The Earthheart - OOC

I think we need to do some additional organizing.

I'm thinking
>Continent
-->Nation: Region
---->City: Population

Stars next to a city represent nation capitals

All the details of cities and the nations would be included elsewhere, but I don't think we have enough of a distinction between where nations end and cities begin and we also have room for more than one group to occupy a nation but not be the dominant group of that nation.

Example
>Mictathuria
-->Larocia: mountains and fields
---->*Larocia: human
---->unnamed river delta: Niaids

And so forth. The arrows are tabs or whatever we want to,do tobindicste subfolders.
Nations + region descriptions would be included elsewhere as well as city descriptions.

Also I'm so sorry this post is literred with errors I'm on my phone and it's missing,me,off because it just decides it wants to do random shit.

Ooh I can work a sea like that in there, no probs! And scale the nations down as well. xP My plan is to have these ones be the big world powers, but those aren't the political boundaries there, just vague lines to determine where on the continent the countries will be. The finished map will have loads of countries adjacent to our main ones, I'll just create a bunch :D

I'll work on organizing the drive more after the map is done. So if you have any ideas for regions/cities/countries/anything, post them now! And thanks for all your input and contributions!

I'm gonna work on the organization a little now that I'm back! I'm commandeering what's currently the bottom section.

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Might I suggest that Forested, Plains, and Arctic environments should be in the Northeast continent

Jungles, Tropics, and the likes should be the southeast

Deserts and hot climates should be in the western continent.

If you all agree I will take action to move the countries to their appropriate places.

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I'm racking my brain here about what to call the veil that isn't just the veil. It can be The ___ Veil or even The Veiled ___

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My suggestion would be.

>Northwest: Forests and Plains and things
Larocia, Huginn, Jehd-Az-Akhr, Tannarin, Tao Totuk, Probably the Gnomes too

>Southeast: Jungle and THings
Arlean, Pentaria, Desbin, Haerthew-under-Sky,

>West: Desert and Dry climates
Dust Plains, The Cactus Dryads I'll probably make, others

Thoughts?

Sounds good to me! Everyone else like that idea?

(I'll be gone for a while on a 20 hour bus ride back to good ol Rock Island! See y'all on the side of the flips! :D)

Sounds good to me. If I make any other kingdoms, I'll put them in a continent.

EDIT: My name suggestions for continents:

Northwest continent: Aquilon

Southeast continent: Austoria

Western continent: Occavis

Wait, do you and Omni mean northeast instead of northwest? o:

I'm fine with either, personally.

Also, I feel like Huginn and Tanarrin should be rivals/enemies. What do you guys think of that?

I meant Northeast yes, but I also have another idea.
I think west should be jungle and the southwest should be the desert.
Also I'm thinking
http://blogs.nicholas.duke.edu/thegreengrok/files/2012/12/world-biome-map-columbia-nasa-wwf.jpg
The continents should roughly line up with where they'd be as part of a geographic biome scale.
So the west jungle is on the equator.
The east desert could be just a little south of the equator to line up with the desert
and the forest arctic would be further up towards the top lining up with like Europe area.

As for the Tanarrin and Muginn, I think that's up to whoever made those two groups!

Well I made Tannarin. Where's Ji?


EDIT: My first sheet:


Lutin du Perverse

Name(s): Lutin du Perverse
Race: Demon/shade
Pronouns: Male
Age: 200
Occupation: Spy/stalker
Skills, talents, and useful knowledge/abilities/possessions: Lutin is a rather primitive demon, lacking technology of any kind to settle on pure magical prowess. He has the ability to phase back and forth between the veil at will, allowing him to both teleport and turn invisible to mortals. These skills make Lutin quite stealthy and hard to find and can cause him to become a serious pain in the neck on any battlefield. Lutin’s weakness in his teleporting and invisibility is that he cannot touch corporeal things when in those forms. When invisible, he must reappear to attack, and while his teleportation has no distance limit, reappearing is a process where he slowly fades into reality, making him easily visible. While physical weapons cannot hurt Lutin while he is reappearing, he becomes especially vulnerable to magic. When it comes to fighting, Lutin isn’t nearly as proficient. He fights using primarily shadow chains, black chains made of pure shadow magic which he can conjure up and fire at his enemies with a whip-like effect. The shadow chains burn whatever they touch, but can be blocked by shields and destroyed with light magic. Another strength of Lutin’s is that he is extremely hot to the touch, so anyone who tries to grab him with their bare hands will be in for quite the surprise. This doesn’t stop gloves or weapons from harming him, though, with the exception that it weakens ice magic.

Lutin’s appearance has the odd effect of causing people to experience a phenomenon known by Poe as “The Imp of the Perverse”. Lutin’s presence causes people to have strange and terrifying thoughts about things which they could do simply because they are possible. The imp of the perverse is what makes you think about jumping or throwing someone off when standing at a high height, and it’s what makes you think about hurting yourself or someone else when seeing a weapon or potentially dangerous object. Generally, the imp of the perverse is harmless, but some psychologists have pointed to it as the cause of the “voices” in the heads of some criminally insane people. Although many people have these kind of lingering thoughts which can easily be controlled, Lutin’s presence greatly intensifies them, though he in no way forces anyone to experience them. Anyone with any willpower whatsoever will easily overpower these strange urges, but it can rattle foes and strike fear in an enemy camp.

As far as possessions go, Lutin carries few. He doesn’t carry any weapons, but has collected a few odds-and-ends devices over the years which he finds interesting, primarily jewels and other small shiny trinkets. He keeps them in the inner pocket of his robes, where they are safe. These objects include a segment of a red geode, a pyrite ammonite fossil about the size of a quarter, a Kreskin's Crystal, and a garnet pendant on a chain.

Hobbies and interests: Despite his intelligence, Lutin is drawn to things which are shiny, especially colored gems and shiny metals. He enjoys art, especially sculptures and pottery. Lutin also is a fan of pranks, though he finds most silly pranks to be immature; his are more drawn-out and elaborate pranks which generally do not harm people and are done solely for the fun of it. He enjoys reading as well, but doesn’t do it often.

Greatest strength: Lutin’s best quality is his stealth. He is extremely skilled in his ability to sneak his way around enemies and observe in silence through years of dedicated training. I won’t say that Lutin is the stealthiest character in the roleplay because that would be rude of me, but I just said it, now didn’t I?

Greatest challenge: Despite his stealth skills, Lutin is kind of a screw-up as a wizard. He’s always been abysmal at sorcery, and can’t mix a potion or cast a strong spell for the life of him. His shadow chains are magic, but they’re also not overly strong, and can be somewhat easily shattered with a powerful enough magical attack or blunt strike.

Appearance and personality: Lutin appears as a demonic creature about four feet tall, though his exact physical features are somewhat unimportant, as he is always concealed under his robes. His skin is a dark red, but he will never be seen without his robes on so it’s somewhat pointless to talk about what that would look like. Lutin wears a set of grey wizard-like hooded robes which cover his entire body. The robe is trimmed in red and has very deep belle-style sleeves, though the inside of these sleeves is total darkness. Lutin’s four-fingered hands stick out from the robes, but they are armored in a pair of golden, talon-like gauntlets with sharp nails on the end. A single chain wraps around his body like a sash, and there is a rope belt around his waist. If you look hard enough at his feet, you can occasionally catch a glance of his black cloven hooves. Lutin’s robes have the effect of sending off an obsidian-colored fire which burns above him smokeless and makes him so hot to the touch, though it doesn’t seem to bother him at all. Lutin’s general posture is hunched over to the point where his hands almost touch the ground, and he has a definite hunchback.  Lutin’s voice is quiet and deep. He doesn’t sound threatening, but more so somewhat depressed. When he’s especially angry, his voice gets a chilling kind of edge which isn’t terrifying in your general demon-y way, but is scary nonetheless.

Personality-wise, Lutin is kind of a depressing guy. Pushed down and bullied all his life for his lack of magic, he has become somewhat shy and reclusive, preferring to be alone and committing his life to his work so as to avoid the gnawing sadness inside. He’s very cocky about the things that he is good at, believing and advertising himself as the greatest spy in the world. He can very easily be offended, at which point he often drifts away and goes elsewhere to sulk. He is very envious of good wizards and has a great antipathy towards them. He is extremely intelligent, on the verge of being an intellectual bully.

Backstory: Works for the mysterious forces and is following the adventurers.

Other:



EDIT: So exactly what does a Skrae look like?

That could work, Socrates, though that'd mean Huginn would need to be at least comparative in size/scale, or I suppose, in trade influence. You describe Tannarin as rather rich, so it's probably the former, of which I would still probably cede size to Tannarin. (I know I described the Huginnese as being a major trade power, but I assume the money is mostly used as it arrives, you've got a large stockpile. Mercenaries are serious tools in the hands of the exceedingly wealthy.) The Huginnese probably hold more political allies though, to prop a balance between the two entities.

Yeah. I feel like it'd be a kind of Cold War type thing where they're both really big and occasionally get in small skirmishes but they both know that if they go to war, neither would win. Or they fought long ago and whoever lost is still butthurt or something.

Maybe sort of an England/France situation, with uneasy peace broken by the occasional war causing minor border changes that tend to revert come the next one.

But because wars between the two are so all encompassing, and draining to national manpower, they probably typically keep flexing at the border, calling each other names, and bullying smaller states as each tries to get big enough to meaningfully impact the other.

Admiral Ji wrote:

Maybe sort of an England/France situation, with uneasy peace broken by the occasional war causing minor border changes that tend to revert come the next one.

But because wars between the two are so all encompassing, and draining to national manpower, they probably typically keep flexing at the border, calling each other names, and bullying smaller states as each tries to get big enough to meaningfully impact the other.

That sounds fantastic. For the different wars, the nations should number them so it's like "the first great war", "the second great war" and have them be on, like, 26 just to show how pointless the disputes have become.

EDIT: I think I'm going to make a dwarf and then maybe a fairy. I don't want too many characters, though, so I might cut the fairy.

"The 23rd Sort of Great But Mostly Just Kind of Uncomfortable For Everyone War"

Ømnivalence wrote:

I meant Northeast yes, but I also have another idea.
I think west should be jungle and the southwest should be the desert.
Also I'm thinking
http://blogs.nicholas.duke.edu/thegreengrok/files/2012/12/world-biome-map-columbia-nasa-wwf.jpg
The continents should roughly line up with where they'd be as part of a geographic biome scale.
So the west jungle is on the equator.
The east desert could be just a little south of the equator to line up with the desert
and the forest arctic would be further up towards the top lining up with like Europe area.

Still waiting for input on this by the way.

Calling it that makes it sound far more dignified than "The one time we waged a two year war over a couple of pigs".

That makes sense to me, Omni. About how I figured it should work out anyway.

First off, sweet work, Mata.

Climates should be based on lattitude and mountains, not continents. As per that map you posted, Omni. Note, however, that deserts form based on rainfall, not temperature; my understanding is that the rain shadows downwind of mountains are the determining factor.

(Also I've gotten attached to the current grouping of nations. We have an old world - half human-dominated, half not, - and a new world on which to sequester the elves and fae.)

I'll take a closer look at the map and try to produce my interpretation of how all the biomes fit.

Regarding continent names, I suppose the question comes down to who named these things in <language all our charries will use>, anyways. The old Larocian empire, perhaps?

Going back to earlier discussion:
Lumping the descriptions of lands (regions, cities) into those of the relevant nations has worked for us so far. Although it's true that larger nations should contain more than one place, and minorities on either a per-nation or per-place basis. I'll see what I can do.

(I'm thinking the 'list of cities' should go more Continent -> Region -> State -> Place, to better accomodate client states that shouldn't really be at the same level of organization as a given nation-state's major cities.)

looking forwards to seeing the filler countries so that I can headcanon about all the lizardfolk ones

Ømnivalence wrote:

"The 23rd Sort of Great But Mostly Just Kind of Uncomfortable For Everyone War"

Admiral Ji wrote:

"The one time we waged a two year war over a couple of pigs"

yes good
anything that you don't bring us into is, really

I like the three continent setup, personally. When did Mata put up a map? (Socrates is blind, sorry)


Map looks cool. I like that kind of setup.

Well see the way it is that the center of the world is hotter. And the poles are colder, but the amount of rainfall varies.
So it's hot and wet in the middle creating rainforests, then it's hot an arid creating deserts, then it's cool and wet creating seasonal forests, then its cold and arid creating tundra. That's the cycle of biomes on our planet. If our continents were lined up in that way then it would make sense for them to be almost biome specific.

JazzTap wrote:

Regarding continent names, I suppose the question comes down to who named these things in , anyways. The old Larocian empire, perhaps?

The Huginn, at least, will likely have their own names for their continent/region; though whether Omni's character's country will share those names is debatable, depending if Huginnese was an original language or an evolved dialect of a parent tongue.

Hey mata, is there any way that you could put up a description of the Dust Plains? I'm trying to round out Hollimene some and I want to make sure we don't have a weird situation where we have a desert right next to an ocean.

Yeah so we did a little bit of reshuffling in the Drive.

I included a little map as well of the biomes of the world.

Northeast being arctic towards the top, temperate forests/plains in the middle, and maybe a little arid towards the bottom.
West is Jungle with a smidge of desert on the top and bottom.
Southeast is predominantly Desert but extends down far enough to be a little forested and arctic.

Also I'd appreciate if everyone updated their countries locations on the continent as they were made. Theres a lot of nations that exist that don't have any place visually on the world only a casual mention of where they are.

All of my nations are placed more or less correctly, thought I feel like there should be a few more kingdoms.

Also, I added a diplomatic relations section to the doc. You guys should check it out.

EDIT: Also, mata, when you get on my sheet is somewhere in the last two pages.

Omni was expressing concern that the race descriptions are too much to skim through, at this point. My feeling is that additional paragraph breaks (and for longer sheets, adding sections) would improve readability. Both of these are slightly authorial actions, so weigh in if you don't want them imposed on your work.

I'm trying to think of a nice way to make diplomatic proposals from within the doc. Probably by adding the name (preferably questionmark'd) to the appropriate field, and seeing if it's reciprocated.

We could have a specific area for proposals yeah. And then people can check it periodically for new proposals with their races.

We could also simply use the forum's posts or pm systems. :p I might be speaking from a position of trying to conserve extremely limited internets through paranoia, and thus am afraid of what is probably a document in the tens of kilobytes.