Tag Archive | setting

This was going to be about the setting but then I spent 300+ words on the architecture…

Oct17

Unnamed Kink Setting Worldbuilding 1

Envision elaborate architecture – arches, steeples, towers – all of it built with an eye to defense.

These are cities which have been under siege before; which have been attacked by human foes and by monsters, by magic and by war engines. War isn’t a constant state, but someone might be coming next week is a constant mindset.

Start with the walls: any city in this land is surrounded by at least three tiers of walls; even the smallest town has two tiers. The largest cities have seven to ten, added onto as they have grown over the last hundred years.

Inside the outermost ring is grazing land, crop land. There are these things outside the walls, too; what’s inside the walls is a refuge when attacks come.

There are always houses on this land, unless the wall has just been built. When there is no more grazing land, work begins on another wall outside the last one.

Inside this level is cheap housing. These houses, like ancient Pueblo dwellings, have no doors on the first floor – often on the second floor, either. Access is from the third floor and up, via ladder from below.

There are so many wards around a city that, even if you can fly, flying in a city is almost impossible. Almost everyone uses a ladder.

Back to the buildings. These buildings are often adobe-covered. Deeper into the rings, the buildings have often been joined together; three or six one-family homes are used as the foundation for a taller multiple-family dwelling. The further towards the center you get, the more elaborate the buildings get, and the taller. The houses of the elite in the center are said to touch the sky (although generally no more than 13 stories tall, in modern terms).

As you look at the construction, you will easily note that both buildings and walls appear to be made out of a mish-mash of building materials. A great deal of effort has been made to unify the mish-mash into attractive patterns – sandstone spotted with brick in some sort of checkboard, for instance – but the materials themselves, on very close inspection, have very likely been used for something before.

Indeed, the gates that stud each wall look as if they are built from I-beams and odd slabs of wood, shaped into a pleasing form.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/582574.html. You can comment here or there.

A week of Settings – Day Four: Superheros

Oct17

Super-heroes, super-villains, aliens, altered beings, mutants; this story has it all… even reincarnation.

These stronger, tougher, faster metahumans live their lives on the stage, living out the stories they have created for themselves.

These aren’t those stories. These aren’t the high-flying exploits, these aren’t the daring rescues, these are the lies they tell the press nor the lies the press tells about them.

These stories are the superheros at home. Uncloaked, unmasked. These stories about about humanity… no matter the planet of origin.

<a href="http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/tag/verse:+superheroes
“>Superheroes is a tongue-in-cheek look at the super-powered genre.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/582135.html. You can comment here or there.

A Week of Settings – Day Three: Stranded

Oct11

Stranded Verse

The world is made of magic.

The world is made of connections, and in the ability to understand and manipulate those connections lies the magic.

The world is made up of the sparks of life, of creation. Every spark connects to others, and that is both magic and the building block for magic.

All of those are true in Stranded World, and yet all are untrue – just metaphors for an existence few understand well at all.

The world has connections, that much we know. Everyone and everything make connections. Those connections are often pictured as multicolored strands, tying everything together until they world is made.

Some people can reach out and tangle these strands, complicating everything. Some can smooth them. Some can tie bows in them, and some simply understand them.

In the RoundTree Family, Autumn, Winter, Spring, and Summer, they have one of each.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/578631.html. You can comment here or there.

A Week of Settings – Day Two: Blizzarded

Oct4

Walk into the snow and keep walking, don’t turn around and don’t look for landmarks.

If it doesn’t kill you, this might step you into a strange world, where fauns sometimes pop up and goblins take payment in tech.

And if you keep walking…?

Well, if you keep walking, who knows where you’ll end up.

Blizzarded is a setting that started from a random freewrite, and is based primarily in one story. It counts, probably, as fantasy.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/575738.html. You can comment here or there.

Encyclopedia Californica: The Modified Humanoid in Tir na Cali Culture

Nov20

This is the comment perk from the October Giraffe Call, a setting piece on the Tir na Cali cat-people. For whom I really need their own icon.

The Modified Humanoid in Tir na Cali Culture

History

The trend toward today’s Modified Humanoid, or “Moddies,” began as a fad for cosmetically altered slaves in the early sixties.

The first on record were a set of three cat-girls, triplets who were modified to have pointed cat-like ears, tails with some mobility, and dental work to look like sharp, cat-like fangs. The trio belonged to the tycoon Madison Arthur, a man who took great pleasure in appearing as eccentric as possible.

Others soon followed, modified with ever-increasing skill from a small cadre of experienced cosmetic surgeons and the empowered, to look like everything from house pets – dog-girls and mouse-boys – to predators – crocodile-men and wolf-women – to the fantastic – dragon-beings and, once, a failed pair of centaurs.

These slaves, altered through a combination of internal power and surgery to appear in some way inhuman, were genetically and biologically still completely humanoid. Their brain chemistry was still entirely “normal,” and their children, when they were bred, were of course still humanoid. They were no stronger, no more aggressive, no quicker than a normal human, either, and thus the purpose of their modifications was entirely cosmetic.

The trend towards owning “moddies” came and went, as with any fad, and, as with the sad accessories of any fad, the modified slaves were left by the wayside when the trend passed. Some were consigned to fieldwork who have been pampered house slaves; a few lucky ones were modified further to suit the new trend, or returned to their “natural” state. With each surge of the trend, the technology, science, and skill of the innately powered modifiers became more refined, and with each surge, the modified humanoids looked more and more realistic.

The second true wave of modified humanoids have only recently come into existence; the first genetically modified humanoid was made known to the general public in 2002. There are, of course, rumors that the Agency had been working on these genetic changes for as long as a decade earlier, and the rumors of second-generation genetically altered beings seems to lend credence to this theory.

These modified humanoids, better described, perhaps, as “scientifically produced hybrid species” are created by manipulation at the genetic level. At this date, the only producer of said hybrids is the Agency; all known attempts to make genetic hybrids outside of the Agency’s labs have resulted in, at best, failure, and, at worse, death. As such, all such experiments are illegal, save on volunteer free subjects.

The hybrids produced by the Agency are to their predecessors what a real tiger is to a children’s drawing of one. While a well-modified cat-girl might ape the behaviors of a cat, and, in modern times, have catlike ears, tail, and sometimes whiskers and claws that move naturally and serve as part of her body, the Agency’s well-protected hybrid cat-humanoids have brain chemistry and behavior patterns that, in many ways, are more feline than human.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/181097.html. You can comment here or there.