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Author Topic: Help with a plothole  (Read 6315 times)

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Offline ravenx2000

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Help with a plothole
« on: August 09, 2018, 04:36:21 PM »
Hello,

I am in the process of writing a story however i hit a snag and am a bit at the end of my creative rope sorta speak.

I have a spire 250meters high. build by the precursor of humanity. However this building stands since the beginning of time. Yet i don't want any of the human race to see it.

The only magic i've got on my world is Soul magic ergo using souls to power certain spells. Yet Invisibility is not one of the inherent uses.

lvl of science is in victorian age mechanical. so no scanners or any other fancy equipment.

How can I hide a building that large. In a decent way without waving the magic wand around and say well you just can't see it. Which seems a bit of a copout

I went the Planar route already found it lacking and confusing just for that purpose.
I went with dimensional pockets, but did'nt feel like it would be possible in my story.
Bag of infinite holding, would be funny but no.
Vortex/maelstroms maybe??
or make the magic concession and go with that.
I was thinking sort of mind manipulation aswell but it seems far fetched.

I am just out of creative ideas at this point and perhaps you guys might be able to nudge me in a more palpeble area of thinking.

Offline JustHANO

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Re: Help with a plothole
« Reply #1 on: August 09, 2018, 07:59:05 PM »
1. Underwater
2. In the earth/inverted into the ground.
3. Underground
4. Only certains souls can reach it.
5. Floating above the clouds lol.
6. In a huge deserted desert that's hard to explore due to heat and rations.
All i can think of. Tell me if any of this helped!

Offline Coryn

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Re: Help with a plothole
« Reply #2 on: August 09, 2018, 10:36:41 PM »
Perhaps you could have like, a giant tree has grown around it, or a deep mountain range surrounded it as geology happened around it.

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Online Suuper-san

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Re: Help with a plothole
« Reply #3 on: August 10, 2018, 04:42:11 AM »
I was gonna say a giant tree/forest. Or covered with sand, deserts can change height by lots of meters and completely cover stuff up. far enough in an arid place and people wont bother going. maybe a trap that kills anyone who does find it, like a pitfall. Think a place where people CAN'T go, such as underwater or desert and you might be on to something.



as my genius art shows, as long as they can't get to it, it doesnt need to be covered or blocked completely. the natural landscape will prevent it being seen.

alternatively, a legitimate "sleight of hand magic", where magicians make whole buildings disappear. Maybe the building was disguised as a tree all along......
like an optical illusion or something. on that line, maybe something with lenses would be cool
« Last Edit: August 10, 2018, 04:44:58 AM by suupertramp »
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Offline KeanFox

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Re: Help with a plothole
« Reply #4 on: August 10, 2018, 06:13:02 AM »

On its side

Offline ravenx2000

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Re: Help with a plothole
« Reply #5 on: August 11, 2018, 06:06:34 AM »
@justhano

1. Underwater. The building is build on the Axis Mundi, meaning middle of the earth from all sides and height. Sorry perhaps should've noted that.
2. In the earth/inverted into the ground. This was the idea i had using the planar idea or upside down. Did'nt really work out.
3. Underground. see underwater
4. Only certains souls can reach it. The souls will reach it regardless the humans can't see the souls being drawn to the city.
5. Floating above the clouds lol. Axis mundi thing again.
6. In a huge deserted desert that's hard to explore due to heat and rations. Could work however it's hard to build a promised land without anything going for it.
All i can think of. Tell me if any of this helped! Ofcourse it helped it's good to see that the most processes i've been through are the same for you to take this from a rational logical point of vieuw as to not overcomplicate it with convulated things in the background.

But i find it hard to only have mystical answers, i find it often hard to put into a world. While the world might be mystical the landscape and other behind the scene mechanations are not perhaps i need to look into that more deeply. And find a common divide between the two.

@Coryn, yes i thought of this aswell but the place needs to be habitable and rooted on a basic lvl of earth.

@supertramp man love the precursor xD, the idea works however do you really think humanity would let it stop them from venturing in there? we have crossed oceans on a guess, that we would not drop off the side of the earth. Yet still there were people that went and did it. It feels a bit easy to say like nah it's dangerous so we better not go there.

So all your suggestions lead me to it has to be an either mystical or some other form of greater power to shield the city of humans in a way they simply never see it or never can interract with it. Need to think on it some more. Thanks for the suggestions though and if you have any bright ideas don't mind putting them up.

Offline Coryn

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Re: Help with a plothole
« Reply #6 on: August 11, 2018, 09:32:19 AM »
Hmm...

Well there is an interesting route you can take, where it is known to people, but they just can't reach it for whatever reason. Humans are awfully good at taking weird things and filing the away as unimportant. Certainly some people would be interested, but I can't imagine the average Joe would bother after a while. It's sorta like how there are plenty of mysterious ruins on actual earth, and archeologists certainly care, but most locals have definitely already filed it away as "that thing that's always just been there is still there." Even if they have a myth associated with it, it's not likely to override their normal day to day concerns.

So maybe there's like, an impassable valley around it with high winds. Sorta like a moat going on. Just enough where it's really not worth the trouble for long enough that the protagonists can show up and get it done.

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Online Suuper-san

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Re: Help with a plothole
« Reply #7 on: August 11, 2018, 10:57:05 AM »
fair enough about humans adventuring into the unknown. taking coryns idea about it being troublesome rather than difficult, how about up a mountain? the visibility is naff from clouds and you can't see more than about 20m in the worst weather, which could be magically worse but not necessarily. that or a really foggy place, so people do go there, but its easy to get lost in the marshlands etc and die in a swamp, so they stick to the known paths. kinda like hound of the baskervilles area, if you have seen that.

looking back to the first post, I notice you had mind control as an idea, why did that sound far fetched? hypnosis is a regular thing, so any sort of magic to boost the effectiveness, especially soul magic which kinda sounds good for that sort of thing. given the precursors made it and it was super advanced, did they have a super advanced magic as well?

theres a good website for this kinda of thing, like, uhhh, aha found it https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/
« Last Edit: August 11, 2018, 10:58:36 AM by suupertramp »
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Offline Coryn

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Re: Help with a plothole
« Reply #8 on: August 11, 2018, 12:28:58 PM »
It also speaks to something I've seen come up occasionally with this kind of stuff. You don't want your mind manipulation to be all DON'T COME HERE! People react to that by wanting to get there more. You just have to convince them it's not worth their time. More like "yeah, we could go there, but why would you want to?"

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Online Suuper-san

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Re: Help with a plothole
« Reply #9 on: August 11, 2018, 02:53:45 PM »
or it erases their memory so they dont remember they have been, and similarly their brain says oh it cant have been anything worth remembering. or it alters their memory to be "oh it was just some random old building"
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Offline Crackhead Johny

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Re: Help with a plothole
« Reply #10 on: October 17, 2018, 06:00:53 PM »
Well without stealing another writer's stuff I'd say put it on the other side of The Insipid Forest of Banality.
The forest is enchanted with a soul magic spell that just makes people who enter it conclude there is nothing of interest in the woods and there are much more interesting woods in all other directions.
No one really walks far in before getting bored and looking for something interesting to do.

Why do you need a 250 meter tall building? It isn't because quest objects/villains are always in tall towers is it?

Offline 50 Words for Paipis

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Re: Help with a plothole
« Reply #11 on: October 17, 2018, 09:56:14 PM »

Offline Crackhead Johny

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Re: Help with a plothole
« Reply #12 on: October 19, 2018, 06:04:23 PM »

On its side
he's onto something
Yeah.. But why is the end of that "personal massager" pointed at the back end of that sheep?

Offline JackOfArtAndProse

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Re: Help with a plothole
« Reply #13 on: April 22, 2019, 04:23:56 AM »
Continuing on the "memory wipe with soul magic" idea, it could be that people HAVE been to the spire, but anyone who finds it and leaves gets their mind wiped. Thus, everyone believes that such a thing doesn't exist.

Talk about hiding in plain sight... Then again, I would combine this with the spire being in an out-of-way location - perhaps at the end of a cave complex at the end of the world, or whatever.

Offline bossx5

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Re: Help with a plothole
« Reply #14 on: April 22, 2019, 09:38:22 AM »
Make it made out of a light spectrum that humans cant comprehend so it looks like a mountain or something