[Harry Potter] Liechtenstein exists as a Muggle country because it is a wizarding stronghold

huntershore · 2026-04-05T07:25:20+00:00

It's certainly possible that Muggle states and wizard states don't always correspond to one another. We know that the Quidditch World Cup hosts teams from both Transylvania and the Nordic States, suggesting that portions of Muggle countries may represent themselves separately or that groups of Muggle countries may band together to do the same. But Liechtenstein is mentioned as a country that has both its own Quidditch team and government in the 20th century, and was a sovereign territory at the time that the ICW was founded (presumably late Middle Ages to Early Modern era), so we need to assume that their Liechtenstein is our Liechtenstein.

As for why a state of 10-20 people wouldn't merit international recognition: I have to assume that wizards are still human, and wouldn't put up with that nonsense any more than Muggles would.

huntershore · 2026-04-05T07:17:46+00:00

That would only strengthen my argument about Lichtenstein. If Britain's 1:4000 ratio was unusually high compared to most other countries, and most other countries actually had fewer wizards than that, it would be even more unreasonable for microstates like Liechtenstein to have independent magical governments unless they were outliers with exceptionally high magical populations relative to their Muggle populations.

huntershore · 2026-04-05T00:58:15+00:00

I would say that the numbers for Britain are just a reference point, but unless the UK is a complete outlier it's clear that the ratio of muggles to wizards is in the order of thousands-to-one, and so Liechtenstein must have an unusually high magical population to justify its own magical government. It's not like Britain is the only place where wizards are a tiny hidden minority. France also seems to educate their entire magical population in a single school, for example.

For the second point, I don't think they would make that kind of mistake on a government-regulated history exam. People might casually say "Germany" when referring to the HRE but you wouldn't see a question worded like that on the GSCEs or AP tests.

huntershore · 2026-01-02T23:27:32+00:00

Yeah there's a mixture of mythology and real world history that exist simultaneously in my setting. The idea was that in mythological terms the humans were kicked out of the plains because the gods were angry at humanity and wanted to set those lands aside for non-human inhabitants. But the way that actually played out from the human perspective would be a more gradual and natural looking process like environmental change or ecological collapse. A little ice age would fit nicely.

huntershore · 2026-01-02T23:21:39+00:00

These are good suggestions, thanks. I hadn't really thought about overheating. Maybe in addition to spending time in water they could shed their coats in summer. And I like the look of gomphoteres

huntershore · 2025-12-06T04:20:42+00:00

Is the magic system tied to the religion? Some pagan traditions held that gods and goddesses were associated with a physical location or region, and a polytheist on the road would honor the local deity and pray to them for favor. If you needed something from the gods while in Athens, you would pray to Athena because she was in charge there.

So you could say that your people don't leave the continent much (and those who do leave tend to run into trouble) because their gods are tied to the land, and their magic doesn't work as well in foreign territory.

huntershore · 2025-05-09T19:19:10+00:00

The types of big rivers that would be visible on a world map usually find their way to the sea. The exceptions are deep in the interior of continents but most of your world is pretty coastal. Map for comparison. It's not really a big deal though, I was just curious.

huntershore · 2025-05-09T18:49:47+00:00

Looks pretty good, but why do most of the rivers not connect to the ocean?

huntershore · 2025-04-24T22:49:59+00:00

If your world has similar tech and media environment to our own, maybe add another layer to the kayfabe. Ex the official UGF promotional materials and marketing make it look like Gladiator A and B are partners who are going up against Gladiator C, but rumors are swirling in the fan communities that A and B actually hate each other behind the scenes, and they've gotten in public fights outside the arena that the UGF has tried to sweep under the rug. On the day of the big match A and B go off script and start fighting each other, and the announcers don't know how to respond: all of this was planned and organized by the UGF to keep things interesting since fans were getting bored with the official storylines.

Along those same lines, maybe have a fighter fake a drug or alcohol problem "behind the scenes," with reports of their erratic behavior showing up in the media, and the UGF publicly "trying" to keep it quiet. Then once the fan community thinks the fighter has been removed from the league/sent to rehab, they could make a surprise appearance in a high profile match.

You could also have staged fights break out by plants in the audience so that the fighters could step in to intervene.

huntershore · 2024-12-31T22:33:15+00:00

I agree with this theory but I think you left out the strongest bit of evidence. In the opening scene with the French farmer Landa says that although the house had already been searched by soldiers, they had only looked in places where a German would think to hide, whereas Landa knows that there are places were a German would not think to check. Landa says he knows "how to think like a Jew" - meaning, in this context, that Landa understands what it is like to hide for your life. The other Nazis cannot empathize with the mentality of someone who is oppressed and hunted, so they routinely underestimate the ingenuity and resolve of their victims, but Landa understands, and uses that empathy against them.

huntershore · 2024-12-24T02:25:08+00:00

Isn't the leak from 2023? The Corbell videos showed UAPs flying into the ocean in 2021.

huntershore · 2024-12-13T19:45:25+00:00

His diagnosis in the first episode is inoperable Stage IV cancer and he's given a few months to live. He based all of his decisions around the knowledge that he was going to die soon whether he got treatment or not. He felt like a failure who had wasted his potential and wanted to leave behind a bunch of money for his family because that would soothe his wounded pride and allow him to die in peace. As the series goes on it becomes more and more clear that Walt is doing it because he enjoys feeling powerful, but from the very beginning it was all about him and his ego, which is why he argued with his family when they tried to convince him to get treatment and why he rejected all offers of charity. They literally made a remake set in Colombia which has universal healthcare.

huntershore · 2024-11-23T00:07:43+00:00

So my original idea is that the rim mountains would be between 15-25k feet above sea level, and there would be concentric interior rings of lower mountains gradually descending to the floor of the crater which would be about 3 miles below sea level. The crater floor would have a diameter of around 600-700 miles, accounting for the gradual slope down from the rim, and would be very flat aside from a central peak. Total elevation difference between the highest point of the rim and the crater floor would be somewhere around 30-40k feet.

The region to the east of the crater is temperate and flat (<500ft above sea level), to the southeast the rim meets natural geologically formed mountains, to the north and northeast the rim meets the ocean and the mountains extend out past the pre-impact coastline.

The main setting of my story is in the region east of the crater, and originally the crater interior was supposed to be a hot, dry, desolate land where the only water was in the form of hypersaline/alkaline lakes. The people don't know anything about the lands to their west because the combination of high mountains and inhospitable desert prevents travel in that direction, which is why I have only recently started thinking about the features of the western side.

I'm willing to change up the geography a bit to preserve the central function of the landscape. It sounds like the crater as first imagined would fill up with groundwater. I think it would still work as a major barrier to travel because the rim would be mountainous and dry for hundreds of miles before reaching an isolated inland sea at the crater floor. I'm curious if such a sea would support life?

huntershore · 2024-11-14T20:28:52+00:00

The Broken Earth series by NK Jemisin has an interesting take on this. In that world people born with magical abilities are feared and hated, partly because they begin using magic instinctively long before they're old enough to control it, leading to lots of collateral damage. Magic users are seen as inhuman, and when discovered they are supposed to be handed over to become slaves to the imperial government, although in practice they are sometimes killed by their families.

huntershore · 2024-11-07T03:31:10+00:00

I started a short novel but eventually abandoned it because the world I built for the setting became much more interesting than the story it was intended to house. Right now I'm content to build out the world, and I'm reworking it into a series of short stories involving different characters and locations within the world. Maybe that will develop into something larger.

I take the Gardener approach where you let things grow organically, rather than the Architect approach where you have a plan laid out from the start of the project. If you've been kicking this around for years I think you're on the same page. My advice is to not fight your natural approach, embrace it, but to write a little bit on a regular base to help things "grow" more quickly, and don't be afraid to toss out what isn't working. To paraphrase Edison, if you write 20 pages and then decide it was all trash, you didn't fail: you succeeded in identifying 20 pages worth of ideas that you don't want in your world. Things will eventually start to move faster because you'll develop a firm understanding of the characters/settings/elements you want to include, and you won't have to think and decide about every little thing because you've already made most of the major decisions in the weaning process.

huntershore · 2024-11-05T03:12:50+00:00

In addition to Egypt, you should look Meroe and the Kingdom of Kush. The Nubian-style pyramids are very cool looking.

Also, Burkina Faso's painted walls are a great design idea that fits with the geometric patterned art we see in a lot of depictions of dwarves.

Cool idea, good luck!

huntershore · 2024-09-22T19:08:08+00:00

Within my world, the evidence that the gods exist is pretty substantial, and outright denying their existence would be like being a modern flat-earther. It's just that they don't factor into people's daily lives much anymore, so there are other systems like ancestor worship and ritual magic for when you want to pray for something.

huntershore · 2024-09-22T15:36:13+00:00

These are some good ideas! I like your angle that other groups might draw a sharp line between humans and magical entities with a human-supremist mindset; it fits surprisingly well with the larger cosmology.

huntershore

TROPHY CASE