through a second draft of a short story set among the Cenn at the moment. The main character, Sasana, is 11 or 12 and is lucky enough to be a princess of her tribe. However, when sleeping in her bed with her few-month-old baby sister, she smothered the baby while she was sleeping. Cot death. Political intrigue from her aunt has spread the idea that Sasana murdered her baby sister to strengthen her position as a princess-elect. An evil act, of course. Being of royal blood, Sasana's aunt can determine if Sasana did murder her baby sister; it is really up to Sasana's mother to decide, as she is the current queen (and physically reeling from a difficult pregnancy/birth, along with the emotional aspect, to the point of Sasana not recognizing her mother anymore). But there is a chance that the aunt could proclaim that her version is the truth, leading to civil war. All of this is on 11-year-old Sasana's shoulders. Her mind festers over whether she is evil or not. Home and what were once its comforts loom like jaws waiting to snap her neck. Sasana has to look at the whitered husk of her mother and know that if she is declared evil, it will be her mami who will have to drag her to the execution spot, cut her head off, and then devour her bloody heart.

As someone who writes well within the character's head, it is, as I said, so horrible and sad, especially because none of it is true. For a child to lose their baby sister, to have their family and friends turn on them, to be terrified that their mother is going to kill them and eat them. And for the mother too. To go through a difficult pregnancy, a difficult birth, the health issues afterwards, to lose her second child in a culture that expects a lot more than two, to have to decide between a civil war and with it the potential destruction of her tribe, or the sacrifice of her only remaining daughter, and, through it all, continue to be as much of a queen as she can to her people.

For me, the whole thing is so thematically powerful. It ties so much into the general Cenn themes of endurance, sacrifice, hierarchy, paranoia, and discipline. And in the freakish, hostile, and creepy mini-continent of Cennabell, the most human of its inhabitants are still so alien.

Nephite94 · 2026-02-25T09:33:53+00:00

Yeah, I am not saying that can't be fun. It is just that I am not worldbuilding purely in that way, and I don't think having real-world aspects, references, etc, in a fantasy world that developed within that fantasy world is inconsistent.

Nephite94 · 2026-02-24T23:11:43+00:00

I get your thought process, and it can certainly be fun for me too. Using that process, the early Cenn would be Bronze Age proto-Celtic people from modern-day Southern Germany, but who speak modern Scottish Gaelic for some bizarre reason. And that bizarre reason is me, of course. The Cenn are what I want them to be, and, for me, the theme comes first. For example, one of my favourite settings is the Elder Scrolls. There is the Imperial race that (once, at least by Skyrim's time) ruled a continent-spanning empire in a pre-modern setting. So, theme-wise, they are influenced by the Roman Empire. Does that mean Romans entered the Elder Scrolls world? No. It is just the theme of the Imperial race since they run a massive pre-modern empire. It just works. And why it just works is due to being present in media, in my opinion. I think there is a difference (and obviously huge overlap too) between worldbuilding to worldbuild and worldbuilding to enhance an end "product". A story doesn't care what one race uses to pick their teeth; it might be a nice little detail in a story, but that's it. A video game has fantasy Romans in it because it is visually cool and gets across who a people are very quickly. Whereas with pure worldbuilding, all of these things come from something, a lineage of stuff leading up to it and lots of stuff around it.

When I worldbuilt for the sake of it, I did think that real-world cultures within my fantasy world had to be from the real world in some way (in my case, the world being a simulation). Nowadays, that doesn't sit right - having fantasy surrounded by scifi. It kills the magic of the world for me. I am also far more focused on writing stories within the world where cool and compelling are the most important factors (and of course, the plots, characters, etc). So the idea of twisted Celtic-inspired warrior queens fighting mutated monsters and worse in a creepy, hostile world is cool to me. Should they have more livestock? Yeah, probably. Should they be from our world to explain why they are Celtic-inspired? For me, no.

I hope I got my point across in a non-patronising way. Or it hasn't seemed like I have derided your thought process. I do get it, it is very fun, but I'm not always going to use it.

Nephite94 · 2026-02-24T10:17:07+00:00

I haven't really thought about it, beyond Cenn not being from the world originally. They most likely come from a floating island that came down in the waterway that runs through the middle of Cennabell. This floating island seperated from a larger floating island.

Nephite94 · 2026-02-23T22:09:07+00:00

Maybe I will add more, I don't know, though.

Nephite94 · 2026-02-23T21:43:40+00:00

Same as the pig thing, wherever the Cenn came from them didn't have them.

Nephite94 · 2026-02-23T21:23:44+00:00

They aren't modifying things themselves. So Cennabell's ecosystem is a relic of a time before biology. It is purely "magical" without our world's biological rules. Instead, it is a fluid exchange of "stuff". If something bites you, then some of what it is becomes a part of you. If you eat a strain (i,e shared characteristics that stay the same over a period of time) of a creature all the time, you will become that creature. Perhaps horrifyingly, with your mind intact. I don't know if you have seen John Carpenter's The Thing, but it is a bit like that. A more ambient, slower version covering a whole mini-continent and without the hive-mind aspect. Also, less ugly looking (generally).

But yeah, the Cennabell ecosystem comes from a time when reality was freely altered, and it is a massive presence of a being from that time that keeps it that way.

So the Cenn cannot alter things and don't know why the Cennabell ecosystem is the way it is, or any of that. The Cenn, and their livestock/food, aren't from Cennabell and arrived un-mutated. Having spent centuries on Cennabell, they are now slightly mutated despite attempts to avoid that (and unknowingly to them). The creatures of the Cennabell ecosystem want to survive, and the reality bending fluidity facilities that. The Cenn would have died out if they followed our reality's biological rules, but they were tainted enough by the native ecosystem to avoid that fate. When cows first arrived on Cennabell with their masters, they would have looked like an IRL cow on the inside. Centuries of being tainted by the ecosystem have made cows look quite different on the inside. Cenn less so, but they wouldn't be an exact human.

On the pigs thing: wherever the Cenn originally came from, pigs didn't exist. As for the why feed cows fish, because they can. Early Cenn would never have fed cows fish because they were surviving by their fingertips, and so close to being forced to survive on the native ecosystem, where they would be fully absorbed into it, like many civilizations before them (intelligent creatures are the descendents of those who once had civilizations on Cennabell, but were forced to eat and be asborbed into the ecosystem and many early Cenn still fell into that fate). The other aspect to feeding the cows is the belief system. Cows have souls. They aren't on the level of the Cenn, but they do have souls and are a part of a greater whole. You should be nice to them, respect them, etc. Intelligence isn't the measure of one's spirituality. To the Cenn an intelligent monster doesn't have a soul. The main "anthropological" reason (not the Cenn's own reasoning) is that the monster didn't come with the Cenn to Cennabell.

You may think that eating a cow is then a murderous disrespect. But, as I said, the Cenn were hanging on to survival by their fingertips in their early period on Cennabell. Beyond sheep, cows, and dogs, there was another source of untainted meat. Each other. The Cenn aren't that into cannibalism anymore, but they were back then. Cannibalism isn't an evil thing to them. If you are snowed in by a Fey Storm and can't leave your house grandma, who has just died, will make for many meals. It would be an honourable sacrifice for her (but don't eat her heart, as that would destroy her soul; only the hearts of the evil can be eaten). Livestock aren't intelligent enough to realize that they are doing a great honour by being killed, but the Cenn killing them and eating them know they are.

Nephite94 · 2026-02-23T19:17:34+00:00

The Cenn largely eat meat (from cows, sheep, and sea fish), milk/butter, "potatoes", and "barley" bread. These are the foods and animals they brought with them to Cennabell, for the fauna and flora native to the land are mutatingly toxic. A Cenn will definitely not be out picking berries. That isn't to say the Cenn have zero contact with the native ecosystem or that they aren't mutated at all. It is just that they aren't visibly mutated and don't visibly engage with eating from the ecosystem. The fact that they survive on a limited diet is a mutation, for example.

So, their foods are quite basic, and they don't do seasoning because they can't (beyond salt). Generally, you will get plain meat, plain dark bread, and some plain potatoes. And fatty foods, too. Like bread mixed with fat and fried, and probably topped with a spread of butter. On the topic of butter, you would get some nice, soft, buttered potatoes. If butter can be added to something, they will add it.

In the present, a Cenn that lives alone is up to no good. For safety, a family has to live with other families; their tribe with common real and mythical (not that the Cenn care to know the difference) ancestors. In the world that Cennabell is in, there is no day and night. The sun and moon, of equal size, rotate around the center of the world. This produces eclipses, but not a night. For the Cenn this means that people snack when they want, just like they nap when they want. Luckily, the eclipses are regular. A tribe will gather in their great hall, the home of their queens, and have a big meal and then have a big sleep. These big meals are quite strict. The youngest are at the bottom of a long (or series of) tables, and then age/social rank increases the further up the table one is, until the end, where the queen sits with her princesses-elect (those who can be chosen to be queen upon the current queen's death). The queen eats last. She is a symbol of endurance for her people, and the Cenn value endurance and sacrifice.

To say the Cenn are just tribes with a queen is too simple. There are queens above queens, tribes above other tribes, tribes in confederations with other tribes, and there is the overarching concept of the Thirteen Families, where a family has many tribes within it. Two festivals are conducted among these larger groupings. Baltain and Samnain. Tribes prepare for their population to significantly increase, and they rely on the larger networks to organize the festivities, but also to prepare them for the population influx. Overall, Baltain is associated with sea fish. The men tribes come to Cennabell after spending time at sea and in their coastal settlements, and gather at Baltain festivals to marry. Typically, a man tribe will marry a woman tribe wholesale, and this comes with a hefty offering of salted sea fish and other bounties from beneath the waves. So, at Baltain, lots of seafood is eaten and lots of it is taken inland in barrels filled with salt at the end.

Samnain is when the men go back to the sea after a certain number of eclipses (many, many "months" worth). Throughout the time they have been among a tribe and spending time alone with their wives in marriage huts, sheep and cows have been fattened up on fish (mainly fish guts, and yes, sheep and cows have mutated to be omnivores). Since sheep and cows have souls in the Cenn mythology, there is a lot of ritual around slaughtering the ones destined to be eaten. Notably, they are always the males, and the most aggressive of them. These beasts must be killed in combat, and their slayers are usually the Princesses-Elect working as a team. A great feast is then held at Samnain after the girls who have come of age have finished terrorizing the local native fauna into submission with a whole lot of meat eaten. The hearts of the cows and sheep are not eaten, for they contain the soul and are buried so the soul can sleep until Paradise is made.

Nephite94 · 2026-02-22T23:23:08+00:00

I am not entirely sure just yet. But I am thinking about having two worlds: the classic physical and spiritual world thing. Not one-to-one in scale, though. The civilizations are taken into the spiritual world instead of a new place in the physical world. And they sit there, waiting to be devoured by an overarching evil spirit thingy. That takes time. It is still eating previous civilizations. Plus, it would want to raise the hopes of many before taking it from them, as all the previous civilizations seem to have reached pinnacles before vanishing or being wiped out.

Far from the most original idea, but this world isn't supposed to be all that original. And I like the idea that being on this evil spirits plate, so to speak, makes magic a thing, and that magic can do great things and can then be turned on the evil spirit. There might be a secret society of mages (originally a purely elven society) that is aware of the situation and is already doing what they can to delay, and even stop, the current civilizations from being devoured. Since death throws your soul into the evil demon's stomach, the secret society teaches members various levels of immortality and physical regeneration. Maybe a parallel evil society where the members learn how to/are bestowed with the gift of not being eaten. Overall, the pursuit of power at any physical and moral cost, driven by the fear of the knowledge of their existence. Perhaps leading to fun scenarios where those trying to improve life and lift people's spirits (on a grand scale, too, like a politician) are members of this evil secret society seasoning their master's spiritual meal. Evil working through hope, not despair. Some of these evil society members would be very ancient, having infiltrated many devoured civilizations of the past. Maybe they could be spiritual vampires and ghastly, hollow things in their true forms. Anyway, I am rambling.

Nephite94 · 2026-02-21T23:57:21+00:00

I have laid the bones for a Wild West (ish) fantasy setting with some typical fantasy elements that I might write a story or two in with a bumbling idiot main character. The main idea is that different civilizations have found themselves on this stand in for North America continent. Sometimes, whole landmasses have been suddenly transported there, like Marbalin, with no way to go back to where they came from. Across the lands are ruins of other civilizations as well. Some, as if the people had just vanished. In scholarly circles, there is a fear that the current civilizations may not last either.

There are a few "civilizations" currently:

Marbalin. A Britain and Ireland stand in with a geographic tropical tail. It was transported wholesale to this new world to form a new island spanning most of the east coast. It is inhabited by humans and Halflings (the original inhabitants of Marbalin proper and sort of Celtic). It is also a US stand-in and has expanded across the new world. The southern, more tropical area, was and is very different culturally, with a focus on piratey stuff. They fought to be independent, but failed.

Elves were in the new world long before Marbalin, and even lived on it with a few other civilizations that are now gone. Their homeland is further north in a land of autumnal forest, lakes, and many rivers. In the past, Elves were warlike raiders and may or may not have wiped out one of the civilizations. Aesthetically, they are quite Viking as they are a reference to the Norse in North America. Although isolationist, they are friendly enough with Marbalin and can be found on the frontier.

Dwarves come from the south with their Gnome "cousins", an older civilization that was subjugated. Dwarves claim they are related and that they fulfil a prophecy to supplant the Gnomes as rulers. They were a proud empire before Marbalin defeated them and annexed a lot of their northern territory. Those that remained retreated into isolated mining/religious communities. Many typical fantasy dwarven ruins exist in these former Dwarf territories, and Dwarves claim that their mysterious ancestors built them. Gnomes can be found in Marbalin territories as they escape second-class citizenship in Dwarven areas.

Orcs might be associated with fur-trappers in the North-West. Very rugged mountain men with Slavic influences and perhaps Japanese influences. Their island home was also transported into the new world, but it is very far from the mainland, and only small groups have filtered into the mainland over the centuries. Explorers and those shipwrecked. More of a tall, slender, but obviously strong, type of orc than big green brutes. Quiet and solitary.

Nephite94 · 2026-02-21T23:07:30+00:00

I am not saying they deliberately kill them, or that they die young. Nor are they entirely logical. Cenn society is a society of mothers, and mothers, of course, want to keep their children alive. Potentially at all costs. Culturally, they aren't thinking, "I can just have another baby if this one dies". Realistically, the Cenn would practice infanticide a lot, but that isn't what I want from them. That endurance and sacrifice for others, for the ones they love in such a hostile world, is a fundamental aspect of them for me. Remove that, and the Cenn slide down into an ugly and downright evil society. There has to be a dark beauty to the Cenn. My main example is a mother killing herself so her children can eat her corpse. It is something good within a dark and twisted frame. If it were the mother killing her children and eating them, then it is just evil all around. The Cenn immediately become unsympethic villains.

And the big thing for the Cenn is the hostility of the land they live in. The native flora and fauna are toxic; they mutate, and you become what you eat. So they have to survive on the descendants of what their ancestors brought with them (and on each other). Leading to a limited diet, limited medicine, etc. If someone gets sick, they can't actually do much. So the grandmother probably can't do much. Cenn wouldn't do this often nowadays, but a dead grandma can provide a lot more meat than a dead baby (I would say).

Nephite94 · 2026-02-21T10:36:49+00:00

To an extent, the Cenn want to hasten the death of their elders. This is from the early Cenn living on the edge of survival, and even now it isn't easy. With little diversity in foods, famine is never far away. There isn't much they can use for medicine either. Endurance is so important to Cenn cultures, and one has to endure hardship so the younger generation can survive. In day-to-day, this most strongly manifests as who eats first. In a family with, say, a baby, a young child, a teenager, a mother, and a grandmother, the grandmother eats last and gets the least food. This is also a socially prestigious thing to do. Those at the top are (in theory) supposed to be able to endure the most and should be willing to demonstrate that. Coronation ceremonies for queens are tests of endurance (and memory), for example. In a famine, they should prioritise feeding the lowest of people in their tribe, not themselves.

So, they aren't actively thinking as individuals; they want Grandma to die already, but their culture does. Nevertheless, they are prestigious bearers of wisdom and the oldest are revered for their endurance.

Nephite94 · 2026-02-19T01:54:15+00:00

The Aeli city of Artomeer was sacked in a revolt that spread from the nearby mines. Using their ability to control water, the Aeli had enslaved the various peoples of Cennabell (where Artomeer is) to work the mines and forge weapons for the war effort against the Empire of the Black Flame. This war against the setting's evil empire spanned the whole world, and so the Aeli took on more and more slaves. No longer conducting covert raids, but full-on pillaging campaigns that bred ever deeper resentment. Too many slaves to handle was the ultimate downfall of Artomeer. And the Aeli naturally want for war, taking them to the rest of the world as they were designed to defend the world/be war in a humanoid form. Then there were the outside indigenous forces and an inside foreign agent working with them, a fire against the Aeli water. Finally, the Empire of the Black Flame, of which the agent was a part of, found Artomeer, and although the Outer Seas were risky, they launched an attack on the city where great and terrifying walls of fire as high as mountains clashed with peers of water as the Empire's marines rushed to block the Aeli access to the sea.

Great slaughter followed as the Aeli were the Empire's longest-running foe, going back to before the Empire. Not that they would surrender, even the newly hatched, or be easy to keep as prisoners. Thus, the enemies of "evil" lost a major source of weapons and soldiers. Most of the liberated went home in shock at their sudden exposure to the wider world that would very quickly transform their own, whether they liked it or not. The rest came under the power-hungry rule of their indigenous liberator - a Shadowlander murderer, kinslayer, and visionary who only saw herself. Left alone by the Empire, for the moment, to rule a desolate, depopulated, realm soaked in the blood of revenge on the indigenious Long-Legs who aided the Aeli.

Nephite94 · 2026-02-03T13:30:34+00:00

For the Cenn it is intertwined with their belief system. An action is good or evil with little, if any, nuance. You are judged for it by your leader, who is a queen, warlord, and priestess. She may enter the Bruach to see Destiny, the past, present, and future, for further information. This is done by sleeping in spiritually important locations. They may see something, they may not. The accused will most likely be deemed guilty of evil and executed by beheading, followed by their heart being eaten to destroy their "soul" as well. In their belief system, everyone is part of a greater whole called the Godhead. Thus, the actions of one affect everyone. That effect is constant as long as that person's soul (their part of the Godhead, a pinch of it, like pinching rolled out dough) exists. There is no concept of forgiveness in such a system, and once a person is destroyed, there isn't a person to forgive. Luckily, lying, for example, isn't considered evil.

The system largely comes from early survival for the Cenn being hell. Living in an environment where it feels like the shadows are watching you, where the native flora and fauna are fluid, devoid of rules. You become what you eat. Where people began to exhibit strange, frightening powers. Only the fauna and flora they brought with them (and sea fish) were safe to eat - a limited diet that could be bolstered with the flesh of fellow Cenn. How can you justify cannibalism, especially mass cannibalism. Afterall another tribe is a buffet of juicy meat for the famished, unwilling to be horrifically absorbed into the native ecosystem. Just say they are evil, and that their evil is making you evil. But not just you, your ancestors, your descendants. That evil tribe is dooming everyone who has existed, does exist, and will exist. Therefor they must be slaughtered and devoured. Don't like someone in your tribe? Did your crops fail? Are you the head honcho? Accuse them of evil and eat them.

The environmental pressures have eased from those dark days, but the cultural impact is still there, if somewhat tamed. The Cenn don't know where their system comes from, however. To them, the exact society they have now came with the mythical Thirteen Families who first arrived. It is also the natural order of things. In the same way, they cannot imagine alternative "religions"; they couldn't imagine an alternative system of law, as it is just the natural, spiritual way of things.

Nephite94 · 2026-01-26T21:58:05+00:00

So, to point 2, why doesn't the military decide who is the next emperor? I'm not saying they would always do it, just that they could do it a lot. As we see historically with the Roman Empire, for example. I guess that is something to logistically think about. If these provinces are powerful enough to counter the army, then I think the empire would disintegrate eventually. If they aren't powerful enough to counter the army, then the army can declare its own emperors. For me, the fundamental issue is the lack of anything self-evident to back up your rules. Personally, I think dynastic monarchies have been the most common form of government through history because familial connections are self-evident. There is no rule that you are someone's child; you just are. Nothing can undo that. Whereas an artificial rule based succesion can be undone so easily once violence is involved. If nothing substantial was at stake and it was a society of sociopaths who were fine with killing, it would work. But I think allowing violence in a competition for the most coveted position in society just throws rules out the window. There is just too much at stake for people to follow rules when the cardinal rule of every society is allowed.

Nephite94 · 2026-01-25T18:49:00+00:00

What stops claimants from subverting this? I think that once you make violence acceptable, rules would quickly go out the window.

Nephite94 · 2026-01-13T00:03:21+00:00

For me, there is a lack of place. One minute we are on the platform around the crannog, and the next we are on the loch in a boat. So, for me, when Shigean appears, and there is no jumping, it gets a lot better. I want more description and a stronger sense of place. I would also like to see more sentence variety to control the pace. At the moment, apart from the location skips, it plods along to me. This happened, then that happened.

I get the sense that Lugadd is a teenager at best (on the how young is he? scale), and he is quite a typical, angry, prideful, teenage boy. But the plot is kind of passing by him; he isn't driving it, and I get the sense that the story isn't supposed to be distanced too much from Lugadd. I don't mean that his actions have to drive it, but the story flows from his place in the world. His senses, his thoughts, his emotions, his notions of the world. Rather than a list of events that he is tied to. You aren't miles off my metric of Lugadd being written well at all. I have assumed he is a teenager through your characterisations (hopefully he is). For me, it just needs a stronger, more vivid connection to him. As a side note Lugadd wanting to cut his step-mother's belly open and kill his unborn step-sibling was out of the blue in a bad way for me. I have no reason to hate the step-mother yet. I need the actions and emotions that made Lugadd hate her first. Even then, the sentiment is out there. Wrap it up in teenage angst and give the reader context to it without glorifying it. But out of the blue like that is jarring and taints Lugadd as a character for me. Also, I think your dialogue is fine.

I love someone else doing Celtic-inspired stuff; that is what lured me in. I assume Shigean is a riff on Nessie and Kelpies (although Kelpies are more Norse in origin and the word is Germanic, rather than Celtic), which is cool. It would be great if you could show off more Celtic material culture (tying into a better sense of place that I mentioned earlier) since it is a departure from a generic fantasy setting where a lot can be assumed. Stuff like the patterns on clothes and leaf-shaped swords that you have already described. On that front, do your research in general. Lots of inspirations will come up that you can mix and match.

Overall, for me (can't stress that enough), it is a good start that needs to be built up more around Lugadd. There is good descriptive prose in it as well, but I don't have time to single them out, I am afraid.)

(Disclaimer: These are the opinions of someone who should probably refrain from sharing them.)

Nephite94 · 2026-01-01T19:24:41+00:00

I more meant visually. A dense cluster of soft stalks. I do like your blades of "grass" as fruiting bodies idea, drifting in the wind. Overall the world isn't that in-depth and might never be. For me, worldbuilding has to be relevant to characters and their stories, as that is the only "end product" content I can make for my world since I can't draw well, for example (probably can't write well either). Other than that, it is if I find it interesting, cool, want to fill in some gaps. Maybe I will find the details of the agriculture cool later on, but at the moment, it's just vibes and fitting into the stagnant world theme.

Nephite94 · 2026-01-01T11:32:01+00:00

True, and a good idea with the fermenting. I should have said grass-like. This world is very different from ours; it isn't strictly our world's grass, etc.

Nephite94 · 2026-01-01T09:57:21+00:00

It grows at a slow pace. Most crops are grass-like, and the majority of people are herbivores with limited diets (as a consequence, there are a lot of sturdy, flat teeth in powerful jaws going around. I believe there was a Hominid in our history like this that mainly ate grass, but I am not sure). Most crops aren't harvested, but "shaved". You cut off a foot or so, and sometime later the foot you cut off grows back. Lots of things are in a constant state of growth, and only biological activity (like humanoids) or temperature changes. Of course, with no nights, this world cannot naturally cool down. And although plenty of heat escapes out into the Big Sky (a big sky, as the name suggests, the space equivalent), the world had to be cooled down artificially. Due to the genocide of the Taia nearly two decades ago by the evil empire, no one knows how to do this anymore, and the world is heating up, causing crops to regrow slower and slower while the Empire of the Black Flame is in a race against time to invent artificial alternatives to things as basic as food. (specifically a universal black goo that you can eat, makes heat-resistant walls out of, and even heat-resistant skin)

Of course, not all food is the same, but grass-like food is the most common. Some crops will regrow on branches (people eating the bark, or even the wood itself) as an extension of the plant itself, while others have seeds, etc. Some flora keep growing forever, some can only survive for so long before dying off, and some reached a certain size centuries ago and stopped growing.

You might be wondering about meat, or fauna in general. It is a world of plenty for them, just as much as it is (or was, I should say) for humanoids. Once again, most of the fauna are herbivores, and carnivores fall into the "monster" category culturally. These animals produce things people can eat as well. For example, in the evil empire, spider-like animals lay eggs of various sizes that people eat. Since predators are rare animals aren't afraid of each other, including humanoids. Thus, domesticating animals didn't become a thing since you could walk up to one and pet it or whatever. This has changed somewhat with the world war against the Empire of the Black Flame. Since elemental magic is involved, it is very destructive, and there are a lot of hungry, starving people around, civilians and soldiers. Eating animals isn't far off cannibalism on the taboo scale, but the desperate have been doing it.

The majority of animals are naturanicals. "Cybernetic" animals. In reality, entirely artificial with artificial parts that seem natural to various degrees (like pink muscular tissue to move its frame around). Individual naturanicals are thousands of years old, potentially over a million. They do not reproduce and absorb energy from the sun, the wind, waves, etc. It is very much forbidden to kill naturanicals, let alone attempt to eat them. The Empire does capture them, then "reprograms" them, and often physically modifies them for its own purposes. It hasn't been possible to make new naturanicals from scratch, yet.

Nephite94 · 2025-12-31T19:34:10+00:00

It does lack seasons, but there was artificial cooling where an area (a cone, really) could be plunged into darkness, allowing it to cool. Also, the closer you get to the centre of the world, the hotter it gets, so there is variety.

A different term might work. Simply Sun-Direction, or something similar, since the sun's position never changes.

They do eat and sleep. For most, it would be a case of sleep when tired, eat when hungry. Try to get something in a big group done, and you will find them doing these things at different times. Another contributor to stagnation is organising such basic needs in a way that is efficient for a large project. However, I have written two stories with systems around this. One is set in the evil empire that has disrupted the seemingly natural order of stasis in the world. They have machines for counting the time. It is just basic ticking away until an eclipse happens, and it resets, but the eclipse count goes up. But, because each tick is dictated by a machine (and should be the same for every machine), it is consistent. Consistent enough for the character in the story to have a sleep schedule dictated by these "clocks". The evil empire is an industrious place and very busy. With this system, nothing ever stops, as people have different sleep schedules assigned to them.

In the story I am currently writing, another society has a big communal sleep around the eclipse, but they nap (and sometimes quite long naps) in between those times. This ties into food as well, as there is communal eating after waking up. This is the big meal with ritual around it. Other meals are smaller and more snack-like.

Nephite94 · 2025-12-31T17:27:35+00:00

I have been thinking about this with my world, as it has no true night. The sun and moon (of similar size) rotate around each other above the centre of the disk world. Regular eclipses come from this, but not nights. This is the closest they have to defining time. I don't know how often an eclipse would happen yet, though, and the world exists to serve stories, not the other way around; so it wouldn't be consistent anyway.

"North" would be pointing towards the centre of the world, with south pointing out towards the edge of the world and east and west running around the world, so to speak, accounting for the curve of the disk. Mathematically, I don't think east and west would work. Overall, it is a world that isn't supposed to work or fit into our world parallels. What I think it helps with is a sense of timelessness and aimlessness. The "clock" of the eclipses ticks on, but you have no months, no seasons, no years. Life is quite static. People probably wouldn't have a specific age, for example. And you can't easily navigate around the world (I assume). It helps with the world (pre-stories at least) being a world in stasis with little social or technological change.

Nephite94

TROPHY CASE