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Author Topic: Vacants World Building Dumping Ground  (Read 2572 times)

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Offline Vacant

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Vacants World Building Dumping Ground
« on: July 20, 2022, 08:11:01 PM »
I feel like I want to contribute some form of content to the Forum, but don't quite have a decent draft done yet. So in the meantime, I figured I'd just throw down some Worldbuilding stuff in the meantime :ninja:
 
I've always liked seeing "behind the curtain" and how people develop their worlds, characters and unique abilities etc.
So I want to try and incorporate how I do things and why where possible in case this is of interest to others.

Any questions and critique is welcome and appreciated, thanks you lovely lil Raiders you.

Offline Vacant

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Re: Vacants World Building Dumping Ground
« Reply #1 on: July 20, 2022, 08:35:01 PM »
Of Blights and Breaches

Blights are the main monsters and initial antagonists in Absolver. Blights are mysterious creatures who hunger for souls. They seek out living beings to drag back to their “Breach”, in order to trap them inside and to digest them later.

They have plagued the lands of Irobor for millennia and are the sworn adversaries of the Absolvers. While their origins are not fully known, a range of theories, both scientific and spiritual exist.

They appear from tears in the fabric of reality known as “Breaches”. These are bubbles that form on the outside of the realm of the living. When the Blight has developed fully, it bursts through a small rift into the mortal realm to relentlessly hunt down living creatures to drag back to its Breach, in order to harvest their souls. There are four stages in the life cycle of a Blight. These are known as Larvae, Chrysalis, Complete and Calamity.

What Is A Breach?
-A Breach is a blister of space containing a Blight that latches onto the underside of our reality. It is currently unknown why these Breaches appear, or where Blights come from.
-As the Blight begins to develop, a slight tear in reality begins to form, barely visible to the naked eye.
-Each Blight varies with how long it takes them to mature, with some taking mere hours while others have been known to take months or even years. As it matures, the rift in the mortal realm becomes darker and more visible. 
-When the Blight is ready to emerge, the Breach tears open fully and turns a solid black. The rift it causes varies in size, depending on location and the Blight itself. The rift remains open, acting as a gateway for the Blight to re-enter their Breach and allowing them to store their victims within it.
-Not much is known about the interior of a Breach, as once a person enters a Breach, they are considered lost and impossible to recover. A Blight will capture living creatures and haul them back to its Breach, before throwing them inside.
-After a Blight has collected as many souls as it desires, it will re-enter the Breach and undergo a metamorphosis, dissolving all the souls within and restructuring the Blight into its evolved form, known as its Chrysalis stage.
-When this form reemerges, the Breach will normally close itself. However, on rare occasions it will remain intact. Thus, the Chrysalis will roam again, collecting creatures to harvest. If it is successful in this, its second evolution is known as a Complete Blight.

What Is A Blight?
-A Blight is the creature that forms within a Breach. It grows inside until it reaches maturity and  emerges from its Breach. This first stage is known as its Larvae Form. It is a mindless beast, driven on instinct alone. It seeks living creatures to drag back to its Breach.
-When the Blight deems it has enough, it will return and re-enter its Breach. At this point, it dissolves and digests the souls collected and transforms into its first evolution, known as a Chrysalis Blight.
-This Blight is more cunning and intelligent than the Larvae form and if its Breach remains intact, it is also more effective at capturing souls. If its Breach does collapse and disappear, it will still hunt for souls. However it is unable to consume them properly as it would in its Breach. This eventually drives them mad, reducing their mental capacities to its base Larvae form once more.
-If they manage to make it to their second evolution and become a Complete Blight, they attain an intellect on par with humanity and possess the ability to speak and communicate.
-Besides being stronger than their previous evolution, the key difference is that their Breach is held internally, a fissure they can open at will to trap/consume souls.
-No matter the stage in its evolution, a Blight can be very dangerous and take many forms. However, they often have wings, Antennae and insect-like vestiges. Their colour schemes often match a Butterfly/Moth pattern too.

What Is A Calamity?
-On exceptionally rare occasions, a Complete Blight will crave only for other Blights and will begin to capture these within its own Breach. It is said if it is successful in consuming 100 Blights, it will undergo its final evolution into a Calamity.
-These foes are capable of destroying entire cities and are greatly feared throughout the lands. Only the strongest and most cunning Blights can become a Calamity and only a few have ever been recorded in history.

Dealing With A Blight
-Blights are a scourge of mankind, indiscriminately hunting down people to consume. As such, the Absolvers were established to deal with them. They were powerful, magic wielding warriors led by the Farseers. A subspecies of man that were adept in Divination, as well as being formidable wizards in their own right.
-Absolvers are sworn to defeat Blights and to cleanse their Breaches, allowing any souls trapped within to pass into the Void to head to Journey's End and have done so for over 1000 years.
-Traditionally, Farseers had visions of when and where Breaches would occur and would attempt to preempt them. In modern times, as their bloodline diluted and numbers diminished, detection nodes were developed that could give an alert when a Breach appeared.
-There are dozens of these dotted around the globe. These send alerts out to the nearest outposts and human settlements. Alternatively, some too weak to be detected/too far from a node can be reported manually by people.
-Without these Nodes, Breaches can be difficult to see until the Blight within has almost matured, appearing only as small, hazy fissures in reality. Unfortunately, many of these nodes across the Mainland were damaged deliberately by Aristas during the Northern War 2 decades ago.
-When a Breach is detected, its size is assessed and recon is gathered. This informs the level of response to it. Absolvers are dispatched and civilians instructed to evacuate, keep distance etc.
-Absolvers have two options when dealing with a Breach. If the Blight is still within, they can choose to seal it, thus casting the cocoon into the Void. This is not deemed the best case scenario, as the Faith believe it to be a damned soul within and simply sealing means it hasn't been “absolved”.
-Alternatively, they can expel the creature out. This involves tampering with the Breach. The Absolvers will then defeat the creature, before performing a sanctifying rite. This purifies the soul contained within, allowing the souls to travel through the Void and to Journey’s End.
-If the creature is loose, they will combat it and seal its Breach separately, although the sealing of the Breach is generally done first to prevent the monster from capturing further souls if the Absolver is unsuccessful.
-A Blight can survive with its Breach being sealed, however if a Blight is killed, its Breach will begin to collapse in on itself and seal up on its own accord.


Stages of Blights
Larvae
-This is the first stage of a Blight, one that has yet to consume any souls. It is typically just the trapped soul that has begun to hunger and be consumed by its instincts.
-These are generally weak and pretty easily dealt with using Magic and don’t particularly have any special abilities, although they will invariably have some way of trapping targets, such as a web, tentacles, poison etc. in order to lure or transport living beings back to their Breach.


Chrysalis
-This creature takes a new form and is more cunning and dangerous than its previous form. It will either continue to capture souls for its Breach, or if its Breach collapses it will simply feast on people, unable to consume their souls.
-These Blights will often have abilities and special techniques to defend themselves. They will be larger than the Larvae form and appear more monstrous.


Complete

-It the Chrysalis’s Breach remained open and it repeated the cycle of storing souls and consuming them, it underwent a transformation to a Complete Blight. These creatures typically appear more humanoid, often far smaller than their previous forms. However they are far stronger and possess immense intelligence.




Offline Coryn

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Re: Vacants World Building Dumping Ground
« Reply #2 on: July 28, 2022, 12:23:32 PM »
Finally found time to read this! I think it’s an excellent example of a badic 'story bible' to keep the details straight. All too often people try changing the rules of a story on the fly to meet some new ideas they've had (guilty). So it's always important to write these things down and stick to them.

Lots of bleach influence (no surprise coming from you :P) but definitely a strong basis for a shounen style story! I like how the rules of evolution are basic enough to follow while also leaving room for uncertainty on the exact 'why' of it all. Which leaves a little undiscovered knowledge for our protagonists to grapple with.

A strong start, all in all! I look forward to reading some actual story!

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Offline Suuper-san

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Re: Vacants World Building Dumping Ground
« Reply #3 on: August 14, 2022, 03:24:53 PM »
Definitely getting Bleach vibes as well.
But totally agreeing with Coryn, having clear rules means the readers can follow along, and things that break the rules are either amazingly powerful (i.e. Ichigio inflicting that blow on the the mega thing early on), or have to be explained in a special way.

I didn't probably plan out my power system at all for my stories so they were hopelessly lost and I sort of just wrote in the moment what I felt was how the magic worked XD
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Offline Coryn

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Re: Vacants World Building Dumping Ground
« Reply #4 on: August 14, 2022, 04:27:44 PM »
I'm definitely guilty of on the fly world building for how power systems work. It might lead to some cool moments, but over all will weaken the story. It's something I really need to work on once I get past this current spat of writers block the summer has inflicted on me, lol

Will review stories upon request. My latest arc: http://goo.gl/KYgsfF

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Re: Vacants World Building Dumping Ground
« Reply #5 on: August 14, 2022, 04:30:33 PM »
My cosplay spate has meant I haven't drawn properly in about a month+, which for me is an eternity. I did plenty of sketching of my costume parts, but that doesn't count lol

@Coryn what do you think's causing your block? the heat?
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Offline Coryn

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Re: Vacants World Building Dumping Ground
« Reply #6 on: August 14, 2022, 04:35:54 PM »
The heat usually doesn't help, no, lol. But in this case it's the usual activities we inevitably get dragged to in summer when the weather is nice, and my own wedding planning stress which is making concentrating on writing hard.

It has at least lead to me spending more time on stress reducing hobbies (movies, books, games) which are filling my head with different ideas and stories that I'm sure when I'm out of the funk will come to the fore and improve my writing. But until then it's a slog, lol.

Until then, here's to another Sunday drinking mimosas and playing FF14 I guess.  :cheer:

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Re: Vacants World Building Dumping Ground
« Reply #7 on: August 15, 2022, 10:18:05 AM »
Ah so true with the extra activities - my cosplay was a massive timesink this year, no thanks to my massive ambitions XD
ah yeah the wedding! that's coming up soon? that can certainly be somewhat attention seeking, especially seeings that it's your own XD

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Until then, here's to another Sunday drinking mimosas and playing FF14 I guess
Gotta get that downtime, amen to that!
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Offline Coryn

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Re: Vacants World Building Dumping Ground
« Reply #8 on: August 20, 2022, 01:58:45 PM »
Oh yeah. "Soon" is an understatement at this point, lol. September 16th  :ohmy:

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Re: Vacants World Building Dumping Ground
« Reply #9 on: August 22, 2022, 12:49:55 AM »
oh wow! all the best with that!!!!
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