My Fantasy RPG World, Feedback and Ideas appreciated

Agreed. Rustic yokels should not say "cool" and aristocrats should not be spouting "shut up!" (unless they are Julie Andrews in a comedy movie)

I have not nailed this down. I have a vague plan to make Fumayans and Borderlands sound a bit Slavic, Uskalans sound a bit German, Swynfaredians sound a bit Welsh (not that I'm sure how to write a Welsh accent) and the Kantoca are going to sound vaguely Spanish.

I am still not sure what the dwarves sound like and whether Meckelorners and Stahlheimers should sound alike to outsiders (I'm sure they sound different to each other). Likewise I'm not sure what my elves should sound like other than that the four elf cultures are going to have distinctive accents and they can generally tell very quickly exactly where another elf is from.

Maybe not with Sea Elves, they have such negligible contact with other elves, most wouldn't know a Sea Elf accent if a wood elf, dark elf, or grey elf heard it, the response would be "Whhhaaa???"

The only accents I need to nail down are in West Colassia because that's the region I plan to focus on story wise as much as the prospect of writing Scaraquan stories (and it's pretty obvious what they should talk like).

Since my first protagonist is going to be a gnome, I probably need to figure out gnomes, though I do have the general notion that gnomes are very good at cultural assimilation and have a head for languages. Mechanically gnomes, get a -1 difficulty break on most Charisma and Manipulation which I figure is mainly from them choosing their words very carefully.

 

Move over Myconids, I have a new favorite cute monster I need to figure out how to add to Scarterra.



Me Pondering the Underdark (again)

All the recent development on Scaraqua plus the video that kind of reminded me of Myconids made me again revisit the idea of Scarsubterra or Scarcaverna.

I also thought of using the Underdark. Night would Scarnoctis and dark would be dark would be Scartenebris. Scarnoctis isn't that bad. I like Scarnoctis better than Scarsubterra or Scarcaverna but I don't like it as much as Scarterra or Scaraqua.

Lets run with Scarnoctis for the moment. In published D&D worlds Underdark is where the evil creatures of ancient times were literally driven underground.

I'm thinking of making Scarnoctis like a metaphysical Australia when Great Britain opted to throw their poor people there.

Rather than Scarnoctis being the prison for Evil things, it's the dumping ground for Inconvenient things. The Nine don't want to destroy these creations of theirs, but they don't want to them hogging the prime real estate.

To continue the Australia metaphor. The local wildlife is very good at killing you, but the locals can and do adapt to this.

Because I created the universe, I have established that the Nine are roughly equal in power. The Nine have finite power. If one of the Nine for some reason put all of his/her focus on Scarterra, he or she could not interfere with Scaraqua or Scarnoctis at all.

Korus is regulating the ecosystem of Scarterra and his Scaraquan personality Mubete is the Mother of Fishes. That's a lot of work. So let's say hypothetically that he could very little of his/her divine might towards Scarnoctis. Korus is basically a nobody there, maybe manifesting 5% of his/her divine power underground. The main thing he does underground is likely recycle waste products from Scarterra and Scaraqua to feed Scarnoctis. If I choose to use Myconids I might make them Korus' spiritual children though I also like the idea of making Korus the god/goddess of moderately benign rats.

Mera/Enosha is stretched pretty thin trying to bring Scarterra and Scaraqua together and deploying more spirits than most. Mera/Enosha can probably wield about 10% of her divine power underground and a lot of her focus is on the kalazotz, the subterranean race that embodies her ideals greatly.

Greymoria/Taedi is stretched pretty thin in her Scaraquan schemes and Scarterran petty revenge and managing magic. Maybe she can afford to manifest maybe 15% of her might in Scarnoctis. Her main contribution is dumping her slightly used monsters into Scarnoctis.

Khemra is busy with the sun. So is Heekma. But Heeka does not poke his nose into Scaraqua half as much as Khemra pokes her nose in the affairs of Scarterra. She/he is probably going to create some kind of Hollow Earth inspired proto-sun underground. Maybe she/he can manifest about 20% of her/his power underground.

Maylar/Bellusk is moderately busy regulating disease, rot, predators, darwinism, assorted monsters but he/she would certainly want to have a finger on the pulse of Scarnoctis, if only because it has a dangerous competitive vibe that he/she likes. Maybe 25-30% of his/her power can be spared for underground.

Zarthus/Dalgari handles the moon and the tides and light and justice, but really he doesn't need to manipulate nature very much. Thematically, the moon does not translate well underground but Zarthus and Dalgari are all about shining light into the darkness so it's not a big stretch for him to want to interfere with Scarnoctis. He can probably afford to manifest 25-30% of his divine power underground.

Nami/Kontona doesn't actually do much in Scarterra or Scaraqua. Well Nami controls the weather in Scarterra, and that is fairly labor intensive. But as of yet, Kontona hasn't done anything in Scaraqua metaphysical events though Scaraquans believe she is the prometheon water bringer who "invented" rivers and lakes so that Scarterrans could steal the essence of Sea. Nami/Kontona doesn't do much not because she cannot but because she doesn't want to. She prefers to watch things unfold in their own way and only pokes a stick at Scarterra or Scaraqua when things start to grow stale. She could easily manifst 40% of her divine power underground if she wanted to. I'm not sure if she does want to.

Hallisan/Mancha and Phidas/Resona have a pretty small role in Scaraqua and Scarterra. And their role in Scaraqua is taking nutrients and chemicals from undergrond and dumping it into the sea. In Scaterra and to a lesser extant Scaraqua their roles are to dump minerals into the crust of the earth and/or make sure the crust of the earth doesn't collapse into Void, so even when they are dealing with Scarterra and Scaraqua they are still manipulating Scarnoctis indirectly so these two are clearly the top dogs underground. Let's arbitrarily assign 50% of their divine power underground.

So here's a fun baseline. The battle between Law and Chaos is strong in Scaraqua, since the three neutral good, neutral evil, and true neutral deities have a minimal presence and the other six have fairly large presences. Maybe the cosmic struggle between Law and Chaos is what causes earthquakes.

So I'm thinking 2-5 civilized underground races with fairly large populations that Phidas and Hallisan fight over influencing (and one of these groups is probably going to be dwarves) and maybe 2-5 races with small populations under the spiritual guidance of Korus, Greymoria, and Mera, and 10-12 small population races under the spiritual guidance of the three chaotic deities.



Scarterra and Scaraqua are fairly isolated from each other, all things considered, but the boundary between Scarnoctis and the other two biomes are a lot more porous.

Kobolds, goblins, camazotz, cyclopes. and dwarves are very deeply split between Scarterra and Scarnoctis. Kalazotz and Aranea are primarily underground people but are very curious about the surface. Gnomes are primarily surface people but they are probably a bit curious about the underground.

Squid people (whatever I end up naming them) and Astalakians are primarily sea creatures but they are curious about the underground waters.

EDIT: I don't remember if I included the Runesmith video on the D&D Underdark or not yet. I'm not beholden to any of it, but I'd be a fool not to draw inspiration from it.

 

I'm planning to slowly color in the Scaraquan map so to speak. Starting way up north. I might change the name from Dark Sea/North Sea to Dark Ocean/North Ocean but I don't know what the line dividing sea from ocean is and "Sea" sounds more fantasy-esque than ocean.


Go to Scarterra Homepage
The Dark Sea
The Dark Sea to Scaraquans is what Scarterrans call "The North Sea." The region makes up all the ocean water north of East and West Colassia and is both the figurative and literal end of the map for both Scarterra and Scaraqua.

Without powerful transmutation or invocation magic, Scarterran ships cannot safely transverse the North Sea in the winter months because otherwise the ship will probably get stuck in ice.

Sailing is possible in the summer months. Sailors have to keep an eye out for ice bergs and dress warmly, but it's far from impossible to sail here, not that there are many places to sail to.
Geography
There is a very narrow band of shallow sea floor near the coastline but the water becomes deeper very quickly moving to the north.

To get to the rest of Scaraqua, the main thoroughfare is the Demonic Strait or one could swim around East or West Colassia.

if you keep swimming north in the Dark Sea, eventually you would hit a solid wall of ice separating the The Void from Scaraqua.It was originally assumed that Void Demons that enter Scaraqua initially cross the The Barrier on the Scarterran side and the dive into the water (Void demons do not have to breathe so they are fully capable of killing things above or below the sea.

It was fairly recently discovered that the wall of ice separating Scaraqua from the Void is permeated with many small tunnels that demons can swim through directly into Scaraqua. Unsurprisingly, very few if any Scaraquan nations have sponsored an exploration into frigid demon infested waters, so the full specifics of the watery section of the Near Void is as of yet, unknown.
Ecosystem Cycles
Fish feed on plankton and algae and bigger fish feed on the smaller fish, much as elsewhere in Scaraqua.
Fauna & Flora
These waters are cold and dark sparsely populated. The beasts and monsters that do swim here are all adapted to the cold in some way and very strong and tough.

The few barbarian tribes that swim here are similarly strong and tough.


I have yet to populate these waters. Maybe I don't have to. For narrative purposes, if I want to introduce a big scary sea with minimal explanation I can just say "It came from the Dark Sea!!!!"

It's a fantasy world so I can justify anything I want. Also, real world oceanographers and marine biologist admit there is a lot they don't know so there are almost uncertainly undiscovered cool species in the real world arctic sea. You might blame it on global warming changing oceanic migrations, but also we have better technology to study the arctic and Antarctic waters. Practically every year marine biologists disover that a X species or Y species thought to favor temperate waters seems to visit polar waters more than scientists though.

The mightiest real world sea creatures I could find in the arctic ocean besides marine mammals are Greenland Sharks and Sea Skates (similar but not identical to manta rays). I guess to a medieval person's simplistic world view, a Sea Skate and a Manta Ray are the same class of animal. Besides some minor morphology differences, Skates lay eggs and Manta Rays give live birth. Not a big difference in the grand scheme of things.

I like the idea of having a few tribes of Karakhai based on greenland sharks. I like the idea of having different Karakhai tribes based on different species of sharks (as long as know one looks too closely at crossbreeding).

It probably won't be much more than a short blurb.

A few facts about Greenland sharks

Obviously, greenland sharks can handle cold temperatures well. They are not as big as great white sharks, but they are among the largest sharks. They don't quite have the iron stomachs that tiger sharks do but they are very omnivorous equally happy eating fresh meat or carrion.

Greenland shark's most interesting attribute is that a byproduct of eating and digesting almost everything, their flesh and blood is very toxic. Apparently there is a colorful Inuit legend or two explaining why it's dangerous

Greenland sharks are apex predators, they don't have to worry about many things trying to eat them (except maybe Inuit who haven't heard the stories), but Scaraqua has monsters that are big and strong enough to eat Karakhai. So I guess that's a useful special power. Monsters won't want to eat them. It could be like monarch butterflies, bird eats a Monarch once, learns never to do it again. Or Karakhai could have an odor that warns predators not to bite them.

It won't defend them against a Void Demon (because their souls aren't poisonous), but it would be a nice defense not that it would stop an intelligent monster from killing a Karakhai as a competitor, if not as prey. But if you are fighting a big monster, it's not a bad thing to have it reluctant to bite you.

 

When I was coming up with exotic Merits and Flaws, I created two Flaws relating to if you taste good or not. One is "Delicious Aroma" which translates into "Animal intelligent monsters usually attack you first" and "Intelligent monsters that occasionally eat people will be substantially harder to reason with but will not be forced to attack you first"

Another Merit applies to have a delicious soul, so Void Demons and undead attack you. One PC chose this because he was a rarified type of favored soul and figured his soul was tasty.

He didn't apply this (because he is very much NOT a tank), but it was pointed out that this Flaw could be construed as a Merit. If you built a very tanky character, you could use the flaws that cause enemies to attack you first as a good thing, because it gives the more squishy characters in your party some breathing room.

Hypothetically if one were create an adventuring party of Scaraquans lets say a Greenland shark karakhai barbarian warrior was in the party, it would be a bad thing if the monster attacks the party's squishy Merfolk wizard immediately and ignores the literally thick skinned Karakhai.

 

Iron Hills Border Barony

Barony The Iron Hills
No one knows why, but the local are dampens magic. Magic is not impossible to cast in the area. but it's a lot more difficult to cast here than in most other places in Scarterra. No one knows why. On a related note, naturally occurring reagents do not exist here. Very magical creatures such as spirits, dragons, and half spirits feel mildly ill here and thus rarely stay.

Lots of scholars, alchemists, and mages have tried to study this effect. Many have searched for a means of exporting the magical effect of the area to create sort of anti-magic reagent. Nothing seems to work. Not the salt, not the iron, not the rocks, not the plants, not the water. No one has figure out why the area acts the way it does or how to export the effect.

Scarterra has other anti-magic sites but all the other sites are in the middle of deserts, tundras and desolate mountain tops. Not places that have plenty of clean water and a modest amount of arable farm land.

Over the centuries, many people migrate here if they really hate magic. It doesn't always work as a sanctuary. At least in one famous example, a man fled here to avoid an angry dragon. Sure the dragon's fire breath was a little weaker but that just means the dragon had to use his fire attacker longer, so his target just suffered longer.

Tentative Geographic Assignment: Spot 12

Basic Concept: A mining town that has an odd supernatural anomaly near it.

History: Iron Hills has got it name from a famous iron mine. There is also a salt mine. Both mines are somewhat tapped out and less productive than what they used to be, but the name stuck.

The previous Baron of the region was a tyrant and treated his subjects like slaves in all but name. He was killed by the current Border Baron is more of a hands of a benevolent despot.

If the foreman of the minds are abusing or underpaying the miners he will go in and beat them. Well he is beginning to show his age now. If the mine foreman abuse their power, the Baron will send his knights to beat them up.

Government Style: Laisses Faire libertarianism with frontier justice when things get out of hand.

Character of the Realm: Fairly stereotypical to the Borderlands region. Rugged individualism is prevalent here.

Religion: Most of the locals are areligious here, but there is a small offshoot of the Cult of the Compact here that preaches that mortals should worship the Nine without the incentive of divine spell casting casting magic on The Nine's behalf.

Challenges: Obviously the locals cannot use magic to resolve many of their problems. The anti-magic effect attracts some colorful characters. While the Borderlands has a lot of Scum and Villainy types, this realm seems to have an extra share of bad apples.

The local Baron is a good man with a sharp mind and the loyalty of the people but he is getting old has no clear heir. It's likely whoever succeeds him will not be as noble of spirit.



I now have 16 of the 20 Border Baronies spots detailed!

 

Money Money Money!

Stahlheim and Meckelorn have the Master of Coins

Swynfaredian Keeper of the Gold

King Drosst has a Golden Mask

Default Human Feudal lands have Stewards

 

I've slowed a bit gratuitous world building and slipped back into 9th place on total word count for World count. I'm pretty far ahead of 10th place. Not that this is important.

Lately I've been writing more little articles rather than a few giant ones. I think most people prefer reading little articles. I cannot really win World Ember from spamming it with articles. I'm 5th place in the number of articles.

I'm around 70,000 words written in the month of December on World Ember. I just passed 300,000 words from the time I started my World Anvil Account. Just for comparison, I checked, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is about 257,000 words.

These articles are fun to write and I hope you guys enjoy reading at least some of them, but a nagging voice keeps getting louder and louder that if I don't write a novel this is all a waste of time. Once World Ember is over I can stop obsessing about my place in the top ten lists and start writing for real. In preparation I thought I might profile some characters that might show up in my novel.

I plan to have Nilen and his companions tromp through the Border Baronies region and visit 3-4 various Baronies before having a showdown with the villains in the Barony of the Dead. Apart from the Barony of the Dead, I am not sure which Baronies I want to use all options are on the table.

I have 16 border baronies so far, one of them being the Barony of the Dead so I have 15 options and of course if I have to invent an entirely new Barony for story purposes, I will do so.

One of the very first Border Baronies I created was the Dread Barony of Mallocaballo. And now I have made a character profile for it's leader, who I have named Tello Serrano.

Tello Serrano is a very agile combatant though a bit wiry (he's super fast and accurate but doesn't have much Strength) He is pretty intimidating as someone with the Dread Baron should be, but he is slightly less intimidating than his predecessors and is partially coasting on his family's reputation to get by.

I think it's good to give villains a tiny bit of goodness and a line they won't normally cross. Tello loves his wife and children a lot and because of this he normally does not hurt his target's families (though if his own family gets even a whiff of a threat, all bets are off).

Tello loves manipulating people and juggling complex subterfuge. Perhaps too much, he will often make solutions to his problems needlessly complex just for fun. That's probably his greatest weakness. He is so obsessed with entrapping Kantoc nobleman into blackmail traps that he has not noticed that the Border Barons nearest to him are plotting against him, mainly out of revenge for things his uncle and grandfather did.


So for my novel A Cobbler's Journey, if Nilen and company travel through here, it won't make ripples by itself. If the party gets shaken down by the local mafia-esque thugs Nilen could probably talk them into taking a smaller bribe. If they just pass through I could have the party witness criminal stuff and have it be a character building moment but it won't affect the main plot much.

Alternatively if I wanted to bring in the main plot, the main villain's goons catch up with the protagonists when they are in Mallocaballo, the Dread Baron is probably going to object to them starting a ruckus in his town and is likely to send his tugs to take down both the main heroes and main villains which could be a fun x-factor or perhaps a well veiled deus ex machina perhaps forcing both heroes and villains to withdraw and postpone their confrontation while Tello shakes his fist at them all when they run away.

Then if I wanted to set up a sequel for Nilen the cobbler, I could have an epilogue scene with Dread Baron Serrano saying in his best mafia voice. "Find out everything there is to know on this supposed cobbler" setting up Serrano to be a major character in my hypothetical sequel novel.

I'm still not sure what the Dread Baron (or anyone else) looks like. I dream of a day when I can afford to commission a professional artist. The internet is full of semi-pros that can work cheap but I have no money not earmarked for rent, food, and utilities right now. I have decided that if I could afford a professional artist for one thing, I would commission illustrations for this article on ethnicity in Scarterra.

I would want to see a multigenerational family with children, young adults, middle aged people, and elderly people typifying earthy, fiery, watery, and airy people.

I'm not good at visualizing or drawing faces. I want to make sure that when I came up with elemental ethnic traits I didn't make anyone look too weird looking.

Once I establish that the criteria I set up are reasonable, I would then hire said artist to draw me a bunch of earth-hybrid people. Most of my characters are young adults or middle age people that are either "half earthy/half ____" or "mostly earthy with a dash of _______".

For instance, most Borderlanders are mostly earthy with a dash of watery. So is Nilen's family, but because Nilen is unknowingly marked with Mera's blessing, Nilen himself has about a 50/50 mix of earthy and watery rather than the 80/20 mix of most of his family.

 

I agree with your diagnosis on bad boys. I'm not sure that applies to this thread. Note, I'm not trying to fix all the problems with modern dating through my novel.

I did unintentionally hit on gender archetypes when I created the Nine, or at least some of them. In Western fiction, the two feminine archetypes are The Good Mother and the Witch. Mera is very much a Good Mother and Greymoria is very much a Witch.

On the masculine side, Hallisan and Phidas represent the positive and negative aspects of ambition respectively. Zarthus and Maylar represent the positive and negative aspects of self reliance respectively.

Korus, Khemra, and Nami have genders but they are kind of androgynous in my mind. I guess that's why most of my deities that gender swap between Scarterra and Scaraqua are in this bunch.

I just looked over my novel outline and thought,
this doesn't have a romantic subplot in it, and it has very few female characters apart from one wise mentor figure," so I thought that might cause a problem and make my book boring and unrelatable or at the very least turn a publisher aside.


Are you familiar with the "No true Scotsman fallacy?" I believe a "No true alpha fallacy" applies. I have seen dozens if not hundreds of definitions of what makes a "true alpha male." Sometimes this is phrased as "A real man does ______."

To say nothing of beta males, zeta males, gamma, and sigma males, all with their own definitions. The latter is like "Omega males are weak and pathetic, beta males are pathetic and foolish, alpha males are evil and foolish. You should be a sigma male to live a fully actualized life! Buy my $400 course on 'How to be a Sigma Male'!"


EDIT: To steer this back on topic. Gnomes view the goal of romance as being the formation of strong families. I wasn't planning on giving him a love interest but I was planning on having him draw on the wisdom of his family to solve problems and I am likely to make one of the human characters a spirit loa who I guess draws on his family's wisdom in a more literal sense.

 

Scaraqua is better than ever. Now it has crystal waving hippies!

Followers of Sea

Sea is your past, present and future, Sea is All

Most Scaraquans venerate Sea as a powerful cosmic force that is the father/mother of the Seeyirah, the daughters/sisters of the Sea, but they say that Sea does not listen to or answer the prayers of mere mortals. Even the Seeyirah cannot speak to the Sea.

The Followers of Sea, believe that Sea can and does respond to prayers, at least in a limited fashion. The Followers of Sea believe in harmony and regularly practice mediation.

As of yet the Followers of Sea cannot wield any magic powers but some of the Followers of Sea claim that their most enlightened followers can exercise some limited aspects of Sea's power (but only when there are no non-believers watching).The Followers of Sea also believe that Sky and Sea Floor wield similar cosmic power but no one as of yet has made a serious attempt to commune with Sky or Sea Floor.

A few undersea princes and religious leaders have attempted to persecute the Followers of Sea, but most ignore them viewing as fools but otherwise harmless given that most of Followers of Sea are pacifists.

 

I had a very short and simple social distancing Christmas with only my mom, so I had lots of time to write on World Anvil (which is good because I've lost ground in the rankings!)

I have created Kantoc a long time ago but hadn't filled in many details. Basically I was like ummm, "It's got a lot of knights and it's kind of like Rohan, kind of like Camelot, kind of like medieval Spain".



I created this article covering about 1000+ words about their general government. Probably only going to gradually get longer gradually as I incorporate other things and a bunch of smaller articles.

I arbitrarily gave Kantoc the name Kantoc because I liked how it sounds. Now I made up that their legendary ancient King Arthur figure was named King Kantarias, who ruled my blatant Camelot ripoff now called Gerlaria (based on the Basque word for "warrior"). So the Kantoca people took their name from King Kantarias and the nation of Kantoc took its name from the Kantoca people.

The dominant ethnic group present, the Kantoca. The secondary ethnic group that merged with them and brought their horsemanship into the nation, the Jortoca. Also, pony riding gnomes.

Their two main national holidays, The Equestrian Days and Heroes' Day.

But the real thing to write about in Kantoc knights.

I created a bunch of knightly orders so far. The Korus sponsored tree hugging Green Knights, the peasant friendly Mera sponsored Knights of the Hearth. The Phidas sponsored Order of the Steel Mask, the sea loving Wayfarer Knights, the super elite Red Lion Knights, and the highly expendable Knights of the Broken Blade.

It is mildly unusual for Phidas temples to sponsor a knightly order very unusual for Mera or Korus temples to sponsor a knightly order, but in Kantoc, if you do not have a knightly order, you cannot really get anything done politically.

I still need to create at least one Hallisan sponsored order and at least one Khemra sponsored order. Since Hallisan and Khemra usually have knightly orders almost everywhere, it'd be hard to distinguish the Kantoc branches much.

I'm not sure yet if Greymoria, Zarthus, Maylar, and/or Nami are going to make an attempt to sponsor knightly order (or mocking anti-knightly orders).

I could probably use more secular knightly orders. I only have two, the King's Honor Guard and the King's Suicide Squad.

The interesting knightly orders are the ones whose mission requires them to travel to many places in pursuit of a broad mission. The vast majority of knights in Kantoc probably have a very simple and straightforward knightly mission that is not that epic in scope.

The Knightly Order of Duchy #7 is charged with defending Duchy #7 and answers to the Duke #7.

 

Scarterra Traveling Circus
Scarterra has many fantastic beasts in them. Many wealthy princes, adventurers and warlords pay good money for exotic trained beasts. Scarterra has many adventurers who scour the land looking for animals to capture and train in return for riches.

One of these such groups was running low on funds and it costs a lot to feed their charges. They had the desperate idea to let the locals gawk at all the weird beasts in exchange for a few copper or silver coins.

This helped them scrape through a rough patch, until they were able to find a buyer for one of their trained pegasi. When they entered the buyers realm they found their reputation preceded them. All the townsolk in their new location were offering them money to see their "tamed monsters."

They figured they might as well keep doing this to make a side income. Next thing they knew, a Kantoca duke offered them several hundred gold to be the showcase exhibition in his festival. Gradually the rag tag adventurers and animal trainers got better at showmanship and they hired a few bards. Where once they made almost all of their income selling trained animals, now they found they made about a third of their income running shows (and the shows helped advertise their beast training services.)

That was generations ago. Now the group is rebranded as The Scarterran Traveling Circus and they have two score employees, some helping the show, some hype men and of course wilderness savvy people to find new beasts.

The circus also provides safe haven to outsiders. The circus features "friendly orcs" helping with the shows while wearing ridiculously exaggerated costume versions of orc barbarian garb.

Over it's long history, the circus has featured Metamorphs, an Aranea, kobolds, several kalazotz and almost every half-breed hybrid you can name.


The "Friendly" Monster That Wasn't.
It's fun and exciting for a person to look at a scary orc warrior up close. The circus has hosted a lot of benign gentle outsiders to many of the so-called monstrous races. One time they included a "friendly" camazotz.

She was nice and friendly when around crowds, but on the circus' last night he would murder one or more people in the place they were visiting and drink their blood, then use the circus as cover to slink away.

Eventually people caught on and the camazotz was slain, but this scandal almost shut down the circus forever, staining their reputation for years to come.

 

Go to Scarterra Homepage
The Acro Bats
Contrary to popular belief, kalazotz are not actually harmed by bright light, but they do avoid bright light.Kalazotz can see in the dark perfectly and are normally timid and shy so they normally stick to the dark whenever possible, but there are a few oddballs that don't mind letting the light shine on themselves.

The infamous massacre of the Grey Forest kalazotz has made kalazotz in general leery of traveling in human lands by themselves, but there oddballs that are curious enough about humans to risk it.

While the Codenya kalazotz work well with their wood elves allies, very few have adopted the tradition of the Rumspringa for themselves but there are a few oddball exceptions.

A half a dozen kalazotz decided to join a few wood elf friends on their Rumpsringa

They traveled to Penarchia a long way from kalazotz territory where no one had even heard of a kalazotz, styling themselves as the Acro Bats.

The kalazotz would play Aerial Hackey sack and do other flying maneuvers to impress the locals while their elf friends provided musical accompaniment. The prettiest manned the ticket booth and was their hype woman because no one wanted to give an ugly bat creature money.

The troupe traveled up and down the continent for the better part of ten years before packing it in and returning home to Codenya.

 

Belated response to this prompt.



Sea Biscuit the Hippocampus
A bluish hippocampus became a frequent sight to the fishers around Meraland. This was viewed as a good omen because Hippocampi are considered sacred to the goddess Mera.

Thus it was viewed as good luck if the Hippocampus swim along beside them. Over time the fisherman realized that she seemed to like eating biscuits best.

Sea Biscuit became even more beloved by the locals when she grabbed a sailor that was thrown overboard and swam him to safety.

As more fisherman cheered Sea Biscuit's appearance and began feeding her biscuits routinely.Sea Biscuit has also provided warnings and last minute rescues against dark elf incursions.
Physical Description
Body Features
Body of a horse, two front legs, big fish tail rear. Light blue scaly body and light yellow fins including a large prominent mane-like fin on the back of the neck.
Special Abilities
Sea Biscuit has a limited ability to control fish and speak to fish and marine animals.

Sea Biscuit can breathe air or water and can temporarily bestow land creatures with the ability to breathe water.
Mental Characteristics
Accomplishments & Achievements
Seabiscuit is believed to have the powers of a Fisherman's Friends because since the local fishermen have befriended her fishing yields have increased considerably.

More impressively Sea Biscuit has the power to temporarily bestow water breathing on humans. More than once, when dark elf slavers tried to kidnap fisherman, Sea Biscuit has coaxed fishermen to jump into the water and hid them below the waves long enough to swim them to shore safely.

Church/Cult
Tenders
Age
unknown
Gender Identity
The Fisherman used to argue on whether Seabiscuit was a stallion or a mare, but after a fisherman saw her underside, he noticed of her underside and saw no male horse parts.
Eyes
deep green
Skin Tone
murky blue
Known Languages
She seems to be able to fully understand Common, but she cannot talk though she can communicate basic ideas by the tone of her whinny.

 

My new symbol for heresy....

Philosophical people who think the Nine are jerks.


Nihilists who want to bring Turoch back from the Dead


Power mad lunatics who want to become gods themselves


Nonreligious people who drape themselves in Turoch imagery to make themselves look scary


Extreme Risktakers that want to bring back the Traitor (the Nine's tenth sibling)


Infernalists, those who collaborate with Void Demons

Anyway, these are the dangerous heretics against the Nine collectively.

I guess technically any Scarterran that worships the Nine in their Scaraquan forms is technically a heretic but it's unlikely such a person would face mobs of torches and pitchforks.


It's also possible to have heresy against one of the Nine. Khemra's Keepers have to deal with the heretics of the Night Order. Some of Mera's Tenders believe the Paladins or the Pure Ones are heretics. Phidas' Masks have their own Blessed One heresy to deal with. Nami's Rovers have an ecclesiastical civil war every three or four generations.

Generally speaking, these heresies are considered internal matters. The priesthoods of the Nine don't usually bat an eye against groups that some other priesthood considers heresy.

The groups with hyperlinked articles above are the Big Bad heretics.

 

Scaraquan Geography



Here is my rough draft map of Scaraqua's seas.

The Dark Sea is the sparsely populated narrow north polar region. Detailed here.

I'm still working on the details for who lives here. Probably some Karakhai based on greenland sharks and a few other tough as nails nomads, but not much else.

The Dark Sea has no navigable ocean currents to speak of making long distance travel irksome for Scaraquans. The harsh weather and climate makes this area difficult to sail for Scarterrans.


The Long Sea is nice and warm (which Scaraquans can thrive in) but is fairly deep on average (which Scaraquans struggle with). A vague frontier where nomads and civilization butt heads. I haven't figured out the details yet, but I figure Water Rome would like to control this area but they keep hitting roadblocks. The sea is detailed here.

This region has relatively few navigable underwater currents making long distance travel moderately difficult for Scaraquans. Conversely, the climate and wind currents are very favorable to Scarterran sailors.

I'm still working on the details for who lives here. I figure a few isolated small nations and a bunch of nomads of various races. Plus the occasional deep sea monster or cult. The Long Sea is probably going to going to be ethnically diverse with no single Scaraquan race having a clear numbers advantage over the others.


The Sea of Enosha is going to be the heartland of the Oshamni, aka Water Rome. Enosha is the Scaraquan name for Mera and this region encompasses Mera's Lake appropriately enough. This sea is both fairly shallow and quite war, great for agriculture making this the proverbial bread basket of Scaraqua. The Sea of Enosha is going to have a wide variety of undersea races but they are going to have a disproportionately high population of merfolk. The Sea of Enosha has lots of underwater currents making long distance travel relatively easy here for Scaraquans. Mera's Lake is very hospitable to surface dwellers, so this area is smooth sailing for Scarterrans. Stub article here.


I'm not sure which order Oshamni is going to expand in, but the Sea of Resona (Scarqua Phidas) and the Sea of Mangcha (Scaraqua Hallisan) are very similar and they both represent early major expansions for Water Rome.

Both these seas are near the equator and have a bunch of islands. They also have a lot of chemical vents (Mangcha and Resona are the gods of chemical vents). These seas are probably going to going house "Water Carthage" and the other "Water Greece." These seas have a disproportionately high population of Astalakians (crab people). This area is going to above average in food production and Scaraqua's best place for mineral and timber resources. Navigable ocean currents are limited and there are a lot of islands to swim around so this is moderately difficult for Scaraquans to travel long distances. Scarterrans have smooth sailing. The islands are so close together and well charted that Scarterrans can stop for supplies and provisions pretty easily when taking long journeys (though they do have to make sure they don't run their ships aground in the shallower areas. Stub Resona article
Stub Mangcha article


The Sea of Taedi is named after Scaraqua's version Greymoria. It's probably going to have a disproportionately high number of cephalopod people.

It's going to be geographic diverse with coastal water open waters, shallow water, deep trenches, undersea hills and climate ranging from polar to subtropical. This is the tentative home of the Water Celts and it's going to represent an area for relatively late expansion by the Water Romans. Stub article here


The Sea of Mubete is the tentative home of Water China. Water China is the only nation that could theoretically challenge Water Rome but they are so geographically removed they barely are aware of each other and full on warfare is not possible. The Sea of Mubete is going to be a nice place to be a Scaraquan with decent mineral and food resources so Water China is going to be pretty self sufficient. Stub article here.


This is still a WIP obviously, but this is a baseline for me figuring out which undersea people live where.

So plan is Water Rome's heartland is The Sea of Enosha. There first major conquests are the Sea of Resona and Sea of Mangcha (though it's going to include heavy pockets of resistance). They are kind of sort of trying to conquer the Sea of Taedi. The Long Sea is sort of the main frontier where civilization meets the untamed seas. The Dark Sea is the "Here there be monsters" part of the map and the Sea of Mubete is a distant land of exotic wonders.

 

I tried to come up with a lot of clever things and fell flat. I didn't exactly dive deep into the wells of creativity on this one.


Go to Scarterra Homepage
Dogs of Scarterra
Scarterran dogs are fairly similar to real world Earth dogs. Much like Earth dogs, Scarterran dogs were descended from wolves.

Legends differ on whether the transformation from wolf to woof was precipitated by Mera, Korus, Zarthus, or a bold mortal acting independently though it is clear that dogs ere fairly common in the Second Age and even more common in the Third Age.

Dogs are selectively bred and the most common dog breeds fall into the four broad categories of guard dogs, hunting dogs, house dogs, and lap dogs. Less commonly there are show dogs, herding dogs, and fighting dogs. Scarterran dogs come in the same variety of shapes and sizes of real world dogs, but Scarterran dogs come in even more colors.

Like horses, dogs can manifest ethnic traits from elemental forces.

Earthy dogs tend to be large and strong if a bit slow in both senses of the word. They tend to have brown, dusty, roan, or black fur.

Fiery dogs are very spirited and aggressive and have great endurance. They tend to have reddish orangish fur. As they get older, their fur is streaked with dark greys.

Watery dogs are intelligent and inquisitive and are naturally strong swimmers. They tend to have light blue or vaguely greenish fur.

Airy dogs are very fast but they are geared for sprinting not long term endurance. They are a bit flighty and have low attention spans. They tend to have white, golden, or silvery coats.

Most house dogs and lap dots are watery/airy hybrids. Most hunting dogs are earth/air or earth/water hybrids. Most guard dogs are fiery/airy or fiery/watery hybrids. Of course any combination is possible and dog breeders have tried everything.

Fur style varies considerably. The shortest hair dogs are fire/water (including a rare few totally hairless breeds) hybrids and the shaggiest dogs tend to be air/earth hybrids (including a rare few that can be sheared for wool like sheep).One niche that Scarterran dogs have that real world dogs do not is there are more watch dog variety. Selective breeding can create watch dogs that are sensitive to magic spells in their presence or that can sense undead and Void minions at great distances. Dogs with all four elemental traits in roughly equal proportions are said to be more attuned to the supernatural than other dogs. Presumably because a dog with all four elements is grounded so firmly in nature that they can sense imbalances.

On average, Scarterran dogs are a bit larger and stronger than real world dogs, and they tend to live a bit longer often routinely living 15-20 years. Purebred or near purebred dogs with only one dominant elemental trait tend to have somewhat shorter lifespans than mixed breeds.


I doubt I can go into great length on kalazotz with pet bats, but I think I'll hash out an article on it. I think pet bats would be like cats. They are not particularly obedient or trainable but kalazotz think they are kind of cute and also bats help keep the pest population low.

 

Domesticated bats
Lots of mortals like to keep pets that remind them of themselves. The kalazotz, especially dwarf influenced kalazotz sometimes like to keep pet bats. Kalazotz that live above ground, almost never keep pet bats however.

Even with their natural kinship for bats, kalazotz have not been able to fully domesticate bats. Bats are as much tamed as domesticated. Domesticated bats are temperamentally similar to domesticated cats. Much like humans and cats, bats often come back just for the free food. Also, like with humans and cats, kalazotz appreciate that having bats around can help with pest control. Much like outdoor cats, kalazotz have a lot of outdoor bats that routinely roam around free nearly every night but come back to their kalazotz' "owner" to rest during the day.

Dwarf allied kalazotz cultivate a lot of specific fungi and they don't want insects poaching their mushrooms before the kalazotz can harvest them.

Also, the kalzotz can use the bat guano as fertilizer or pass it along to their dwarf allies to help with their above ground farming. Kalazotz of course produce a lot of their own brand of guano, but it doesn't have the nitrogen or phosphorous content that makes ordinary bat guano so good for plants. Kalazotz are not insectivores, or at least they are not commonly insectivores.

A few humans and dwarves have tried to keep pet bats, but it's never worked. Non zotz humanoids do not have the innate kinship necessary to even vaguely keep pet bats in line.

Camazotz could keep domesticated bats if they wanted to, but camazotz just aren't naturally nurturing enough to bother keeping pets around.

Ordinary bats are skittery. Having a bunch of bats near a kalazotz nest can help act as an alarm system because the bats tend to freak out if an intruder is approaching. Unfortunately, ordinary bats treat camazotz like kalazotz so pet bats cannot serve as an alarm against camazotz, the kalazotz's ancestral enemy.

 

Magnificent Art Work Created by the Great Artist Scalecasso

I created some more prize winning Scalenex originals on Microsoft Paint.

Nami's most common symbol on Scarterra is wind based



Kontona's (same goddess different name) most common symbol in Scaraqua is rain based.



I don't have the details nailed down yet, but in Scaraqua is Kontona is the closest thing they have to a "land Goddess". At the very least she "stole" rain and gave it to Scarterra so they could have their rivers, lakes, and wells and thus could support complex life.

Not every Scaraquan is bothered by this. Many are indifferent or happy about the fact that there is life on land.

I was using clip art for the Guardians of Hallisan icon, but if I wanted to monetize Scarterra I would have pay $10 for the axe and hammer clipart. Mahrlect that. I'll make my on axe and hammer icon!


Same thing for Zarthus' Lanterns. Zarthus is also the moon god of course.



Had issues with the sizing of the phases of the moon but I'm reasonably satisfied, the general idea is conveyed.

I couldn't even find clip art for a hearth surrounded or floating on water so here is an approximation of the symbol that the Tenders use.



I'm kind of tired of MS Paint for the time being, but when I feel up to it again, it will not be difficult to make a Sun for Khemra's Keepers or a bloody spear for the Testers of Maylar, or maybe just two spears crossed and make them red and white instead of black and white.

That just leaves Greymoria. I'm not even sure what I want the symbol to look like. Right now I have a placeholder clip art "magic star."

 

This is going to be a tough prompt for me to follow given that I have a lump of obsidian where my heart should be.

I did realize that I had a 40 word footnote in my article on the Lanterns, so I took it and expanded it.


Go to Scarterra Homepage
Gariela and Sandalius
The story of Gariela and Sandalius is a famous love story among Lanterns worldwide and is especially popular in the Kingdom of Kantoc where this event supposedly happened.
Summary
Gariela was a holy warrior serving the god Zarthus who was in love with a healer among Mera's Tenders named Sandalius. Gariela would often visit Sandalius for magical healing between her adventures. Sandalius was a prolific potioneer and kept Gariela well stocked with healing potions

One day while Gariela was away, Sandalius' temple was attacked by minions of the god Maylar. Almost the entire temple staff was killed including Sandalius though they left a survivor to tell the story.

Gariela swore vengeance and spent whole life fighting Maylar’s Testers and his various pet monsters.
Spread
Gariela took on two apprentice Lanterns, and these apprentices went on to take on apprentices of their own who formed Gariela's lineage of wisdom.

Centuries later, there are at least a dozen Lanterns claiming Gariela's spiritual lineage. The lineage of Gariela will aggressively fight Maylar's minions and will go out of their way to protect Mera's temples and followers whether they ask for the protection or not. Most of Gariela's legacy holders focus on swordplay, stealth, and wilderness survival skills as their core skill set though versatility is highly prized with this lineage, so they are hard to pigeonhole.

Gariela was originally from Kantoc (or possibly Kantoc's predecessar the fallen Kingdom of Gerlaria), but she traveled a lot after her true love's death and her forebears were mobile too. Thus Lanterns claiming the lineage of Gariela can be found in almost any land.

The Lanterns of Gariela's lineage (and Lanterns in general) love to tell this story at any opportunity and it has been picked and retold by many storytellers and bards around Scarterra.
Variations & Mutation
In some stories, Gariela and Sandalius were actual lovers. In other stories Gariela was in love with Sandalius but could not find the words to express it, so Sandalius never knew she wanted to be anything other than a work colleague.


While most Lanterns deny that the tragic lovers ever procreated. Some bards like to say that Gariela and Sandalius had an infant child and that the child was staying with Sandalius as the primary caregiver so Gariela could keep going on her quests. According to these storytellers, the child was slain along with his/her father meaning Gariela also was a vengeful mother and not just a vengeful ex-lover.



There was a bard that told a yarn about the love child of Gariela and Sandalius being kidnapped by the Testers and raised to worship Maylar. Unknowingly, Gariela's bloodline lineage is actually at war with her spiritual lineage!

That bard was tracked down some Lanterns of Gariela's spiritual lineage. They beat him half to death. Magically healed him, and beat him up again....six or seven times.

He retracted his story the next day,
Cultural Reception
The story is popular in the civilized world, even among cultures and people that are not particularly fond of Zarthus or his followers.

Many princes and authority figures wish all the Lanterns would run off into the wilderness to go fight Maylar creatures rather than stick around town protesting every tax hike or supposed act of oppression.


It should be noted that it is hardly unusual for Lanterns and Tenders to become romantically entwined with each other (though it rarely ends this dramatically), possibly reflecting the gods themselves.

It is commonly believed that Hallisan, Zarthus, and Mera are in a love triangle. While not as prevalent, there is speculation that Mera, Greymoria and Korus are also in a love triangle. Or a love pentagon because some believe Khemra and Nami are also romantically interested in Korus.

According to some storytellers, Korus is also sometimes romantically linked to the male deities as well. It is noteworthy that a lot of Korus' mortal followers are non-binary.


I'm not sure it's worth writing a story about this, but I have heard legends where wolves or coyotes howl at the moon to either mourn for or try to call back a lost lover. If I were to co-opt this story, wolves (who are sacred to Korus) could trying to contact Zarthus (who is the moon god) on Korus' behalf. Though wolves are also sacred to Maylar so wolves howling at the moon could be howling insults and threats to Zarthus on Maylar's behalf.

I'm not sure if I want to delete and repost my article on the tides or create a spinoff article for this category, probably not necessary, but Scaraqua has a divine love story related to the moon. The tides are created by Dalgari (Sea Zarthus) pining after Taedi (Sea Greymoria). Of course Scarterrans who hear of this story are scandalized. Greymoria and Zarthus would never be romantically involved.

Astalakians are an exception, but for the most part Scaraquans are more sexually promiscuous than Scarterrans, so it takes something huge for Scaraquans to consider it scandalous.