Skyverea Worldbuilding Thread

[Zathoth]

If you dream walk a little bit too far, beyond the phantasmagorias of your mind, if you remain undistracted by the naked celebrities, if you walk past the baboons that give sage advice, if you pass the halls of Azathoth and keep walking, flying, swimming. Keep moving. If you do you may see shimmering orbs in the distance, you may see planets in all manner of possible and impossible shapes and sizes, you may see clouds and fishes and birds and ships, all this just floating around in the air. Then you will realize that there is air to breath, you will realize that you need to breath. You are not dreaming anymore, you have entered Skyverea.

It sort of annoyed me that every time I needed help with Skyverea I had to explain the entire bizarre setting it has and usually I just ended up copy-pasting an explanation from earlier, but then I had to find the explanation to copy paste... so I am just making a thread that I can link people to every time I need help. And you get to read my strange ideas. Everyone wins!

Skyverea is my weird, insane, surreal science fantasy horror mystery serial web novel that will happen one of these days as soon as I can get the magic figured out.

The Skyverea itself is, as the blurb above says, basically Super Mario Galaxy that lies beyond your dreams~ It is a portmanteau of Sky-Universe-Sea, so it is pronounced "Skay-ver-ee", not "Skay-ver-ee-a". Dont blame me, blame English spelling. The plot goes something like:

"Riem the theif lives in a planet system by the name of Hela, on a large planet (though of course to us it is just the size of a country) just called The Harbor. He steals things, cons people and takes jobs stealing things and giving them to other people, for a fee, of course. One day, during one of those jobs he gets set up for a murder, captured and sentenced to death, but manages to escape and then goes on a bizarre adventure trying to find out who set him up."

Now, that's out of the way, world building details!

Stars: Stars are glowing spheres of differing sizes, the main source of both light and magic. They grow brighter and dimmer as the "day" goes because I wanted day and night cycles. Once a "year" they stop glowing completely for a "day", signaling the start of a new "year". This is for some reason uniform all over Skyverea.

Planets: Planets come in all shapes, sizes and kinds of material (me having stolen the setting from Super Mario Galaxy), there are regular, round planets made out of dirt, planets made out of mostly rock, ice or metal, square planets, flat planets, planets that are giant tea cups, flowers or ancient, sleeping gods. Gravity? Gravity just works. It generally pulls things to the middle, but sometimes pulls in other directions.

Clouds: You know how you can sometimes imagine clouds taking shapes? In the Skyverea clouds actually take shapes, if that wasnt enough they also feel the need to move like the things they are taking shapes as. It is not uncommon to see an entire zoo of clouds floating across the sky in shapes of people, birds and dinosaurs, or see clouds silently acting out Hamlet. There is a debate going on if clouds are sentient or not, but sometimes clouds takes things, or creatures. Everyone knows someone who's grandmother was taken by a cloud and her remains rained over two planet systems over and everyone has had bones rained over their ceiling.

Moons: Moons are pale, glowing rocks. They have lunar phases, just like on our world, but rather than one half being blocked by the earth they shine light on their own and one half disappears and shows up somewhere else in the Skyverea. They are also a source of magic and a way to measure time.

 

On to the magic. I keep changing my mind on this, but I'll share what I have. (Yes I really like Chromathury)

First we have Starlight. It exists on a spectrum from cognitive or illusionary magic to more physical magic. It used to be like this:

Spoiler

 

1. Manipulating emotions, telepathy, mind reading, dream walking, inserting thoughts and creating hallucinations in the 'victims' mind.

2. Makes things experienced differently. For example you can make something appear more likeable, scarier or less noticeable.

3. Creates Illusions (Think Lightweaving) for every sense. It is however still just an illusion. If you hit someone with a touch heat illusion they will feel burned, but they wont be burned. It can also be used to record things happening and even use it to sense what is around you.

4. Buffs and debuffs and other such changes. Make things more durable, less durable, make people heal faster, more flammable, less flammable, stronger, faster, better. Or weaker, slower and worse.

5. Telekinisis. Move things.

6. Reshape things without changing the substance.

7. Transformation. Can work both as turning rocks to diamonds and turning yourself into a wolf.

8. Shaping Starlight into shapes. The shaped Starlight turns into something like multi-colored glass.

9. Create things from Starlight, such as fire, water or stone.

Seeing the problem? It is now this:

Spoiler

1. Manipulating emotions, telepathy, mind reading, dream walking, inserting thoughts and creating hallucinations in the 'victims' mind.

2. Makes things experienced differently. For example you can make something appear more likeable, scarier or less noticeable.

3. Creates Illusions (Think Lightweaving) for every sense. It is however still just an illusion. If you hit someone with a touch heat illusion they will feel burned, but they wont be burned. It can also be used to record things happening and even use it to sense what is around you.

4. Buffs and debuffs and other such changes. Make things more durable, less durable, make people heal faster, more flammable, less flammable, stronger, faster, better. Or weaker, slower and worse.

5. Telekinisis. Move things.

6. Reshape things without changing the substance.

7. Transformation. Can work both as turning rocks to diamonds and turning yourself into a wolf.

7 is now fused with 9 (So you can get more stuff than you put in because the Starlight creates the rest) and 8 is its own system (I just really want beams, force fields and lightsabers, ok?)

Problems I have now is the awkward jump between 3 and 4 and the fact that it is now a little short. Ideas?

Anyway, this tells you nothing about how it actually works, does it?

If you are human you are born with three of these Illuminations (that's what I call the 'colors', or numbers). If you get them all in a row or all over the spectrum is up in the air at the moment. Magic is done by 'grabbing' the Starlight (which is not regular light, you cant do magic from a candle flame), weaving it around to put your intent into it and letting the Illumination loose (The Spell).

Of course to make sure the characters cant just do anything they need to practice. Take 5 (Jazz pun intended) for example. Moving wood isn't the same thing as moving steel, they are similar, like picking up a bass after learning guitar, but if you want to move fire you need to start practicing again. You can move something you haven't practiced enough by really putting time and intent into the Illumination, but you may not have the time.

7 is one of my favorites because how odd I decided it to be. In an old manga called Law of Ueki most powers work by turning x into y. So you have stuff like turning trash into trees, beads into bombs, towels into steel, tomatoes into lava, so I just decided to steal that. You need to figure out both what you are transforming and what you are transforming it to.

Making Starlight Magitech is common, you need a special kind of metal to program the Starlight and a special kind of crystal to save the Starlight in. Saved Starlight can also be used to normal Stargazers (Mages) when there is no natural Starlight to grab.

 

Aurora/Bowlight (Rainbows, but without that entire rain thing) You remember that missing 8? It is this, except now a lot more versatile. I havent really gotten into how this works yet, but I'll share what I have anyway.

Aurora can be shaped into hard, physical objects, like platforms, blades and shields. The objects are uneffected by gravity, unless the.... auroraist (?) wills them to be effected by gravity, it can also be formed into beams and fired. Maybe also into gasses or liquids, maybe different colors have different effects, I don't know yet.

 

Moonlight: As Moons are not as common as Stars Lunatics are rarer and they can usually not just grab the light and wave it around. Rather they save the Moonlight in their eyes and expand it upon use.

I don't have a nice spectrum list for Moonlight yet, but I have ideas

Weird senses: Hear the voices of objects, light pre cog, retro cog, hear emotions, smell which person it is you need at the moment.

Summoning: Summon things out of other things. Dragons out of fire, birds out of the air, ants out of flesh, flowers out of earth, ninjas out of everywhere. It doesnt need to make that much sense, but it helps.

Change tangibility: Act as if things aren't there, or even better, force the guards that are chasing you act as if the air is a wall, or the ground is a liquid (make it a non-Newtonian one for extra fun), if someone is acting especially heartless pretend their chest isn't there and fulfill their wishes. And the floor is lava, that doesn't make much sense, but it did give me ideas...

There is also time/space manipulation, just a bit more limited than usual. You can reverse time in a certain area, but everyone will remember what happened (and be lightly annoyed that they have redo whatever it is they were doing), fold space and make point a and point b be much closer or just slow down whoever you are fighting.

Lunatics are in general at least cloud cuckoo landers, their magic hitches on them being able to make sense out of what they want to do, no matter how little logical sense that actually makes. While Starlight messes with the rules of physics Moonlight makes reality and logic look the other way.

 

All these are light based, but I want things that go bump in the night. On random idea, which is cool, but I may use for something else, or not at all was Soundmagic (Don't worry, I know you are tired of reading this, I am almost done with this very ranty post)

Soundmagic works though sound (obviously). Some ideas I have are controlling certain things that can hear the song you are playing, making it so no one can make a sound and thus forcing them to move very silently and they can forget about punching your face in, whistling in the pitch of something to break it... or cook it, recreate the T-rex scene from Jurassic Park by drumming on something and actually summon the monster, create a cursed earworm that must be passed on to get rid of the curse, saving sounds to then summon the effects of the thing that made the sound, like a bomb... I don't know, all weird ideas that could be something.

If I have sound magic I could also have scent magic and taste magic...

So, now Im done, until I think about names for more than 3 of the characters and post a character list.

[DrakeMarshall he/him]

Well, it's an interesting idea and I like the names you have for these things. And some of the quirks to moonlight magic are actually fascinating. Could work out pretty well as a story.

Although, I do wonder if perhaps the magic systems are a little too powerful? It would seem to me that within this list of powers you have encompassed the ability to do virtually anything. Now, it also seems like no single person will have access to all these powers, and plus their are limitations with practice and fuel in the form of starlight. This is good. Even so... Some basic physical enhancements combined with the ability to push around bits of metal were enough to make mistborn legendary beings.

[Zathoth]

16 hours ago, Drake Marshall said:

Well, it's an interesting idea and I like the names you have for these things. And some of the quirks to moonlight magic are actually fascinating. Could work out pretty well as a story.

Although, I do wonder if perhaps the magic systems are a little too powerful? It would seem to me that within this list of powers you have encompassed the ability to do virtually anything. Now, it also seems like no single person will have access to all these powers, and plus their are limitations with practice and fuel in the form of starlight. This is good. Even so... Some basic physical enhancements combined with the ability to push around bits of metal were enough to make mistborn legendary beings.

Honestly I designed the magic to be able to do pretty much whatever to not lock myself down. I imagine the magic energies to be more different kinds of Investiture than Starlight is Allomancy and Moonlight is Feruchemy, so to speak. Think of them more as Investiture and... nega-investiture.

But your concerns are noted.

[Straw he/him]

It would make the starlight magic system easier to understand if you made the stars different colors. Each color would act as a fuel for a ability. Example: Red = Power 1, Orange = Power 2, Yellow = Power 3, Green = Power 4, Indigo = Power 5, Blue = Power 6, Violet = Power 7. This would make the magic system just as flexible but less powerful, it would also allow you to make more powerful abilities rarer.

[Zathoth]

On 2016-08-12 at 3:14 PM, Straw said:

It would make the starlight magic system easier to understand if you made the stars different colors. Each color would act as a fuel for a ability. Example: Red = Power 1, Orange = Power 2, Yellow = Power 3, Green = Power 4, Indigo = Power 5, Blue = Power 6, Violet = Power 7. This would make the magic system just as flexible but less powerful, it would also allow you to make more powerful abilities rarer.

But there are already stars everywhere, it wouldn't limit it at all, just clutter the writing up with the Stargazers having to look for the right star for what they want to do. And they only have three abilities and have to practice anyway.

Im going to have names for all the numbers, I just havent figured them out yet.

So I've been working on the Moonlight spectrum all day, was going to give you an update, then I had a new idea and now I have to change things so you'll get that some other day

[Zathoth]

On 2016-08-06 at 3:35 PM, Morzathoth said:

Aurora/Bowlight (Rainbows, but without that entire rain thing) You remember that missing 8? It is this, except now a lot more versatile. I havent really gotten into how this works yet, but I'll share what I have anyway.

Aurora can be shaped into hard, physical objects, like platforms, blades and shields. The objects are uneffected by gravity, unless the.... auroraist (?) wills them to be effected by gravity, it can also be formed into beams and fired. Maybe also into gasses or liquids, maybe different colors have different effects, I don't know yet.

This I ended up color coding, probably, unless I really want blue lightning, which may happen...

 

Red makes the objects/beams/gases/liquids... the aurora, hotter, obviously

Orange I have yet to figure out, ideas?

Yellow makes the aurora give off electrical sparks

Green makes it toxic, of some kind which I will figure out later

Blue makes the aurora colder (I am very original so far, I know)

Purple I may make it have its own gravity, so the aurora beams would make things super dense until they implode on themselves, or something, or that is black and purple does something else...

Maybe I should have violet as well...

EDIT

A friend just solved this for me.

 

Red: Heat

Orange: Dryness (Absorbs moisture)

Yellow: Electricity

Green: Poison (Of some kind)

Blue: Cold

Purple: Wetness (The opposite of orange)

Violet: Gravity

Edited August 30, 2016 by Morzathoth