My Fantasy RPG World, Feedback and Ideas appreciated

I am developing West Colassia in depth whereas giving the rest of Scarterra a cursory summary because my current RPG is set in West Colassia and my WIP novel is also set in West Colassia.

World Anvil recently launched a timeline feature but it's still in it's beta phase and I'm having trouble getting my data into something readable but here are the major events of West Colassia.

I'm leaving the length of the Third Age relatively vague. It's the year 1837. Year 1 marks the start of the Feudal Era. Before the Feudal Era the elves were still licking their wounds from the Second Unmaking (and recovering their population very slowly) and the humans were mostly barbarian tribes and petty chiefdoms. Nobody kept detailed records so people are unsure if this era was 1500 years or 15,000 years.

-1472: Codenya formalizes a treaty which formally unites the wood elves with a wide variety of sentient forest creatures though these alliances have existed informally for far longer. This is when the wood elves claim their nation was born and it’s what they set on their calendars as Year 1


-1167: the island of Lunatus claims its first colony in West Colassia, subjugating a small number of humans. This marks the beginning of a slow creeping expansion grey elf expansion into West Colassia.


-589: The king of Lunatus starts calling himself “emperor” and the Elven Empire is officially born. This was later retroactively made Year 1 on the Elven Empire’s official calendar. Coincidentally this was the Year of Khemra. Rate of expansion increases.


-150 (approximate): Largely in response to the vampire known as Vladimir the Conqueror, the wood elves of Codenya chose abandon their external settlements and colonies withdrawing entirely into the borders of their home forest.

The wood elves essentially move from moderately isolationist to extremely isolationist.


1: The vampire Vladimir the Conqueror is reputedly slain. Coincidentally this was the Year of Maylar which made it extra convenient for setting this as calendar "Year 1" because Maylar has the first zodiac house in the cycle.


300-400 (approximate): A band of legendary heroes battle against orcs, vampires, Void Demons and other baddies establishing a faux-Camelot inspired nation that lasts about 200 hundred years. Modern Kantocians, both peasants and princes alike, love to tell embellished stories of this time and claim these heroes as their direct ancestors.


400 (approximate): King Drosst usurps the city state of Uskala. He begins annexing the surrounding land piece by piece over the following centuries.


500 (approximate): Faux-Camelot collapses


600 (approximate): The nation of Kantoc emerges out of the ashes of Faux-Camelot. Later Katoc retroactively sets their official Year 1 in this period on the Year of Hallisan.

625 (approximate): Dark elves begin sailing to West Colassia for exploration and to kidnap some humans to enslave. The dark elves try and fail to craft an alliance with the wood elves of Codenya.

654-657: The dark elves of Kahdisteria launch a full scale invasion against the Wood Elves of Codenya. The wood elves deal them a humiliating defeat permanently ending the dark elves’ ambitions to establish themselves in West Colassia.


830-850: The grey elves invite the wood elves to join the elven Empire which of course they refuse. The grey elves do not take their rejection well. The Elven Empire fight a series of brushfire conflicts against the wood elves of Codenya and the wood elves generally get the better of these fights. While not directly responsible for the Empire’s decline, this period of time marks the peak of the Elven Empire’s expansion. Not only did the Elven Empire lose a lot of resources but enough humans witnessed the elf-on-elf violence to realize that elves were not invincible or morally infalliable so a lot of humans begin rebelling against their elf lords.

Twice in his lifetime, the King of Codenya has a major war with a distant foreign power come with no warning. Tired of the wood elves facing surprise attacks out of nowhere, the king decides the wood elves are too isolationist. Codenya exchanges ambassadors with the nearest human nations and formally endorsing the Rumspringa (though the Rumspringa tradition was far older than this, it was something nobles rarely partook in before this royal decree).


941: Swynfaredia is founded though it started out much smaller than it is now. Later, Swynfaredians retroactively set this as Year 1 on their official royal calendar. Coincidentally this was the year of Greymoria.


1067: Mordock the destroyer reaches the peak of his empire and dies a natural death shortly thereafter.


1313: dwarves successfully reclaim the Great Stone of Meckelorn, coincidentally this was the Year of Hallisan which the dwarves consider lucky, never mind the double 13s.


1500 (approximate): Fumaya is established more or less with the borders it has now, minus a very small expansion into the unclaimed frontier later.


1632: Uskala annexes the kingdom of Insert Name Here, reaching the current size of territory it has now.


1716: Swynfaredia annexes the kingdom Talama, reaching the current size of territory it has now. This was recent enough that more than a few ethnic Talamans are still resentful about this.


1837 (Year of Mera if I did my math right): This is the default year for RPGs in my setting to start and the year Nilen the Cobbler is going to have his little adventure

I was working on expanding my West Collassian culture when my computer had to shut down for updates. I didn't lose much unsaved data but it was a two hour long update and I am addicted to my computer.

Nothing tells me I'm too addicted to my computer than when a two hour mandatory update locks me out of my computer on a quarantine day.

How do I occupy myself for two hours with no electronic media or computer games?

By making crude map sketches! I'm not happy with what I have yet, but I do have a start for a West Colassia map.

Here's the quasi-official world map for a recap. West Colassia is the continent dominating the upper left corner.



As I work on my Wes Colassia map I'm trying to make it less uniform. The same basic shape is going to be the same general shape but It's going to have more peninsulas and inlets to make the coastline bumpier. I'm still not sure whether I want West Colassia to literally bump into the North Void or if I want a healthy buffer zone of ocean or a very small buffer zone of ocean.

The northern strip of West Colassia is going to be very cold. Hardy humans can live here if they adopt an Inuit (Eskimo) lifestyle but this is mostly the domain of cold loving dragons and assorted monsters.

Further south it's too cold for farming but not too cold for herding. This is the prime real estate for human and orc barbarians.

South of that is where it's barely warm enough for farming and people live by a mix of farming and herding. These mark the barely claimed frontier of Kantoc, Meckelorn, Codenya, Fumaya, and Uskala. I figure this used to be the heartland of barbarian country but I figure when Mordock the conqueror conquered the top two thirds of the continent that this would have forced barbarians and farmers to intermingle, perhaps in a harsh way but thinking of the United Kingdom, a lot of modern Englishmen are partially descended from Viking raiders that started as raiders and ended as settlers. Modern Kantoca's ancestors are mostly a mix of sedentary faux-Camelotians and assorted horse riding barbarians.

Then I got a wide temperate zone which encompasses most of Kantoc and Uskala, about half of Codenya, Meckelorn and Fumaya and pretty much all of Stahlheim and Swynfaredia.

A tiny strip of coastal land is subtropical and the islands south of the continent are mostly tropical. Maybe, I'll make the southwest tip of West Colassia tropical.

The land north-south is going to gradually get smaller as you move from the wide western border to the relatively narrow eastern border though I think I may throw some more and bigger islands off the southeast coast. The fact there are a bunch of islands off the southwestern coast is unchanged.

That's the topic for next post, is what should I put on my tropical islands? Tropical humans? Some kind of cat people? Camazotz? Some kind of Lustria equivalent?

By the nature of being islands with warm climates, these islands would have some irregular contact with Scaraqua, but that's probably worthy of it's separate topic because I'm still not 100% what I want to do for Scaraqua.

Whoever the original inhabitants were, islands off of the southwest coast of West Colassia would probably be colonies of the Elven Empire though they needed be filled with elves (much like Cyclops Island is politically affiliated with the Elven Empire but has no elves living there).

Islands off of West Colassia's southeastern coast would be very vulnerable to Uskala. Because I don't want the Uskala islands to be carbon copies of Uskala itself, whether I fill the island with Lizardfolk, snakepeople, tropical humans, jaguarmen or something else, they are going to be a tributory state of Uskala.

King Drosst leaves the islands to govern themselves as long as they pay him yearly tribute. That way the geopolitical system will still make sense but I can carve out a unique identity for these islands.

If I add more islands to East Colassia, then said islands would probably either be colonies of the dark elves or they would tributary states of the dark elves. The East Colassian army is more than a match for the dark elves on land but they don't have much of a navy, at least not yet.

I haven't come up with much for the continent of Umera yet besides that the two dominant powers are Nishi and Azuma, and the general region has an Eastern feel. If I add more islands near Umera, it's pretty likely the islands would end up as pawns or prizes in the on-again off-again war between Nishi and Azuma.

The Islands off of the Coast of Penarchia can truly be independent realms because Penarchia has no dominant geopolitical, just a bunch of little ones. At least one cluster of islands is going to be the dwarf-human nation of Mondert. Another one is going to be the sea elves of Nerymer but I'm likely to make their island be a bit further from the equator and thus be more temperate than tropical.

 

World Anvil has begun their World Anvil Challenge. Anyone who writes 10,000 words in the month of December is eligible to win a bunch of prizes.

In the meantime if you guys say write about _____, I will probably take your suggestion seriously.

There are a bunch of category prizes including a 50,000 word challenge.

I have just over 230,000 words now. Since I started my World Anvil in April my average is well over 20,000 words per month. Though I suppose the majority of the stuff I posted was lore I had already written in my messy pile of notes, I just needed to clean it up, add hyperlinks and fix all of the spelling errors...well some of the spelling errors.

The real prize for me is going to be exposure. I have two followers and one like as of now. I hope to have more.

If you guys are sitting on a fantasy world such as @Lord Agragax of Lunaxoatl note that joining World Anvil is free, so ego the World Ember contest is free.

Even though it's not monetized and my old articles are mostly ineligble for prizes I'm going to start auditing myself for artistic license because that's a rule for the contest and I don't want to give the appearance of misdeeds.

A lot of my art is from paintings several centuries and those are in the public domain. And of course Pendrake gave me permission to use the symbol of the Nine. That is the default picture that all my articles have if I cannot find something better.

Photos are not, the rules are not as strict but if it becomes a problem I will fix that too.

 

This article about Scarterran Feudalism uses the cover art from the public domain painting called "The Accolade" on the famous painting by Edward Leighton, a great painter of the early 20th century

I went to my image files and credited this painting to Edward Leighton. I'm curious if an outside observor to this article can find the artist creds I put in the picture.

 

I dream of having beautiful detailed heraldry made by professional artists that look this good



But sometimes in real life, a person on a budget has to improvise something cruder to show which side they are on. So I can have something to put as a visual I'm going to try to make my own approximation of a soldier on a budget painting his lord's sigil. Much like I did for the symbol of Meckelorn which looks this good.



I found this on heraldry colors with a quick internet search. I'm going to run with these colors at least a little bit but admittedly I'll bend to what I think looks cool.

• Silver / White – Argent: Signifies truth, sincerity, peace, innocence and purity.
  
• Gold – Or: Signifies wisdom, generosity, glory, constancy and faith.
  
• Black – Sable: Signifies wisdom, grief, constancy and prudence.
  
• Green – Vert: Signifies abundance, joy, hope and loyalty in love.
  
• Blue – Azure: Signifies loyalty, chastity, truth, strength and faith.
  
• Red – Gules: Signifies magnanimity, military strength, warrior and martyr.
  
• Purple – Purpure: Signifies temperance, regal, justice, royal majesty, and sovereignty.
  
• Maroon / Blood Red – Sanguine / Murray: Signifies Fortitude or victorious.
  
• Orange – Tenne / Tawny: Signifies ambition.

So I like the idea that elf heraldry are represented by raptors.

The dark elves are going to have their predominant colors be purple and black. I really like the idea of a a purple raven but this fails in implementation. If I had a professional artist make a rendition of a purple raven it would be beautiful but a crude approximation is just a purple bird, not a raven. If I go with a black raven on a purple background, it's a lot easier for amateurs to draw.

Wood elves, I think a gold owl on a green background.

Grey Elves/Elven Empire definitely got to be a falcon. Tempting to do blue and gold but I don't want to have too much overlap so I'm thinking blue and orange. I'm sure if I want the falcon to be blue or the background to be blue.

The Sea Elves are the redheaded stepchildren of elf culture. While I could use an osprey or other water loving raptor, I think they won't use a raptor at all and their heraldry is going to be a near clone of whichever heraldry their closest Scaraquan allies use. I'm not sure if they will use blue or not. I don't think the Scaraquans themselves would use blue heraldry because heraldry by design is supposed to be clearly visible. Blue only stands out underwater if you are close to the floor.

While eventually I want to come up with heraldry for all the member states of the Colassian Confederacy but it occurred to me, that if I come up with heraldry, I can justify using that as the cover art for every single East Colassia article I make (I have many and plans for more).

While most of the member states of the Colassian Confederacy are not inherently warlike, the Colassian Confederacy is a military alliance so their main symbol will involve red. The second color is either going to be silver, gold, blue or black. I have yet to decide.

Another thing I'm open to suggestions as the animal.

Initially I thought to use wolves making an allusion to the strength of the pack. East Colassia flora and fauna is based on Africa and while Africa does have wolves in and around Ethiopia, they are not very common and they are certainly are not iconic to the imagination.

Hyenas are pack hunters, but hyenas are associated with gnolls who are enemies of the Colassian Confederacy.

Zebras have strength in number but they are not mighty. Rhinos are not mighty but they are not group oriented. I'm tempted to go with lions but that doesn't seem very creative. Particularly sense I already am leaning towards making Fumaya lion based and Kantoc is going to use lions and lion-like creatures a fair bit for their heraldry and I am committed to making Uskala Griffin based. Maybe a female lion because those are the hunters. Anyone know any supernatural creatures of African folklore that would make a good heraldry base?

The kallazotz are not that important in the grand scheme of things but I like them a lot so I'm likely to sketch a banner for the Barony of Bats before the other baronies. I'm thinking a bat with a small sun and moon icon under the wings because the locals are all psyched that they get to see the sun and moon on a regular basis.

 

Here is my heraldry for the Barony of Bats.

I found a free heraldry generating website. It has very limited options but I used MS Paint to spruce it up a bit.


I'm still on the fence whether I should have made the sun bigger than the moon, but I'm reasonably satisfied with this.

Here is the article I put on World Anvil for the Barony of the Bats.

Here's what I cooked up for the heraldry of Codenya, aka the Wood Elf Nation.


I haven't found any free clip art I like for falcons or ravens yet, but when I do I will post heraldry for the Elven Empire (grey elves) and Kahdisteria (dark elves) respectively.

 

Here's what I cooked up to add to the Red Streams article using your design as a baseline. Plus I added swords clip art...because swords are cool.

 

This is far far gankier than anything I ever witnessed. I've done some things i regret that annoyed players without serving a story purpose but I've never done anything bad enough to cause my players to leave the game in frustration.

 

Agreed, and I'm sure most of my lands have mixed heritage BUT for simplicity I'm only going to worry about ethnic merging in the last 2000 years of Scarterra because historical recorders from earlier than that are fuzzy. By the time Year 1 was (1836 years before the "present' most of the ethnic mixing was forgotten.

Though I have given some thought to making an allegorical equivalent to the Ancient Atlanteans. Not in the underwater sense, the Ancient Greeks didn't believe that the people of Atlantis became mer-people. They believed that Atlantis was richer, more powerful and more technologically advanced than it's neighbors and were ultimately destroyed by their hubris.

I'm thinking of creating some extinct ancient humans that dominated the early years of the Third Age and somehow was destroyed for their hubris. I'm thinking of calling these people the Fakhari (Fawk-har-ree) which is based on the Arabic world for "pride."

I'm thinking the most common story is that Fakhari were supposedly the most magically advanced society Scarterra had ever seen, even surpassing the elves and dragons of the previous age. Of course elves and dragons deny that human ever outshone them. Supposedly the Fakhari were ultimately destroyed by the Nine for their hubris in order to preemptively prevent them from creating a Third Unmaking.

Unlike most ancient legends, no one wants to claim ancient Fakhari ancestors. Most stories involve the Fakhari being wiped out, every man, woman and child.

The stories about the Fakhari are vague and contradictory. Some people doubt the Fakhari were real because the stories about them read like apocryphal morality plays.

Also, it's very hard to tell the difference between Fakhari ruins and Second Age elven ruins.

With a lot of mystery, I have a lot of creative freedom to customize ancient ruins and artifacts.

There are other named ancient humans besides the Fakhari. In most cases modern humans are proud to talk about their ancient roots.

The Mereshnari are a barbarian tribe that claims to be the oldest unbroken human culture in Scarterra, and they might be right. In any event the Mereshnari have the most complete tales of the Fakhari though these stories are clearly biased and often have undertones of "Nomadic people are morally superior to civilized people". A lot of stories involve Fakhari monarchs disregarding the sage advice of their Meresh advisors and suffering for it.

Assuming the Fakhari magical prowess was true and not a fabrication, they would have access to six and seven dot magic powers whereas in current Scarterra even dragons are stuck using 1-5 dot powers.

 

I forgot to mention I had the idea that there are VERY conflicting legends that say that were not wiped out by the Nine but blessed by the Nine.

In other words they were so beloved by the Nine that they were allowed to ascend to upper planes en masse sort of like some American folklore of the lost tribe of the Anasasi.

That's a story the Tiamalan kobolds like to talk about because their ultimate goal is to have their tribe ascend en masse.

 

The lady that co-owns World Anvil with her husband and been giving daily writing suggestions.

Today's really floored me.



I pride myself on having one of the one in depth fictional religions ever created and I realized I have zero holy texts. I'm not even sure how to start.

While I am creating what is essential a RPG religion I find my real world theological views color Scarterra's religion more than I'd care to admit.

My background is Christian, but neither my parents nor my main spiritual mentor were Biblical literalists and actual viewed Biblical literalism as a flawed theology. When writing Scarterra, it never occurred to me that a holy text would be important. Though my studies into other real world religions viewed holy texts as very important whereas me I don't view holy texts as any more or less important than other tools of worship.

The thing is, with messenger spirits it would not be that hard for any of the Nine to dictate a massive holy text word-for-word if they wanted to but I always liked the idea that the Nine want their followers to work out the details themselves.

Spoiler: Tangent on religious views on sexual orientation in Scarterra

Dare I even mention such a controversial topic, but I have given some thought to how Scarterrans view sexual orientation in a religious lens.

I do not want to push my own values and opinions on this topic through Scarterra. My thought process is entirely, based on the environment of Scarterra, what are the social norms around sex likely to be?

Essentially the fact that Scarterra is a dangerous could swing things either way. The two logical responses are.

1) Because life is all too often too short, it is folly to waste time and effort worrying about sexual taboos.
2) Because life is all too often too short, people have an obligation to have as many children as possible and any form of sexual expression that doesn't create children is folly.

I like the idea that Scarterrans cannot agree and none of the Nine have bothered to send a messenger spirit to clarify their position on this thing.

For instance, this is one of the few issues that will cause Mera worshipers to yell at each other.

Some believe that Mera's edict to embrace community between all peoples regardless of external or cultural differences means that of course Mera is accepting of all forms of sexual expression (as long as it's consensual of course).

Others say that Mera's edict of always valuing your family means of course Mera endorses heteronormative sexuality because this is where children come from and children continue the family.

In a similar way, I have a rationale for every single priesthood of the Nine to have conflicting opinions on sexual taboos.

Well Nami's Rovers are pretty pro LGBT. When your core edict is "Live free and do what makes you happy," there aren't going to be a lot of sexual hang ups. Given that Khemra is the foil to Nami and visa versa, Khemra's Keepers are probably the most homophobic religious faction in my world. The Keepers are not likely to believe romantic love is a value worth pursuing and see marriage and coupling mainly as a means of reproduction and little else though there are probably exceptions, not every Keeper has to be a loveless robot.

I don't want to drown Scarterra in woke politics, or fill my stories with as much sex as Song of Ice and Fire, but I think it would be wrong to ignore this topic entirely.

While my setting is going to at least mention this stuff in passing, I don't want any holy texts to deal with it.

 

Agreed with most of your points.

But I believe that most of the meh people would lean on patriotism and quasi religions of state ideology.

You are certainly on to something with the religious texts something for the hardcore worshipers.

There was a D&D Monster Manual race (highly lawful goat men) that I was on the fence whether I wanted to include in Scarterra as a Khemra vanity race. I thought about maybe the race went extinct during the Second Unmaking. During the Second Unmaking, the Nine only had the power to save a tiny portion of mortal-kind and they usually played favorites with their chosen people. Hidebound Khemra refused to play favorites so he favorite children ultimately didn't make it.

I wasn't sure how to include an extinct race in my lore. Now I can have them leave a bunch of texts behind.

 

I figured it would be character building AND very easy to do to make the
Principality of Silfûrhëim which is made up of wood elves pariahs an inverted color scheme of Condenya's.



Here's is Prophet's Pass's heraldry. Prophet's Pass or spot 17 is famous as having the fastest turnover of governments of any Border Barony, at least recently. Currently a oracle of Nami is the figurehead of the realm. I created a created a simple color design and added a crude approximation of the wind lines that are the symbol of Nami's Rovers.



The Border Barony of Altudaridia was founded by outcast Swynfaredian nobles. They chose a generic dragon that does not resemble one of the Founding Dragons as their sigil.

 

Gnomes!!!!!!!!!



I have took my scattered notes and organized part of them into an article on East Colassian gnomes, forest gnomes, Uskalan gnomes, Swynfaredian gnomes, and Kantoc gnomes. My main article for gnomes now has a sidebar for every gnome ethnicity I've created.

I have not written anything about gnomes in the southern hemisphere yet because the southern hemisphere is far less developed than the northern hemisphere on purpose because my RPG is not set in the southern hemisphere and my novel is not set in the southern hemisphere. The only category I have notes for is gnomes in the Elven Empire. I guess I can make an article for them while I'm at it.

I have a mild issue in that I don't have any notes for Fumaya or Borderlands. That's a problem because my protagonist is going to be a Fumayan gnome adventuring through the Borderlands.

My issue is that the gnomes of Fumaya and the Borderlands are so close to the worldwide gnome stereotype that there is not much to write about that. They are just gnormal gnomes, though they are not gnormal gnomes gnamed Gnorm.

EDIT: I found I do have some Fumayan gnome notes. Huzzah! Anyway, I'd be delighted to read any gnome related commentary you may have on this thread.

 

Apparently I hit 10,000 words yesterday and I made the leader border for word count, 53rd place. 10,000 gets me in the raffles for most of the prizes but the specialist prizes require I get likes on specific types of articles (not terribly likely if I cannot get more eyeballs on the site). I can get eligible for more raffles at 25,000 and 50,000 words which should not be difficult.

The real prize is the dopamine hit for likes. If I get in the top tier for word count some people might pop on by out of curiosity. Here's hoping.

 

Anyway, I'm open to any suggestions on what to write because I am going for a crazy high word count of new articles.

A Highly Controversial Idea

I generally avoid putting contemporary politics into fiction, especially fantasy fiction. Because ideally fantasy should be timeless.

Tolkien himself was clearly influenced by WWI and WWII, especially when describing the dead marshes. Also, he mentioned the Scouring of the Shire was an allegory for the rebuilding of Great Britain after the Blitz. But the Lord of the Rings is still timeless because these WWII inspired events apply to many things. Lots of wars have many dead bodies and it's gross. Lots of wars and conflicts have a painful rebuilding.

I had a thought writing Scarterra articles while listening to China news videos.

None of my nations or institutions are based on the CCP but I have toyed with the idea of having some villian justifying invading Land A by saying "Land A was part of my nation in ancient times." That's a big thing the CCP likes to do and they aren't the first nation to use that excuse in real world history and I wouldn't be the first fiction writer to have a villain use that excuse.

What is the Scarterran equivalent to the CCP killing unjustly imprisoned dissidents to sell their organs to wealthy people.

I use the term "reagents" as a catchall term for "rarified materials that can be used to craft magical items or empower spells."

In Scarterra normally reagents occur when a plant or mineral absorbs ambient mystical energy. Also reagents can be extracted from dead magical creatures. Also, alchemists can put sweat equity into precious metals and expensive spices to essentially turn wealth into reagents.

So I thought, maybe their is a villainous shortcut that alchemy + ritual murder of innocents = easy reagents?

One thing that creeped me out about the real world organ trade is that the CCP documents say the "best" organs come from 28 year olds and an investigators noticed that nearly all of the mysterious disappearances in Kazakstan are otherwise unremarkable men and women described like "25, maybe 30." I imagine magical metaphysics would specify different life stages are better for different reagents. I guess it's not that different from virgin sacrifices in real world folklore.

Thoughts?

 

That's a good idea and I can dust off page 22 of this thread. I went into immense detail on the metaphysics of souls.

Cliff notes version is below.

Shadow/True Name: A Shadow is the memory of an individual’s existance and deeds. A True Name is a pure descriptor of an individual in total.

Animus: Metaphysical force that allows beings to act and move.

Heart’s Fire: The divine spark that separates the living from the dead

Psyche: The element that separates sentient life from non-sentient life.

Mortis*: The divine spark that separates sapient life from non-sapient life.

I think any one of these things can in theory be unjustifiably stolen.

Shadows/True Names are virtually indestructible, so they would not be a good candidate for your idea.

Living beings can recover from having their animus stolen. In any event, stealing animus from humans and human-like beings is inefficient because elementals have way more animus than humanoids and are relatively easy to bind with magic.

Stealing someone's psyche would not be something routine but it would be possible. The most obvious thing I can think of is to bind a person's psyche into a book to "read" what they knew. It would be something like Riddles Diary in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.

Stealing a person's Heart's Fire or Mortis is the most obvious thing. They way I see, distilled Heart's Fire would be a good reagent or power source for finite duration items and Mortis could perhaps forged into durable reagents. Stealing someone's Heart's Fire is akin to murder. Stealing someone's Mortis is akin to obliterating a sou.