My Fantasy RPG World, Feedback and Ideas appreciated

This was not my original intent, this was mostly either serendipity or the artist's sensibilities. I am nevertheless pleased with the result.

It does have me ponder if I want to modify the way people look outside of West Colassia. West Colassia is where my RPG campaign is set and where Nilen the cobbler's heroic journey takes place. The flora and fauna of West Colassia is based on preindustrial Europe, so no one question why the people look vaguely European. Some might question why the rest of Scarterra looks vaguely European. I'm not too worried about representation in today's climate, but I wasn't trying to exclude non-Europeans. I was sort of hoping that Scarterran elemental ethnicity would be racially ambiguous to real world ethnic groups.

East Colassia's geography and flora and fauna (a big savannah, lions, giraffes, elephants, etc) is based on Africa though Africa is laid out north to south and East Colassia is laid out east to west. East Colassia has a large desert in the center making travel difficult between the eastern and western portions of the continent while Africa has the Sahara doing the same thing. That said, I have not based the people of East Colassia on Africa. While some supernatural creatures are present in all of Scarterra, East Colassia has some localized monsters from African folklore such as the mighty grootslang.

Likewise Umera is based loosely on East Asia (pandas, tigers, etc) but the people are only vaguely based on real world historical East Asians. My plan is to research some cool monsters from Chinese and Japanese folklore, I have only barely begun this process.

Penarchia has vaguely similar geography and flora and fauna to the Indian subcontinent and southeast Asia but flipped. The north is the tropical region and the south is the colder more mountainous region. At this point I have no point to base the Penarchians on historical Indians. My plan is to research some cool monsters from Indian folklore...eventually.

The mini-continent of Khemarok is loosely based on Australia with kangaroos and other marsupials, it's coastline is fairly fertile but it's interior is a very inhospitable desert with lots of poisonous spiders and whatnot. I have zero plans to add aboriginal allegorical humans here and I have zero plans for the locals to talk with Australian accents. In fact, the local culture here is based loosely on ancient Egypt. So imagine pyramids with kangaroos hopping around them. I got a couple monsters inspired from Aboriginal folklore to put here, but I've only barely begun this process.

 

World Anvil's Worldember 2022 event will be upon us soon. My plan, much like before, is to write A LOT.

For the last several months, when I brainstorm Scarterra and I think, "this is an interesting idea, but it is not directly applicable to my RPG campaign or WIP stories" I put in a "save it for Worldember" file. I'm also going to expand on some noble family trees.

Topics I plan to right about include, different arcane magical traditions and the organizations that form around them. Gender and social differences among orcs. More subterranean races. Fleshing out how dwarves balance their lives above and below ground. Fleshing out how and where slavery and serfdom are applied around Scarterra, and various pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions. Fleshing out more religious groups. How half-dragons fit into society. Various professions and daily life videos inspired by historical Youtube videos adapting real world medieval history to Scarterra. Various reindeer related things. Adapting monsters from assorted real world mythologies into Scarterra. How magic has forced general cultural changes. And more.

Based on past engagement, I got the impression that the wonderful people who regularly interact with this thread on Lustria-Online, are not especially interested in me posting umpteen updates on my Worldember standing. Unless you all tell me otherwise, I'm going to try to restrain myself from cross posting things between Worldember and Lustria Online, unless someone asks for it.

And of course, if someone says, "Scalenex, you should write about _____" I'll probably do it.

 

Anyway, about a week into Worldember, I have written just under 37,000 words as of this posting.

Shortly before Worldember started, I started a new world showcasing my fluff universe based on my old fluff pieces. It covers Warhammer Fantasy Lore mainly through the Lizardmen's perspective and it covers the Lizardmen mainly through my head canon.

Roughly half of my word count is Warhammer related. Lots of little articles though apparently I had a lot to say about Slann and llamas.

My recent Scarterra articles are mostly a few longer articles.

I'm not going to cross post all of my Worldember entries here, but you can look at my Worldember progress via this link.

There are two entries I put extra effort into that I wouldn't mind some constructive criticism on because I'm entering them as showpiece articles to try to win category awards for profession and material. Scarterran Merchants and off-winter ice respectively.

But this time of night when I'm starting to get tired but don't feel like sleeping comes the Muse of extra Silly ideas.

I put on my two list to come with a Scarterran version of mythical salamanders. And internet research shows me there was not a consensus in the ancient and medieval world on how a salamander was defined. Here is a primer to the half-baked idea I came up with.


Go to Scarterra Homepage
salamanders

Salamanders are a race of amphibians that look like lizards. At first glance, Scarterra salamanders are not that different from real world earth salamanders. They come in a wide variety of colors and sizes and can be found all over the world.

Salamanders are famous for their ability to regenerate lost tails and lost limbs, a few of the brightly colored salamanders are poisonous, but Scarterran salamanders don't really have any special abilities that make them stand out apart from the regeneration (which is pretty slow compared to the regeneration of some magic beasts.)

But we are talking about salamanders in the mortal plane. The realm of Fae Home has it's own type of Sprites that greatly resemble ordinary salamanders. the Sprite salamanders are disturbingly adept at finding temporary connections between the Fae and Mortal realms.

These sprite salamanders do have exotic magic powers but they look more or less like ordinary salamanders most of the time.

That salamander sunning itself on the rock is probably and ordinary amphibian, but you are never 100% sure.

This has led to a wide variety of (justifiable) superstitions and fears surrounding salamanders.



Now I just need to figure out things for Sprite salamanders to do, besides setting things on fire, which I suppose some can do. I'm open to suggestions.

Also, I think I'm going to make cats similar. That cat over there is probably just a cat, but it might not be. After watching this analysis video of Coraline, I must make some cats realm walkers.

 

Proof that I am insane.



A while ago, I vowed to make expand on Scarterran reindeer a bit. Last night I the Muse of Bat Shit Crazy Ideas told me to really dive into reindeer lore and use 500 units of my monopoly money to showcase it to other WA members.

Anyway, I get 80 World Anvil coins a day, and I an use this monopoly money to vote for new features or make public statements. I bet a reindeer themed post might draw some eyes to Scarterra. I used six of World Anvil's articles templates to make reindeer related articles.

Character template Sir Schnocneg, the Reindeer Knight

Condition template, giant reindeer

item template, Spear of the Hunter

Military unit template, the Schnocneg Regiment

Species template, reindeer

Spell template, Bone shaping


It's almost bed time. I am definitely planning to use the ethnicity template to detail a barbarian tribe (preferably gnomes) that relies on reindeer herding.

I am considering using the myth/legend template for how Scarterrans believe reindeer were create or why giant reindeer exist.

I can use some other templates but that might be a stretch, profession, the thing is there isn't much to say about the profession of reindeer herding, it's pretty self explanatory.

I could use the material template for reindeer meat or reindeer milk but again, not much to say.

Or I could use the location or organization templates for something reindeer related but again that seems like a stretch.

If inspiration strikes me, I might right a bit of prose with reindeer involved but most of my mental energy prose-wise is going to a short story I'm currently working on and struggling to get done before the end of the month covering the East Colassian War. A vignette about a hastily thrown together ragtag militia trying to pick up the trail of a group of dark elf slavers before the elves can take their recently kidnapped people too far away to rescue.

Complications ensue as the cat and mouse when the chase takes both groups through monster infested territory (no, I'm not planning to have reindeer involved).

 

A few days ago I made this article.


Go to Scarterra Homepage
"little goats"

Properties
Material Characteristics
If meat is edible but of dubious origin (but not mortal flesh, it qualifies as "little goats" at least to dwarf.

Origin & Source
Dwarves typically live with one foot in Scarnoctis and one foot in Scarterra. Their natural mining and crafting skills help them thrive with this lifestyle, but that doesn't change the fact that food is often scarce in the mountains and tunnels the dwarves favor.

"Even if you take a dwarf out of the mountains, you don't take the mountains of the dwarf. It's a severe taboo for a dwarf to waste food. We don't dwarves are infamous for not caring about who we insult but you rarely hear a dwarf insulting the person cooking their food.

I balk at a lot of dwarf traditions but I agree with our people's understanding that you never take a full belly for granted and treat every meal like a gift."
Norabruck Grumblespine, dwarven Priestess of Nami Circuit Priestess of Nami

Dwarves in a pinch will not hesitate to eat rats or cats or dogs much to the disgust of humans aware of the practice. This sort of fare is (almost) never their first choice, but dwarves do not shirk doing what is necessary to survive.

Dwarves were never picky eaters, but their main staple livestock is goats, so any questionable meat is often jokingly compared to goat meat.Mortal flesh is never classified as "little goat." It is sometimes sardonically called "two-legged goat" but dwarves do not knowingly tolerate cannibals in their midst. That's not to say they never unknowingly have cannibals in their midst.

I wrote this article at your prompting


Go to Scarterra Homepage
goats

Goats exist in the wild in some places but domesticated goats are common in most of Scarterra.

Like most beasts on the mortal plane, goats are susceptible to manifesting elemental traits from their environment and their parents.

Airy goats tend to be lanky and have white fur or very light colors. Airy goats are leaner and faster than other goats. They are also better able to withstand cold temperatures and are the most sure footed. Most wild goats are airy. Relatively few goat herders considered airy traits valuable in domesticated goats unless the goat herders live in the highlands in which case airy goats are usually cross bred with another elemental variety.

Earthy goats are bigger and a bit mentally calmer, but slower than other goats. They usually have dark brown or black fur, though some sandier variants are known. They are less likely to be stubborn with their owner/herder but earthy goats are less able to handle predators or obstacles without help than other goats.

Fiery goats are easily recognizable by their reddish or orangish fur. They are ornery and more likely to headbutt or kick their handlers than other goats. On the plus side, they require less food and water to stay alive than other goats and are better able to fend for themselves against predators or other natural hazards.

Watery goats have a bluish or greenish hue. They are the smartest and most curious goats and are uncannily good at escaping leashes and enclosures. They also tend to require a lot of water to stay healthy but they are very good dairy goats.

Like with most livestock, you breed the best and eat the rest.

Local conditions and preferences vary but most goat herders believe earthy/watery hybrids are the most valuable goats in most circumstances and they will try to use these goats for breeding stock whereas the other varieties are considered expendable.
Basic Information
Genetics And Reproduction
Goat gestation is between 150 and 180 days. Twin births are the norm but single and triplet births are not rare.Female goats can reliably produce healthy offspring starting at one year till about age six. Female goats can bear young as young as three months or as old as ten but there are often complications to both mother and kid.
Dietary Needs And Habits
Goats are herbivores. Goats favor grass but wild goats will eat moss or other plants when grass is not available and domesticated goats will eat almost anything they can reach, often to their detriment.
Biological Cycle
Reproduction on both does and bucks. Having kids takes a toll on females and the aggressive mating instincts and instinctual behavior of males during the rutting season takes its toll on them which is why castrated males or "wethers" tends to outlive them both by a wide margin.Females life span maxes out around twelve years under ideal circumstances but their useful economic life is usually about eight years.

Males are so single-minded during the rutting season they will forgo food and will beat themselves or other males down.
Additional Information
Domestication
Goats have been domesticated early in the Second Age if not before and are widespread throughout Scarterra. Goats can be found on every major landmass.Goats are extremely common in Penarchia and East Colassia and are moderately common elsewhere.
Uses, Products & Exploitation
Goat milk and cheese is consumed on the dinner plates of peasants and princes alike around all of Scarterra. Compared to the cost of keeping them, goats are far more efficient milk producers than cows.In West Colassia and Umera, goats are kept pretty much simply for their milk, and goat meat is considered a peasant food as the meat of goats is considered a byproduct of the process.In Penarchia and East Colassia, goats are considered a major staple and peasants and princes alike often eat goat meat.Goats can be used as pack animals too. Goats are not always the best pack animal in Scarterra but sometimes people have to make due with what they have and not what they wish they had. A pack goat can realistically tote 25% of his or her weight. The most reliable pack goats are more often than not castrated males (wethers).
Geographic Origin And Distribution
"I find the keeping of goats as livestock somewhat distasteful, but you cannot be a satyr in East Colassia without developing a thick skin against this sort of thing."

-Basim, Confederate satyr and apothecary and reagents dealer

Wild goats are fairly common in West Colassia and Penarchia. They are present in small numbers in East Colassia.Domestic goats can be found almost everywhere. Goats are considered the main staple livestock in East Colassia and Penarchia. Elsewhere they are fairly common but less popular than pigs and cows.
Average Intelligence
Goats are roughly as intelligent as dogs.Earthy goats are considered the dimmest and watery goats are considered the smartest.
Perception And Sensory Capabilities
Goats have amazing peripheral vision relative to humans, over 320 degrees meaning they are hard to surprise though they only have true binocular vision at about 60 degrees for jumping and climbing over obstacles in front of them.

Goats hear at a wider range of frequency than humans but have less accurate echolocation and they have have to point their moveable ears at a sound to locate it.

Goat sense of smell is acute but they are generally less prone to sniffing than other animals such as dogs.

 

I figured eight reindeer was good enough for Sandy Claws so I decided to stop after eight.


Go to Scarterra Homepage
Reindeer Related Worldember Articles

Because I am probably insane, I am planning to use as many templates as possible to write reindeer based articles for Worldember.

Character template Sir Schnocneg, the Reindeer Knight

Condition template, giant reindeer

Ethnicity template, Zegdelian gnomes

Item template, Spear of the Hunter

Military unit template, the Schnocneg Regiment

Myth/legend template, The Trials of Mogak the orc heroine

Species template, reindeer

Spell template, Bone shaping



I can enter up to ten special categories for Worldember contests, so far I have seven with an nine and a tenth in the works (a short story), more than a few of them overlap with my impromptu reindeer theme. There are prizes but I'm mostly competing for the honor of Scarterra. If you guys only have the patience to read a few of my articles, please read these and let me know what you think.

Once I have all ten, if I want to showcase another piece, I will have to remove a piece from contention.

Condition template, giant reindeer

Material template, off-winter ice

Tradition template, a dragon's wild time, leyacorpla

Myth/legend template, The Trials of Mogak the Orc Heroine

Military unit template, the Schnocneg Regiment

Spell template, Bone shaping

Ethnicity template, Zegdelian gnomes

Species template, Grootslangs


EDIT: Apparently, I accidentally turned of my "like" feature at World Anvil. Fixed now, feel free to shower Scarterra with likes.

 

I am both am terrified of Scarterra facing this level of scrutiny, and I long for it.



I do try to make sure whenever I create a fictional place to at least be able to answer, "How do they feed themselves." If I cannot answer that question with real world farming, I will make up something fantastical like brodesop, but I'm usually able to integrate real world food into Scarterra.

Food is a large subchapter of my Culture section of Scarterra and is continuing to grow. Today I wrote about Scarterran tea leaves. Given that my Elven Empire is loosely based on the British Empire, it should surprise no one that they like drinking tea.

Scarterran tea is really the same as Earth tea. The only difference is the Second Unmaking temporarily shut down the commercial lanes for tea.

Scarterran Pigs are about the same too, but Scarterran pig farmers have to think about elemental traits when breeding them.

Anyway, I can easily write world building articles, but writing prose is hard. Based on the L-O seasonal short story contests, I think I need artificial deadlines to write stories. I'm hoping the artificial deadline of Worldember will motivate me to actually write the Scarterran short story that I've been pondering for months.

 

Yar Har and Fiddly Dee, this writing prompt is appealing to me.

How is the topic of piracy viewed by different societies in your world?


Go to Scarterra Homepage
Piracy throughout Scarterra

Scarterra follows the same historical pattern that Earth's ocean's see. If you have busy lanes of commercial shipping, you are going to either have a lot of pirates or a lot of efforts to stamp out piracy...or both.

About 90% of Scarterra's commercial shipping is in the Inner Ocean while the remaining 10% is in the Outer Ocean.

Even though the Outer Ocean almost never sees a national warship that could threaten a pirate ship, you don't see a lot of pirates here because there aren't a lot of potential targets for pirates to plunder here. Most pirate ships and most anti-pirate patrol ships are in the Inner Ocean because this is where merchant ships frequent.

The Elven Empire is the strongest organized naval power in Scarterra and they take a dim view of piracy. The grey elves pride themselves on being reserved and chivalrous but they give their sailors a lot of leeway to use brutal tactics against pirates. The infamous Eye of the Empress is crewed by Lunatan cyclopes and they have legal permission from the Empress to eat any pirates who refuse to surrender.

The Kingdom of Kantoc and Dwarf Kingdom of Stahlheim both have much smaller navies (but growing). The Elven Empire is not exactly thrilled to have emerging competitors to their naval supremacy but the three nations have signed treaties promising not to engage in privateering and cooperating against pirates in their territorial waters. Likewise with the Umera powers but they rarely patrol especially far from their shorelines.

The area between the Island of Lunatus and the north shores of Island of Khemarok is heavily patrolled by the Elven Empire's mighty navy (aided somewhat by the tiny navies of Kantoc and Stahlheim) meaning any pirates here are either very good or very desperate.

The further east you go from Lunatus the thinner the Elven Empire's patrols are and thus the more pirates you see, but the grey elves are not giving up on their anti-pirate crusade easy. Sometimes anti-piracy naval ships can pop up in far flung places such as around Penarchian and East Colassian shores.

The line between independent pirate and nationalistic privateer is often blurred in Scarterra's eastern waters. The various feuding Penarchian states quarrel all the time on land and sea and many privateers raid the ships of other nations with a few pirate ships mixed in flying no one's colors.

Likewise, the southern coastline of East Colassia is rife with privateers and pirates that are hard to distinguish.

Supposedly, the dark elves of Kahdisteria and the humans of the Colassian Confederacy have a binding armistice and neither side seems to have broken it over land that is.

Both sides are not shy attacking ships belonging to the other power. It is pretty obvious that these raiding ships are privateers but if caught, the ships and their crews are always disavowed and declared independent pirates.

Because of this, merchant fleets from both powers now normally travel in large convoys for protection and this has tamped down on naval skirmishes here, but many fear (or hope) that an attack on a convoy will make a big enough splash that the incident will not be able to be swept under the rug and lead to the armistice being tossed out and full on war resuming.

(sidebar)

How Does Scaraqua Fit In?
How Does Scaraqua Fit In?
Scaraquans try to rob each other all the time, but they don't call it piracy, they just call it "theft".

Some Scaraquans have taken to sinking Scarterran ships and then picking the corpses like vultures. The Storm Thief is an infamous mermaid pirate who does just that.

It is difficult for Scarterrans to retaliate and even if they equip a group of adventurers with magical water breathing aids and say "Go get them bad fish people!" they have trouble identifying which Scaraquans attacked them and which didn't.

Despite the lack of effective retaliation, underwater piracy is less common than you would think. Most Scaraquans are not offended by merchant ships passing over them.

Despite their seeming advantages in a hypothetical war with "the land dwellers" many don't want to provoke a new enemy when they have enough trouble dealing with other underwater factions.

Not every Scaraquan that wants to sink ships has the means to reliable puncture a hull beneath the waterline submerging it.

Another option is to board ships temporarily and kill the sailors on board with hit and dive attacks, but not every Scaraquan has the means to survive even short periods of time aboard a ship. This is a viable tactic, but it still lets the Scarterrans fight back, especially if the Scaraquans are not able to scale the side of the hull especially quickly.

Then there is the issue, that a goodly portion of the goods on a ship become damaged or completely ruined if they are sank into the sea. Even if a Scaraquan has the raw power to sink a ship, doing so is not always profitable.

One point of conflict between Scarterrans and Scaraquans is fishing vessels. While most Scaraquans are indifferent to Scarterrans using ships as a means of moving people or freight over long distances, many feel threatened by Scarterran fishermen.

Tall tales aside, it is rare for a fisherman to catch a mermaid in his net, but in many areas, Scarterrans and Scaraquans are exploiting the same population of fish. In theory, every fish a Scarterran catches is one that a Scaraquan can't and visa versa. Hardliners on both sides view the fishers of the other side as little better than poachers.

"Why cannot they stay on the land and eat their goats and other land fish. The seas are clearly our territory by divine right."
-Cherith, mermaid centurion

"You ask me why I always take a harpoon with me when I go fishing for halibut? I don't keep the harpoon for halibut, boy. I keep it for mermen...and worse.

The mer people have endless depths of the ocean to harvest fish from, and the finned misers cannot let us skim a few fish off the surface? It's not like we are keeping all the rainfall for ourselves."
-Kinmei, Umera fisherman

Usually in these quarrels, Scaraquans are the aggressors. They will either passive aggressively sabotage rudders and nets or they will seek to drown the fishermen outright.

Once, these attacks are rare, but as the Scaraquan and Scarterran populations increase, these confrontations are becoming more frequent and more violent.



And remember

Do you want you want because a pirate is free, you are a pirate!

 

This is my first true and proper Scarterran story. First of many I hope. I'm entering it in a contest on World Anvil and I have about 48 hours to edit it, so I'd appreciate any feedback, be it literary or proofreading wise. And I'm not in love with the title.

The Grootslang

Unsteady Ground

 

I went with the title Unsteady Ground.

I have reached my writing goal for Worldember



There are still 18 hours left in Worldember but I have to work tonight (though it's a short shift). I have also want to sleep sometime, and tomorrow I must eat birthday cake and relax with friends.

That said, I plan to keep making minor last minute edits and revisions to Unsteady Ground and I might write a few more articles here and there if the muses so move me. I also could theoretically make some last minute edits and revisions to my other showpiece entries but Unsteady Ground is where my heart is.

Time permitting I was going to answer a vehicle prompt by writing about Scaraquan underwater barges. This Worldember, I have barely written anything for Scaraqua at all though I have made some good headway into Scarnoctis.

I found an awesome fantasy world created by another called Araea that is set primarily underground that I plan to mine for Scarnoctis ideas for many months to come.

If you wish to peruse my glorious December, you can find everything at this link.

Here are the ten articles I entered to try to win specific subcategories. Some of them have juicy prizes but I mostly am hoping for exposure.

1 material off-winter ice
2 Profession Scarterran merchants
3 Military Unit The Schnocneg Regiment
4 myth/legend the Trials of Mogak the Orc Heroine
5 species grootslangs
6 item Control Collars
7 condition giant reindeer
8 tradition Dragon's Wild Time, leyacorpla
9 ethnicity Zegdelian gnomes
10 Prose Unstable Ground

Next year I want to write more prose than ever before and design more Scarterran maps than ever before.

But now is the time to rest.

 

I had the base idea for Unstable Ground in my head for many months. At the very least I knew I wanted to have a fight between two sides interrupted by a grootslang. I also knew I wanted a story where a lost geu-puppy is used to demonstrate a child is in danger. It was relatively easy to slap this together and since grootslang's only live in East Colassia and East Colassia main conflict is between dark elves and the Colassian Confederacy pieces fell into place.

I know I want to write more stories in 2023, but I'm not very sure what I want to write.

For those of you who have read large portions of this thread and stayed with it, you are awesome. I'd like to know which aspect of the lore you would especially like to see a story centered around.

 

Yeah I can do this. The most obvious would be to write a novelette about Mogak receiving the first giant reindeer.

I had some vague ideas for stories in my head with orc heroes, villains, and/or anti-heroes and they could probably incorporate giant reindeers.

Among the tundra orc tribes, a lot of them keep reindeer and their strongest members usually get the giant reindeer steeds whether they are heroes, villains, or anti-heroes.

Though I'm not great at writing about epic cavalry duels, I can certainly go with the neo-Western trope of a badass riding a horse giant reindeer into town, dismounting and then doing some impressive stuff.

Tangent Time!

At the moment, my RPG campaigns are on the verge of going to Scarnoctis so I am fleshing out subterranean orcs a bit more.

One of my self-imposed limitations is that I want my fantasy races to make sense. If I want to put a fantasy race somewhere I need to find the sweet spot between, "They shouldn't be so powerful that they displace everyone else, and they shouldn't be so weak that they are exterminated."

In West Colassia and East Colassia, the orcs live in areas that humans, elves, gnomes, and dwarves struggle to survive in: tundras and deep caverns.

I am on the fence whether I want to put orcs in the southern hemisphere or not. Note that thus far, Scarterra northern hemisphere has ten times more lore written on it than the southern hemisphere.

It did occur to me that while Scarterran orcs are fairly belligerent, they are not literally born of evil like Tolkien orcs, and they are not the primitive brutes of WHF. Scarterran orcs have bad blood with the Meckelorn and Stahlheim dwarves but they don't have a permanent racial enmity with anyone.

It might be fun instead of having orcs be the barbarians attacking the fringe of civilization, it might be fun to have them be integrated into human (or theoretically elf) society. I can imagine some king being like "Hey, orcs, we could like fight and junk, while you try to steal my subject's stuff, or I could hire you to be my brute squad and I'll pay you to beat up people I don't like."

Though I tend to use that a lot. Uskala has a pet brute squad of camazotz and the Elven Empire has a pet brute squad of cyclopes, and the Dark of Elves of Kahdisteria have a pet brute squad of intelligent spiders.

It might be a fun twist if the Penarchian dwarves have a long standing alliance with Penarchian orcs. That'd be a subversion and it would drive a further wedge between Penarchian dwarves and their northern counterparts though they are so geographically removed the Penarchian and West Colassian dwarves are not even 100% sure the other dwarves exist at all.

A good reason not to put orcs in the southern hemisphere is to give the southern hemisphere more room for it's own flavor of monstrous humanoids. I like the idea of making Cyncophali a Penarchian thing. Penarchia already has some roving tribes of cyclopes.

I also have barely tapped into Chinese, Japanese, and Indian mythology and could come up with some more Eastern style orc equivalents. Cyncophali are a western myth but Westerners believed they were "out East somewhere."

Japanese yokai have some really awesome fantasy creatures but they tend to lean towards the "lone monster" end of the scale rather than "fantasy race" end of the scale.

After dipping my toe in the Conan universe, I am also pondering adding vengeful snakemen somewhere, probably Scarnoctis.

I believe I was once asked, if there is anything I don't want to include in Scarterra. Yes, but it's a very small list. Ironically, this list includes lizardmen, but I have plenty of other outlets to write about them. I'm a big fan of Kitchen Sink Fantasy.

 

I have once again commissioned the talented artist, Diana Rahfoth who made this:


She's going to start sketching on some Zotz in mid January. That means the finished colorized product will probably be ready in mid-to-late February.

Two kalazotz, one standing, one flying.

Two camazotz, one standing, one flying.

I opted to make them relatively androgenous to the point of not bothering with male and female differentiated pictures.

 

Self-aggrandizement powers: activate

World Anvil has a contest for Best 2022 articles. I'm going to try to submit to some of these categories to get Scarterra some exposure. I got till January 21 to select and edit things.

I'm open to suggestions for what to showcase.


In the mean time for 2023, I'm at the mental outline stage for making prose Mogak the Orc Heroine's reindeer related epic adventure (since it was requested) and another prose piece showcasing kalazotz (since great art is coming).

My pipe dream is to come up with a fiction piece that is interesting by itself but also serves as a primer to Scarterra's gods and divine lore without taking people out of the narrative with an exposition dump. Scarterra's divine lore is the bedrock of my worldbuilding and browsing other worlds, it is what sets Scarterra apart from other fantasy worlds which seem biased towards absent gods, dead gods, or forgotten gods, etc.

This is easier said than done. Until a muse gives me great inspiration and this happens:



I'll just try to sprinkle little Easter eggs of my divine lore into stories here and there.

 

Now Hasbro is digging too deep and too greedily.



I was already moving away from D&D, now I'm doing it faster. At this point I would actually be opposed to Scarterra 5th edition D&D adaptations.

Maybe it's a pipe dream, but I now dream of making my D&D10 system more accessible. At some point I'd like to make a more professional looking character sheet.

I don't know where to start though. I used a blank White Wolf Sheet and filled in things as best as I could but some of the spots are too big for what I want and some are too small.

Does anyone know how I might make a better character sheet? I'm not even sure what program to use.

In addition to wanting the spaces to match what I have, I wouldn't mind some clip art. Perhaps this symbol Pendrake gave me which I find myself liking more and more every day.



I probably should name it something other than "symbol of the Nine" or "symbol of the Cult of the Compact".

I attached the character sheet I'm using now, I'm not sure if it will even be readable on Lustria-Online.

 

Scarterra is pretty distantly removed from D&D, so I'm probably safe if and when I opt to monetize it. But I'm not taking any chances.

I have enough money to live on right now. I'm not planning to monetize Scarterra to buy a diamond studded swimming pool, I just to spread Scarterra wide to entertain people with it and create non-woke stories.

Explicitly Wizards of the Coast has trademarked: beholder, gauth, carrion crawler, tanar’ri, baatezu, displacer beast, githyanki, githzerai, mind flayer, illithid, umber hulk, yuan-ti

I don't have these things. I have a creature similar beholders. I used to have displacer beasts years ago, but I removed them because I didn't think they were a good fit in Scarterra.

Gnolls are not specifically mentioned in Wizards of the Coast really long legal document but apparently gnolls were first created by Dungeons and Dragons. Though apparently Blizzard has used gnolls without paying Wizards of the Coast.

Also Scarterran gnolls are very culturally different from D&D gnolls but they are physically very similar. I am changing their name soon as soon as I pick something.

My usual method to make up fantasy names is to pull up google translate for related words.

Hyenas are "dabe" in Arabic and "fisi" in Swahili and "impisi" in Zulu

"people" is "abantu" in Zulu, "watu" in Swahili, and "aishkhas" in Arabic

I'm thinking Dabakash is a nice and menacing but it doesn't roll off the tongue. Watuimps is easy to say but doesn't sound very menacing. Maybe "Dabewatu" or "Dabwatu"? What do you guys think. I need to rename gnolls eventually but I don't have to do it right this second.

I'm also changing D&D10 from the game systems official name to a mere nickname. The new name is Scarterra d10.

Hasbro can go suck a lemon, nay several lemons.

Unlike Disney's decline, I get zero schadenfreude from watching D&D die.