Creation Daily

[Elementalist he/him]

I'm...kinda tossing a concept for something around. Probably a short story (or maybe just something to post as an AMA in this forum)...

I was thinking it might be fun to do a story about a body double/political decoy; think Padmé's handmaiden in the Prequel films.

I figure that would have the potential for an interesting relationship, but other than the idea of a main character who is in that position? I have nothing. Kinda throwing around some idea's - it'd probably be fantasy, since I like that genre, but I'm trying to figure out a cool story to tell with a character with that background.

Brilliant idea! I can see some interesting character development scenarios that a character in that position may encounter.

[Oversleep]

So... I don't really know how to name this trope, but I'll try to give a description. I like seeing it done and I'd like to do it myself.
Basically, it's how characters think back to their normal life. You know, all these "How my life has come to hunting down vampiries" sort of thing. How the characters incorporate their supernatural life into normal life. "I was to do something... Take out the thrash? Do the homework? Sharpen the knives? Study for the test?"

I recently posted an excerpt I wrote about Haesar being on a party (only mages) and thinking about being one of the top mages in the country and still having no idea how to party. And then he sat down at the bar with a drink and contemplated the fact that he can throw fireballs, he fights monsters using a sword on daily basis and still considers not knowing how to dance a problem.
Maybe it's about humanising characters?

I had idea for a setting where a team of mages open portals to other dimensions to defend sieged castles. Like it's their job. Whenever there is a siege being held, a representative appears to offer services of qualified siege-breakers for money or resources or whatever. If the people agree (and they usually do), the company chooses a team of operatives and they drop in the world and do the job.

So our team of heroes appears in the new dimension. And then they decide that's it's an easy enough job, so they lend some spells to one of them and he goes and slaughters the enemies. Why didn't they help? They have to study for math test.
Picture the scene: One superhuman battles an entire army. Defending army supports him by archers on the walls. The rest of the team sits in the hall and solves storming equations.
Because for the people in the castle, it's a matter of life and death. But for them, it's their day-to-day job. After ninth battle they all get the same, you know? So sometimes they pick one of them to do the job and the rest stays inside and plays cards.

P.S. I honestly didn't notice similarites to Apocalypse Guard. I am not sure whether I had the idea before or after I read about it

-----------------------
Edit: I just realized I don't have the name for my universe (the one with Haesar, not the sieged-castles-dimensions one). I don't know how to refer to it instead of "do you remember the idea I had for the universe where...". I remember naming the short story in alternate continuity "Burning sky".

I also don't know how to name my "mages". I really don't want to use the "mage" term. Lukyanienko has Others, inFamous Conduits, this one fantasy author I doubt anyone here would know has Awakeners, Allomancers, Feruchemists, Hemalurgists and Surgebinders, Rothfuss has Namers and hermetics, Grzedowicz has Songsters or Doers/Causers/Makers (no idea how to translate it), Avatar has benders, there are metahumans and mutants and so on...

How do Soul Smiths (or Soulsmiths) sound? I'm looking for a name for the whole group, individuals or smaller groups (like gravitymages) will still be called by "mage".

Edited March 13, 2016 by Oversleep

[Lindel he/him]

I'm looking for some cool, unique ways to use the ability to amplify preexisting magnetic fields. Any suggestions?

[Oversleep]

Mundane one. Get a good popular science book. Read it.
Normally I'd offer some scientific insight, but the issue is really complex.

BTW, did you know that people who had their corneas replaced can see ultraviolet?

[Elementalist he/him]

I had an idea a while back (while I was desperately trying to create a hard magic system for Buffy the Vampire Slayer) about a world in the middle of Revelations. Essentially, Heaven and Hell are actively waging war on Earth, and neither cares much about the humans who were already living there. The magic system is based on mantles of power, or just mantles. A celestial or infernal being has a mantle of power given to it by Heaven or Hell attached to its soul. After the being dies, the mantle quickly (but not instantly) is siphoned back to it's home realm. In the system, there are three ways to gain power:

1. Enter the service of a powered being like a demon or angel and give them something they want in exchange for the ability to draw upon their mantle.

2. Bind a powered being to your service.

3. Bind a powered being's mantle to yourself after the being's death, before the mantle can return to it's home realm (only humans can do this). This method is the most reliable, but has an added danger- the binder will always bind a portion of the powered being's soul in addition to their mantle. Skilled binders will only bind a negligable sliver of soul, but less skilled binders may bind larger portions, which will influence their thoughts. An error in the binding ritual might result in the whole soul being bound along with the mantle, causing the binder to become possesed.

Because a mantle returns to its realm, the forces of both Heaven and Hell have realized that open warfare is practically useless- kill all the enemy you want; their mantles will just be recycled. To counter this, each side hires human "Mantle Hunters," combination bounty hunters and assassins. Mantle Hunters are hired to assasinate enemy powered beings, bind their mantles, and bring them back to the gates of their employer's realm so that their employer can claim the mantle for its own realm. This is the only way to permanantly decrease the strength of a realm.

I'm thinking of writing a story about a Mantle Hunter working for Hell who's just killed an angel with a sniper rifle, and is in the middle of binding the mantle- but she's distracted in the middle of the ritual, and ends up with an angel in her head.

Edited March 14, 2016 by Elementalist

[Oversleep]

@Elementalist
There is a question that begs to be asked... Why would anyone want to work for Hell?

Why aren't the sides interested in humans? Commonly it is believied that they wage war over human souls, after all.

[Elementalist he/him]

@Elementalist

There is a question that begs to be asked... Why would anyone want to work for Hell?

Why aren't the sides interested in humans? Commonly it is believied that they wage war over human souls, after all.

The angels I'm writing are very... Old Testament in their methodology. Both sides tend to view humans as an annoyance more than anything else, and some early war crimes committed by the forces of Heaven disillusioned a lot of people, including my main character. Of course, the demons are just as bad, so it ends up being a choice between two bad options.

The sides aren't that interested in collecting souls because this is the final accounting- at the end of the war, the world will end anyways, and the righteous will ascend to Heaven and the wicked will fall into Hell. Each side is more worried about mantles than souls, since it's the mantle of Heaven or Hell that provides the energy for a new angel or demon to be created, so only by increasing the size of their realm's mantle can that realm hope to break the stalemate. A human does have a tiny mantle that powers their soul, but it's so small that it will always dissipate before anyone can bind it, making humans useless as a resource except as Mantle Hunters or grunt troops.

I've considered also adding in a third, smaller faction, led by witches. Witches are born with mantles from Purgatory, which in this cosmology is basically empty except for a few eldritch abominations. That faction would aim to create a new sanctuary in Purgatory for humans to escape the apocalypse, and want to set up a human-controlled afterlife there as well, since they believe that there should be "no damnation without representation." After they kill all the aforementioned eldritch abominations, of course.

[Oversleep]

Oooh... I like the idea of humans deciding they are not going along with heaven nor hell and setting up their own afterlife. Purging the purgatory (BTW, it sounds like a good title) could be a nice plot thread.

Edited March 14, 2016 by Oversleep

[Kobold King he/him]

Oooh... I like the idea of humans deciding they are not going along with heaven nor hell and setting up their own afterlife. Purging the purgatory (BTW, it sounds like a good title) could be a nice plot thread.

 

 

 

--Sincerely, Humanity

[Kobold King he/him]

So, just earlier today I was wondering about one of the odder tropes about Lovecraftian eldritch abominations; that of them having sinister cults that sacrifice virgins or goats or virgin goats under the full moon.

 

Why would an eldritch abomination necessarily be malevolent? Why couldn't it have a cult that feels oddly compelled to draw manga comics in its name, or share internet memes about it, or sell cute little plushies of it and donate the proceeds to charity? If a being of Lovecraftian proportions is so inconceivable to humanity, why are its cult's practices always strictly rooted in the same old over-the-top villainy?

 

My setting's still an abstract work in progress in many of its broader aspects, but I really want to include an eldritch god of plushies now.

[TwiLyghtSansSparkles she/her]

Does this mean I serve an Eldritch god of pugs?

Edited March 16, 2016 by TwiLyghtSansSparkles

[Kobold King he/him]

Does this mean I serve an Eldritch god of pugs?

 

 

You ARE the eldritch god of pugs.

[Zathoth]

So, just earlier today I was wondering about one of the odder tropes about Lovecraftian eldritch abominations; that of them having sinister cults that sacrifice virgins or goats or virgin goats under the full moon.

 

Why would an eldritch abomination necessarily be malevolent? Why couldn't it have a cult that feels oddly compelled to draw manga comics in its name, or share internet memes about it, or sell cute little plushies of it and donate the proceeds to charity? If a being of Lovecraftian proportions is so inconceivable to humanity, why are its cult's practices always strictly rooted in the same old over-the-top villainy?

 

My setting's still an abstract work in progress in many of its broader aspects, but I really want to include an eldritch god of plushies now.

This exact idea inspired me to write The Great Shining Butterfly.

 

Then of course I made it horrifying anyway, because thats what I do...

 

I think there is a great deal of irony in the worship of the Old Gods, they dont care. Even if the cultists have accepted that the Elder Gods are so much Greater than us they have not accepted how small and meaningless we are, we are nothing to them, even if Yog-Sothoth could have made it through the gate there is no way earth was his goal, they just canceled his flight into this universe, not like he cant find another way.

 

So I guess the lesson is that it is ridiculous to care about beings that cant care about us, or something like that. The universe is cold and uncaring, be nice to each other, because the universe wont.

 

I think you have to step down a little to write interesting gods. Make them slightly more 'human', the shards are interesting examples of that.

[Elementalist he/him]

Huggable soft salamancer plush, anyone?

[TwiLyghtSansSparkles she/her]

I was listening to music, and Johnny Cash's "God's Gonna Cut You Down" made me realize what I want my central theme (one of them, anyway) to be:

You may throw your rock and hide your hand

Working in the dark against your fellow man

But as sure as God made black and white

What's done in the dark will be brought to the light.

Now to incorporate it.

[Quiver he/him]

So...random idea.

An Autobiography written by a monster. Or an alien. Or a robot.

Basically, an actor reflecting on their roles, the good, the bad and the stereotyped.

With the caveat that the actor in question is, like, Godzilla.

[Kobold King he/him]

So...random idea.

An Autobiography written by a monster. Or an alien. Or a robot.

Basically, an actor reflecting on their roles, the good, the bad and the stereotyped.

With the caveat that the actor in question is, like, Godzilla.

 

 

So a paranormal creature writes an autobiography? I'd read that!

 

Though it would probably need... a ghost writer.

 

 

Sorry.

[TwiLyghtSansSparkles she/her]

So a paranormal creature writes an autobiography? I'd read that!

Though it would probably need... a ghost writer.

Sorry.

That ghost writer would need to put their thinking kappa on.

[Oversleep]

I once had an idea about my Soulsmiths (I will go by that name for now): the city they live in was cut off from the rest of the world (I still don't know why) and the plot is that government somehow acquired artifacts capable of sensing magic. And somehow they gone from state of emergency to full fledged totalitaristic regime - our heroes are now hunted since they aren't surrendering themselves and they won't stop killing monsters. I still don't know the specifics, though.

The problem arises when one monster Rips in the reality just near Haesar's house. Haesar knows that the Rip was sensed and a strike force will be sent, but he also knows that they will be too late (about fifteen minutes) and he isn't going to watch the monster eat his neighbours. He also knows that the moment he taps into his power all alarms will go crazy and he will have a a dozen of troops in under five minutes on his head. Normally he would escape after he is done, but they will be able to sense his aura all over the place and conclude it's his home, then his family will be taken hostage...
That sort of thing. I seriously have to stop making up new settings (normal one, this one and that post-apo one).

That setting was originally responsible for setting up a secret network for mages.

On this one, I think more like Final Empire than all these dystopian post-Hunger Games things... wait, I can't be influenced by them, I've read only first Hunger Games book and nothing else from that genre.
I may have been influenced by actual history of my city and country...
And maybe Little Brother, a little.
 

Edited March 21, 2016 by Oversleep

[Quiver he/him]

I'm thinking of trying to write a Darth's and Droids-style take on Stormlight Archive.

Would anyone here be interested in reading that?

Alternatively, anyone interested in drawing it if I did scripts?

[Jo and the Bush all/any]

I would love to read that. And I would love to draw it, but I'm not that good at drawing.

[TwiLyghtSansSparkles she/her]

I'm thinking of trying to write a Darth's and Droids-style take on Stormlight Archive.

Would anyone here be interested in reading that?

Alternatively, anyone interested in drawing it if I did scripts?

 

I'd definitely read it, but unless your vision for the art included some very expressive stick figures, I'm probably not the best choice.  

[Oversleep]

Okay, I need some help with developing secret signs. Like masons or something, secret handshakes... codewords to slip in conversation.

The situation is that I have a subset of Soulsmiths who cannot sense anything magical. Apart from some tricks they can do, they are basically normal humans. Now, the thing is: how will they recognize each other? While I assume they probably won't be able to recognize another member while walking by, I need some kind of confirmation system. Let's say two people set up a meeting, but they don't know each other.

Of course the signs cannot be accidentialy made by someone random (so scratching your nose is out of question) but at the same time it cannot stand out from normal interaction if you're wrong and you're talking to wrong person (so no "The grasshopers are vexing erinaceous constructs" because it will make you stand out and you can't exactly go around telling people that until you come across the right person).

I was thinking about choosing a short code and response to slip in conversation and after initial confirmation moving to more specific signs (I once heard early christians would draw a curve and for the other person to add a second curve making a fish symbol). So at first you would slip in "blue" into sentence and then a "turtle" and the other person would respond by mentioning "pen" and then "fifth". If any side does this in wrong order, you are to suspect a spy and proceed normally, but giving an additional code for "you made a mistake". If the other side gives normal answers but without responding to the check code ("I know I messed up") or gives wrong answers, you have a spy confirmed.
The next stage would be some gestures... I'm working on that.

[Zathoth]

Okay, I need some help with developing secret signs. Like masons or something, secret handshakes... codewords to slip in conversation.

The situation is that I have a subset of Soulsmiths who cannot sense anything magical. Apart from some tricks they can do, they are basically normal humans. Now, the thing is: how will they recognize each other? While I assume they probably won't be able to recognize another member while walking by, I need some kind of confirmation system. Let's say two people set up a meeting, but they don't know each other.

Of course the signs cannot be accidentialy made by someone random (so scratching your nose is out of question) but at the same time it cannot stand out from normal interaction if you're wrong and you're talking to wrong person (so no "The grasshopers are vexing erinaceous constructs" because it will make you stand out and you can't exactly go around telling people that until you come across the right person).

I was thinking about choosing a short code and response to slip in conversation and after initial confirmation moving to more specific signs (I once heard early christians would draw a curve and for the other person to add a second curve making a fish symbol). So at first you would slip in "blue" into sentence and then a "turtle" and the other person would respond by mentioning "pen" and then "fifth". If any side does this in wrong order, you are to suspect a spy and proceed normally, but giving an additional code for "you made a mistake". If the other side gives normal answers but without responding to the check code ("I know I messed up") or gives wrong answers, you have a spy confirmed.

The next stage would be some gestures... I'm working on that.

As inspiration I had an idea for a sign language involving finger taps.

 

Each finger tap and combination of them is a letter... that needs some explaining, doesnt it? (I havent actually made a functioning alphabet around this, it was just an idea I had)

 

Ok, lets say [thumb] [pinky+middle] [four fingers except thumb] [four fingers except thumb] [ring+pinky] spells out Hello. Does that make some kind of sense? Problem is of course that you need a table or something to use it, otherwise if you are just doing the handsigns you are going to stretch a muscle in your hand XD

 

I dunno, just some inspiration.

[Jo and the Bush all/any]

As inspiration I had an idea for a sign language involving finger taps.

Each finger tap and combination of them is a letter... that needs some explaining, doesnt it? (I havent actually made a functioning alphabet around this, it was just an idea I had)

Ok, lets say [thumb] [pinky+middle] [four fingers except thumb] [four fingers except thumb] [ring+pinky] spells out Hello. Does that make some kind of sense? Problem is of course that you need a table or something to use it, otherwise if you are just doing the handsigns you are going to stretch a muscle in your hand XD

I dunno, just some inspiration.

I actually did something similair, but it used a keyboard. Idle finger taps in the positions of a Qwertyuiop style keyboard.