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The world-building for the story I'm currently writing includes the use of luminescent sea organisms (aka sea sparkles IRL) in lamps.

Basically it's a jar full of seawater with the tiny organisms in it. You shake the jar and it agitates the sea sparkles, making them light up.
People have to regularly feed their lamps (I'm thinking powdered seaweed) or they weaken and eventually die. 

The one thing I'm stuck on right now is a name for the lamps. Current options are sea-lamp, waterlight, merlamp, glowbottle and bluetorch.
Thoughts?

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How about "sealight"? You didn't include it in your list of options, and I think it sounds good. I'm thinking no on "merlamp" and errrr on "glowbottle". "Bluetorch", while it sounds cool, doesn't sound like it has to do with the ocean, but with a cold fire. "Sea-lamp" and "waterlight" are fine, but I think "sealight" is good.

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Ah, it's actually a fantasy setting, so I'm afraid anything too science-y won't mesh well.

Sealight does sound good, but I'd rather use that for something mysterious you see hovering over the waves at night, you know? As in:
"The sealights came out again last night," said the harbormaster.
"Aye, 'tis an ill omen," an old sailor growled.

Thanks for the input!

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2 hours ago, Eagle of the Forest Path said:

Ah, it's actually a fantasy setting, so I'm afraid anything too science-y won't mesh well.

Sealight does sound good, but I'd rather use that for something mysterious you see hovering over the waves at night, you know? As in:
"The sealights came out again last night," said the harbormaster.
"Aye, 'tis an ill omen," an old sailor growled.

Thanks for the input!

Then perhaps. Give the jellyfish a name, like Aether.

Aetherlyte.

Or, perhaps, something in whatever language your story's folk use.

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41 minutes ago, Darkness Ascendant said:

Then perhaps. Give the jellyfish a name, like Aether.

Aetherlyte.

Or, perhaps, something in whatever language your story's folk use.

Sounds good to me. You don't have to do something exactly like that, but the same concept.

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This post of @Pagerunner gave me an idea: magic users whose magic is long gone and they try to figure out how to use the new magic.

Like... imagine immortal priest of Poseidon. As long as Poseidon was a Greek god, it was fine. Then the Romans came and he figured out how to use his water magic by drawing on Neptun. But then Roman Empire collapsed. With more hacking he could use some local water god but then politeistic religions started to disappear. Etc etc.

Ok, not really what I have in mind but I think it sort of conveys the idea. Or maybe something like Windows 95 program trying to survive through every system update.

Perhaps drawing comparisions with Perfect State is better.

Spoiler

How Kai couldn't use Lancing in a different State without some hacking and even then it wouldn't be proper Lancing. Then reiterate through seven more generations of new States while destroying his original State. He has the proper code for using magic but that magic no longer exists.

 

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22 minutes ago, Oversleep said:

This post of @Pagerunner gave me an idea: magic users whose magic is long gone and they try to figure out how to use the new magic.

Like... imagine immortal priest of Poseidon. As long as Poseidon was a Greek god, it was fine. Then the Romans came and he figured out how to use his water magic by drawing on Neptun. But then Roman Empire collapsed. With more hacking he could use some local water god but then politeistic religions started to disappear. Etc etc.

Ok, not really what I have in mind but I think it sort of conveys the idea. Or maybe something like Windows 95 program trying to survive through every system update.

Perhaps drawing comparisions with Perfect State is better.

  Reveal hidden contents

How Kai couldn't use Lancing in a different State without some hacking and even then it wouldn't be proper Lancing. Then reiterate through seven more generations of new States while destroying his original State. He has the proper code for using magic but that magic no longer exists.

 

I'm glad someone got something out of my paragraph about ice cream.

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  • 1 month later...

So I just thought up this little 'magic system thingy' and I hope it works out. It's still very much in the early stages but as off right now this is where it's at.

 

This magic system focuses heavily on manipulating dimensions and dimensional barriers. There are infinite dimensions but most of them are barely the size of a small room. Most dimensions kind of have a theme about them except for "Prime Dimensions" such as this one.

The thing that kind of gave me this idea is a battle between two of these mages. I imagined a battleground hoplessly fragmented, interspliced, overlayed and tunneled through to be a perfect maze of overlapping dimensions similair to what Megan did when they where fighting Prof at Sharp Tower.

I was also thinking that a more experienced mage could not open a breach to another dimension but create 'pocket' dimensions and 'wall of' other dimensions to make it more dificult to open a breach to it. 

I kind of imagined the Mages as being very similair to ninjas, since they are unable to directly hurt a person using magic they probably would need to get very good at using an environment to take down enemies and using hand to hand combat.

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You know this type of villain who believes he's doing the right thing and that heroes are too morally simplistic and he believes that their victory will doom everyone?

Let's shift all these things a level. He's the main protagonist and he's right. Not Rashek-right; actually right. While his actions may seem at times questionable, he's the hero. But, after all, the world is not black and white and Knight Templar is not somebody we'd like to meet - actually it's a scary person; fortunately the protagonist is not so close minded.

You know Rorschach from Watchmen? We could make the "heroes" like him. However the protagonist cannot be like Ozymandias.

Important thing is to execute so it won't be obvious there is a moral shift going on. It should be noticeable only upon reflection on the book or perhaps when the hero delivers a line usually spoken by villains, like "you think you're the hero here?" but it's completely justified and then the reader realizes the whole thing.

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I came up with this idea a long time ago, and I recently started thinking about it again, so I decided to share it.

The idea is there's this guy that can make people, including himself, Forget things. He can even make them Forget himself, taking him out of their minds. I really like this idea, as it inspired a character who wished to forget lots of things in his life, and when he Forgets them, it leads to a slippery slope of Forgetting everything, even who he once was. He becomes a wanderer, pretty much.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Random Writing Prompts (Time Edition):

A story that takes place over the length of one second.

A story from the viewpoint of someone who lives in an alternate dimension where time has stopped, and he's the only person who can move.

A story from the viewpoint of someone who can see 19 seconds into the future, but can't change anything that happens.

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1 hour ago, Straw said:

A story that takes place over the length of one second.

Actually I had such idea of various people trapped in a moment. It had that surreal feel to it because everyday stuff became bizarre and unnatural (like there was a man who fell out of the window and they could go and look at him suspended in the air, surrounded by shimmering, broken glass. It was like a statue to them).

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Today i decided to make the substance powering the magic of my world explosive...best decision ever. I sort of reverse engineered possible reasons for it acting that way and it added a whole new level of depth to te system and connected two previously completely seperate magic systems in the world that i've been scrambling to find a connection between.

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Today I finally finished my outline. It's taken me about 10 months to do as I was very indecisive on where I wanted the story to go. But, it is finally done. I'll start making headway into the story this weekend and I'm setting my goal for about 3 pages a day. 

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  • 2 months later...
  • 2 months later...

Not sure where else on the Creator's Corner to ask this question, so I'll fall back to the old standby of Creation Daily.

In your opinion, would an self-made D&D campaign setting count as an original creation, or would it count as a fanwork?

I've recently had my brain hijacked by a D&D setting idea which I'd like to show off, but I'm not sure if the Creator's Corner is the right place for that if it doesn't actually count as an original creation.

Edited by Elementalist
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Wow, so many good ideas! Anyway, I have a few of my own.

Okay, so there is moon, roughly the size of our's, that appears silver-white in color. it is tidally locked in orbit around its planet, again, like our moon. But, it supports life. Including humans. (the planet does too, but I'm building it with my sister. the moon is a surprise for her). Originally, this moon has no life, but was colonized but humans. Then a catastrophe happened that destroyed most of the humans' knowledge and hyper-evolved the other lifeforms. Now, the humans have regained most of their lost technology and have built new civilizations unique to them, of which there are two.

The first race lives on the bright side of the moon. They have light brown skin and black hair, which may contain steel-grey highlights (They kind of resemble the OB endpages picture of Shalash). They are very logical, analytically minded. Scientists. They do not have much art or music, and do not have a real religion. Rather, they believe, by way of a lot of reasoning, that there must be something outside of space and time, which created space and time. Maybe a god, maybe something else. But that's all theoretical to them, and doesn't really matter. Instead, they spend their time unraveling the mysteries of math and science.

The other culture on the moon is almost the complete opposites of the first race. They have very pale, white skin, and curly, smokey-silver hair that they typically wear down past their shoulders (both men and women do this). They are more romantic than their logical neighbors, having strong beliefs in abstract concepts like love, honor, chivalry, and heroics. They do a lot of poetry and music, especially vocal & pure instrumental (lot of orchestras and such). They have a firm belief that whatever god(s) are out there, must care for humans. Even if they've never seen any evidence of this.

Annnd that's all I have. And I am now nearing my bedtime. Anyway, what do you think? Good, bad, okay? Feedback please!

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16 minutes ago, SilverTiger said:

Wow, so many good ideas! Anyway, I have a few of my own.

Okay, so there is moon, roughly the size of our's, that appears silver-white in color. it is tidally locked in orbit around its planet, again, like our moon. But, it supports life. Including humans. (the planet does too, but I'm building it with my sister. the moon is a surprise for her). Originally, this moon has no life, but was colonized but humans. Then a catastrophe happened that destroyed most of the humans' knowledge and hyper-evolved the other lifeforms. Now, the humans have regained most of their lost technology and have built new civilizations unique to them, of which there are two.

The first race lives on the bright side of the moon. They have light brown skin and black hair, which may contain steel-grey highlights (They kind of resemble the OB endpages picture of Shalash). They are very logical, analytically minded. Scientists. They do not have much art or music, and do not have a real religion. Rather, they believe, by way of a lot of reasoning, that there must be something outside of space and time, which created space and time. Maybe a god, maybe something else. But that's all theoretical to them, and doesn't really matter. Instead, they spend their time unraveling the mysteries of math and science.

The other culture on the moon is almost the complete opposites of the first race. They have very pale, white skin, and curly, smokey-silver hair that they typically wear down past their shoulders (both men and women do this). They are more romantic than their logical neighbors, having strong beliefs in abstract concepts like love, honor, chivalry, and heroics. They do a lot of poetry and music, especially vocal & pure instrumental (lot of orchestras and such). They have a firm belief that whatever god(s) are out there, must care for humans. Even if they've never seen any evidence of this.

Annnd that's all I have. And I am now nearing my bedtime. Anyway, what do you think? Good, bad, okay? Feedback please!

Looks interesting! I like how you created a dualistic system without falling into the cliche of creating an ethical division between each side (like, making one side good and the other evil). I think the bright-siders could turn out to be quite unique, but you'll need to be very cautious to distinguish them from the "Vulcan" stereotype that hits a lot of logically-minded cultures. Having the more logical group on the bright side and the more emotional group on the dark is a nice contrast to how those ideals are usually portrayed; it makes thematic sense that an Enlightenment culture would be more exposed to the light.

Edited by Elementalist
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16 hours ago, Elementalist said:

Looks interesting! I like how you created a dualistic system without falling into the cliche of creating an ethical division between each side (like, making one side good and the other evil). I think the bright-siders could turn out to be quite unique, but you'll need to be very cautious to distinguish them from the "Vulcan" stereotype that hits a lot of logically-minded cultures. Having the more logical group on the bright side and the more emotional group on the dark is a nice contrast to how those ideals are usually portrayed; it makes thematic sense that an Enlightenment culture would be more exposed to the light.

Thanks. I hadn't thought about the Vulcan stereotype, I'll have to be careful not to just copy it. Shouldn't be too hard, the bright-siders (am going to find a better name for both, eventually) aren't emotionless husks. They do have emotions, which they display under some circumstances (like parties, or recreational activities), but not under serious circumstances (the science lab, workplace, etc.). Also, both men and women tend to wear their hair cut short (pixie cut, normal guy styles) and prefer shirts and knee-length pants. The bright side tends to be a bit hot, after all, whereas the darkened side tends to be colder. Both races have silvery-grey eye color.

18 hours ago, Elementalist said:

Not sure where else on the Creator's Corner to ask this question, so I'll fall back to the old standby of Creation Daily.

In your opinion, would an self-made D&D campaign setting count as an original creation, or would it count as a fanwork?

I've recently had my brain hijacked by a D&D setting idea which I'd like to show off, but I'm not sure if the Creator's Corner is the right place for that if it doesn't actually count as an original creation.

Well, I've never been in Creation Daily before, but I'd go for it. If it's interesting and at least partially original, then it likely counts. Although, given the creativity of the official campaign settings (which I'v only ever read about), I'd love to read your setting.

Edited by SilverTiger
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