Kobold King

Come to think of it, I think Backtrack makes a better fit for that quote.

At Neverthere's old school, Epics didn't meet in floating museum fortresses.

We can start calling him tsundere, because no one's noticing him.

Sounds good to me. Way better than Sam getting shot trying to peak at official documents.

Eeyup.

You've seen the Silence arc in Doctor Who, right?

No problemo. Looking forward to it. Mailliw, how would Altermind react to Sam grabbing a random file of information and flipping through it?

Are Sam and Revolution in Altermind's office, or are they waiting outside?

There are scattered locations in the world known as hotspots, around which congregate glowing microorganisms called lumuoles. Lumuoles form symbiotic relationships with plants, animals, and sapient beings, allowing for different types of sorcery depending on the specific variety of lumuole. Lumuole varieties are as follows: White lumuoles, which are inert and practically invisible. Over time their bodies can create useful mineral deposits, though. Red lumuoles have power over fire and heat, and are associated with industry and fertility. Blue lumuoles have power over water in all of its forms, and are associated with scholarship and mental acuity. Yellow lumuoles have power over electricity, and are associated with pride and sovereignity. They can be used for meta-magics, types of sorcery that directly affect other sources of magic. Green lumuoles have power over the winds, and are associated with life and joy. Orange lumuoles have power over the earth and stone, and are associated with strength and resolve. Finally, purple lumuoles have powers over light and darkness, associated with fear and granting capabilities of illusion. The three main races of Diaemus are humans, a sapient raptor species, and highly variable magic spiders that live in deep caverns under the earth. More details are available here. Welcome to the fun! Awesome work so far, everyone! I for one wouldn't mind if you started developing the southern oceans. If you want and no one else objects, I can try my hand at creating Mesozoic-inspired inhabitants of the polar ocean. I think there's a lot of potential in mosasaurs or ocean-going pterosaurs.

We should try to keep things consistent whenever possible. What if the tundra is littered with hotspots that are buried in the permafrost? The grazing animals that depend on magic to survive could regularly migrate between them, constantly keeping their lumuoles charged. Meanwhile, the capital city of the Ice Kin could be built over a mountain hotspot. Crimsobeests, spaksnouts, and other magical creatures here definitely use chemical signals to control the lumuoles. The way I see it, lumuoles are impossible to destroy in the digestive process, and tend to work their way up the food chain to be assimilated into organs that are designed for them. Is it possible to convert lumuoles of one type into another type?

That sounds awesome. How warlike would Soruukan be? Will there be any travel between the north and south continents?

Let's see what Edgedancer thinks. He's the one with the biggest stake in the mountains. Who is Palide the deity over, anyway?

Ooh, I like those! Maybe they could have orange lumuoles, for burrowing nests into the earth?

Found it. The Ice Kin have all the blue lumuoles they need at home, but if the humans have a source of another color that isn't common on the tundra, trading could be very lucrative indeed. Even just meat from green-lumuoled animals would be immensely valuable. I like that. Palide's Swords, for the best of two suggestions?

[iNSERT DEITY NAME HERE]'s Armory? There could be a myth that every mountain is the sword of a god, planted into the world to be available for the war at the end of time.

Awesome. I'm using mostly blue and red lumuoles, as your races are closely tied to them, but I'm also considering some herbivores that use green lumuoles to generate small whirlwinds ahead of them, blowing the snow off of the plants they eat. (Caribou just use their antlers to brush away snow, but magic dinosaurs have license to be more charismatic. ) For reference, the crimsobeests would look something like this... ...but with more crimson scales and luminous red underbellies. The spikes would be pretty heavy and probably not hydrodynamic, but maybe the seals could strap them to their bodies when wandering about on land, to protect themselves from predators? The Ice Kin (essay coming soon) are an ethnicity of Dromeans that specialize in blue lumuoles, specifically for ice-related magic. They were founded by a blonde raptor queen who made them an ice castle in the middle of an impassioned musical number, er, I mean, they were founded by Dromeans who migrated south after some sort of turbulence in the north. Their central government will be based out of an icy citadel high in the mountains, but there will be many herdsmen, sap collectors, and traders roaming the tundra all around. They will be more than capable of traveling to the coasts, and if the humans are friendly and possessing of some level of wealth, they might even send caravans to trade them tools of unmeltable ice in exchange for goods. I like that, but the mountain range in the Wheel of Time books is called the Spine of the World, so I was hoping for something similar but more unique to our setting.

Thanks! I think that's the first time I've inspired awespren. From a biological perspective, I think lumuoles would be everywhere. The ability to access the pores of reality for unlimited free energy, bypassing all the rules and restrictions that govern conventional life forms, is simply too valuable for any species to pass up. There would be a few species with meager needs that could do without, like my skitterhairs, but I think even they would allow the lumuoles into their bodies and might make some small use of them sometime in the year. As for intent--DNA and genetic instinct is an intent, right? The spaksnouts may not be sapient, but every fiber of their being wants to generated their fiery displays. The blueroot pine doesn't have a brain, but the way I imagined it, pheromones in the sap and root structure would "tell" the lumuoles what was required of them. I agree that the lumuoles should require intent, if only to prevent them from wreaking havoc in their raw form, but I think expanding our definition of intent to allow for non-sapient or non-sentient magic users makes for lifeform possibilities that are too fascinating to pass up. Like I said to Mckeedee, I think that lumuoles are extremely valuable lifeforms that almost everything would have assimilated in some way or another. I like the idea of making this a world where almost everything is magical; imagine fields of faintly glowing grass, or blissful lake surfaces occasionally broken up by the spout of some blue lumuole-utilizing predator somewhere underneath the ripples. I cannot speak for everyone, but I would like this to be a world where even the barest backyard is filled with magic and magical beings. I like your magic otters and tapirs, by the way. I especially love the idea of otters that give out an aura of tranquility; if human cultures of Diaemus mirror the ones of Earth, I imagine there could be a thriving trade in exporting the still-glowing pelts of critters to the rich and powerful. Mckeedee, what do lumuoles require to survive? Can they directly harness their own energy to power their cell activities, or do they require external sources of nutrition? That works just fine for me. It even gives me a sizable access to the coast, which I'm sure I could utilize... Thoughts directed at specific people: To whichever person claimed the caverns: will all cavern systems be interconnected, or will most be isolated pockets with either no access or surface access only? Would there be caverns underneath the tundra? TwiLyght: do those magic dinosaurs work for you? If not, I'd be more than happy to either design something else or keep these animals confined to my region somehow. Edgedancer/anyone else with an interest in the mountains: do we have a canon name for the long eastern mountain range? If not, I would like to humbly propose calling them "The Spires" as a solid cross-cultural name, though I'd be thrilled to hear other suggestions.

I can do that. I imagine a Dromean's snout coming up to a grown man's chest, about four to five feet high. Larger than Deinonychus, but quite a bit smaller than Utahraptor. Anyway, a lot of great ideas here! I especially love that mini-essay, Curiosity. I think dinosaurs could work for that... tell me what you think of these. That goes for all of you, since I'm not sure how flamboyant lumuole-infused animals are allowed to be. Spaksnout (Pyrorhinosaurus) Medium-sized dinosaurs the size of muskoxen, these iguanadonts wander the tundra in small herds, grazing the moss and lichens that grow in the cold soil. They are warm-blooded animals with thick umber coats, usually walking on two legs as they migrate across the plains in search of food. The spaksnout's most notable attribute is its nose. Within the skull is a hollow cavity just above the nostrils, filled with warm air. This can be used to produce a loud trumpeting sound for communicating with other members of the herd, but that's only one use. More important are the colonies of red lumuoles that inhabit the cavity, absorbed into the body during times of the year when red lumuole-infused flowers bloom in the frosted soil that ordinarily could never support them. The red lumuoles warm the leaves and roots of the flowers, and are used for a similar purpose in the spaksnout. The microorganisms produce supernatural heat within the animal's nostrils and respiratory system, warming the dinosaur from the inside out even in the coldest blizzards and the darkest winters. Of course, such power isn't limited solely to homeotherm regulation. In the long springtime males will voraciously seek out and eat any plants which will provide them with new lumuoles, and their bodies work overtime producing the hormones necessary for upkeeping the ones they already have. The magical red microbes fully fuse with the bulls' bodies, producing immense amounts of heat while simultaneously granting the animal some immunity to it. The magically derived heat has to go somewhere, and bull spaksnouts know how to put it to good use. In elaborate displays to attract females, spaksnout males will snort enchanted flames from their nostrils, causing spouts of fire a few feet long. (Though in one record case, a male was spotted producing a plume of red flame twenty feet tall.) It is an obscene expenditure of energy, especially for the woefully inefficient mechanisms within the spaksnout body. It quickly tires the bulls out, leaving them weak and drained. It's absurd and it's wasteful, but it's extremely attractive to spaksnout cows. Once the excess lumuoles are burned out of their systems, the spaksnouts mate and produce offspring, which will remain huddled close to their mothers until their own lumuole colonies begin to populate their nasal cavities. From an anthropological perspective, spaksnouts would be extremely useful to a human population on the southern coast. While the fire-spouting abilities of the bulls would be difficult to harness, they could be hunted for their meat and hides without much difficulties. They are not dangerous game, and it is not in their nature to use their precious flames for defense. The animals are flighty and are prone to fleeing at the first sign of danger, but clever hunters could sneak their way close enough to strike a killing blow. Crimsobeest (Thermosaurus) A less dramatic animal than the spaksnout, crimsobeests are members of the nodosaur family. Stocky, heavily armored dinosaurs with curved spikes along their shoulders, these mammoth-sized creatures live in small, loose herds on the few areas on the tundra capable of sustaining them. Unlike spaksnouts or the mammalian inhabitants of the tundra, crimsobeests have no shaggy coats or thick blubber reserves to keep them from the brink of freezing. Instead, the plates on the animal's back are matched with hot scutes on the underbelly of the beast, which are hollow and used for insulating colonies of the red lumuoles. In an example of a species becoming evolutionarily lazy as a result of magic, crimsobeests rely entirely on the lumuoles for their continued existence. The animals essentially wander the frozen tundra with heating units attached to their undersides, warming their bodies and putting a warm red glow into the air around them. In the darkness of the long tundra winter, herds of these animals can be made out by the light they produce, and a freezing traveler would do well to follow them and sap whatever warmth he can from their proximity. From the perspective of a tribe, crimsobeests would be a rare but valuable resource. These animals are slow, heavily armored, and adorned with menacing spikes, which renders them all but impervious to non-sapient predators. They have little to no fear of humans or Dromeans, but such clever creatures can make use of well-aimed arrows or pit traps to bypass the natural armor. In addition, any animals or humanoids that rely on their diets to supply them with living red lumuoles would do well to target the crimsobeest, as this animal has extremely high concentrations of the valuable hot microbes. Skitterhair (Thoosaura) While some dinosaurs rely heavily on lumuoles for survival, the skitterhair scarcely has need of them at all. These two-legged herbivores are covered in woolly grey coats broken up by the faint glow of blue lumuole stripes, and bound across the tundra eating whatever small plants they can scrounge up. In freezing weather they will huddle with others of their kind, sharing natural body warmth and waiting out the frigid wind. These are one of the more mundane inhabitants of the tundra--a rarity, in a world where animals can tap into the pores of reality for unlimited free energy. Skitterhairs are hard to catch, but would be valuable for their hides and flesh. They are also pretty fast, and might be used to pull sleds or or carry bags. Snowsaber (Cryokopisaurus) Apex predator? Still working on this one. I can only be expected to throw so much together on short notice. Blueroot Pine (Pagopinus) In a conventional tundra, there are no trees. There is too little precipitation, and a thick layer of permafrost prevents deep roots from penetrating into the earth. However, the standard rules of nature work differently on Diaemus. Blueroot pines are evergreen trees mostly unremarkable save for their sophisticated root structure, which attracts and utilizes blue lumuoles to tap into the hard permafrost. The lumuoles possess a strong affinity for water in all of its forms, and in the case of the blueroot, can be used to change water from one of its states to another. The roots convert the unusable ice in the soil into damp, valuable water, which is greedily extracted from the soil by the blueroot and plants that are adapted to grow near them. The blueroot sprinkles the landscape with dense foliage in between the desolate plains, and provides valuable habitats for small tundra-dwellers with meager needs. The local Dromean culture will travel deep into the tundra to gather blueroot sap, which when distilled is extremely useful in efficiently controlling blue lumuoles. I doubt they'd grow very close to the coast, so it's unlikely that Twi's humans or seals would run into it very often. Anyway, I'm curious to hear your thoughts on these organisms. Whether or not they're fine, or whether or not I need to go back to the drawing board with them. This is fun.

Personally, I am deeply in love with Mckeedee's magic proposal. I'm already brainstorming creatures that make use of the different colored lumuoles, and I think the system in general is beautifully diverse and allowing of all sorts of innovation. Speaking of creatures, I'm glad the Dromeans and Rachnyx are being met with approval. I'd love to have them declared officially part of the world, but I'm patiently waiting to see if anyone has any hefty objections to them. (Looking at you, Seonid and Edgedancer.) If they're approved, then my southern tip of the mountain range will be populated by a moderately powerful Dromean culture who call themselves the Ice Kin. TwiLyght, since you're my worldbuilding buddy in the tundra region, do you have any preferences for what types of fauna and flora to populate the far south with? I've come up with a few concepts for some lumuole-adapted dinosaurs to populate the Arctic with, but I can hold off on them if you had specific ideas for the native life.

I bet you're one of the people who loves this song parody. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8TmqSedt-E

You presume to correct others' spelling, but you can't even spell "Fluttershy"? For shame!

Alright everyone, I drafted some racial profiles for the three primary species of Diaemus! I had no ideas for the merfolk so I left them out, but I created concepts for each of the terrestrial races. Suggestions, additions, criticisms, and outright condemnations are welcome. This is a communal project, after all. I humbly offer these for your consideration. Humans (Homo sapiens sapiens) Of all the races of Diaemus, humankind is the newest. These were imported to the world of Diaemus no more than twelve thousand years ago, and are totally alien beings. They stand at roughly two meters tall. Like sticks pointing out of the ground, they hold a vertical stance from their feet to their scalps. Their faces are flat and their bodies are mostly hairless, save for for the sparse patches boasted by some of the males. They are physically weak, but they make up for their shortcomings with keen and greedy intellects. The defining characteristic of a human is the hand, four fingers with one opposable thumb. With a pair of hands, a human being can craft anything from a pointy stick to a fire to a steam-powered engine. They can create tools for practically any situation, and can adapt their culture itself for lifestyles in every biome. Since their arrival humans have splintered into dozens of distinct cultures and several ethnicities. They can be found from the northernmost jungles to the barren tundras of the south. Only the seas themselves remain safe from these strange beings, and even they are being steadily prodded and explored. The typical human culture revolves around a nuclear family unit, a mated man and woman who together rear a brood of one to five offspring. Multiple families can form a tribe led by a patriarch or chieftain, and especially large coalitions of human families can form complex hierarchies led by monarchs or democracies. Some human empires can grow quite large and powerful... As a species, humans have no particular affinity for lumuoles. Some societies, however, are descended from daring (or sometimes incredibly stupid) individuals who somehow incorporated lumuoles into their bodies, passing down anomalous traits to their offspring and granting the gift of magic to their culture. Human societies lacking magical progenitors must rely on their wits to incorporate lumuoles into technology, or else do without magic altogether. Dromeans (Ethnoraptor diaemi) Before those no-good primates were shuttled here, Diaemus' dominant overworlders were the Dromeans. Anatomically modern Dromeans appeared roughly a million years ago, evolved to specialize in the cleverness that makes dromeosaurs successful all over Diaemus. Their craniums are slightly larger to cultivate large and complex brains, with the result being that the child stage of the species is longer and more arduous for the parents than in other raptors. Hatchlings must be allowed to grow from barely sentient lizards to intelligent and high-functioning adults, which takes a little over a decade. It is the necessity for intensive child-rearing that first began drawing packs of Dromeans together. While non-sapient raptors tend to be aggressive and highly territorial, Dromeans have become cooperative. Their society tends to revolve around pack units consisting of an alpha male and female, with grown offspring that help rear younger hatchlings. Packs can congregate together in a similar fashion to humans, forming fierce coalitions that will pool resources, share intellectual findings, and fight together when necessary. Dromeans possess three fingers on each hand, one opposable to the others. They are equipped with long and razor-sharp claws, which must be filed down to not impede the dextrous manipulation of items. A sturdy scratching post is an important centerpiece in any civilized Dromean household, and only the crazed ferals of the deep jungles leave their claws as long and lethal as nature intended. The primary obstacle for Dromean colonization is not in temperature or biome preference, as their feathered coats can protect them from the cold and their bodies can easily adapt to new germs or conditions. Rather, it is their status as obligate carnivores that makes things difficult for them. Omnivores like humans can eat just about everything under the sun. Dromeans are a step below the great tyrant-lizards as apex predators, and require extremely plentiful numbers of large prey animals in order to sustain their communities. In some harsh regions, pastoral Dromeans can rear the meat they need to survive. The majority, however, stick to temperate and tropical regions that are flush with large game. More innately magical than humans, Dromeans have almost universally evolved the ability to assimilate lumuoles into their bodies. By eating a diet rich in the microorganisms, lumuole colonies can develop practically anywhere in the Dromean body, allowing for fantastic feats of magic. As communities are rarely segregated by class and thus usually consume the same foods, this has the tendency to create entire cultures centered around systems of magic uniquely suited to their habitat and region. Rachnyx (Sofiarachnus spelaeus) The most ancient of Diaemus' dominant sapients are the Rachnyx, giant spider-like creaturess that dwell not on the surface but in the hollow cavities sprinkled throughout the crust. They are the smallest of the three major races, standing scarcely a meter high when pulled to full height. Nonetheless, they are among the most dangerous of them all. A Rachnyx stands on four thick legs, using its foremost pair to feel the path in front of it and the intermediate pair as multi-fingered manipulatory appendages. The hands have four main digits and two extras in opposition to the primary digits as well as each other. The wrists are often bloated with nerve ganglions that make the fine weaving of silk webs an almost purely mechanical process. As a general rule the Rachnyx have a poor sense of sight, as evidenced by the front pair of feelers, but the Rachnyx are arguably Diaemus' most innately variable race. Their earliest ancestors have been traced back four million years, and there are many subspecies that have come about since them. All have evolved for millennia in symbiosis with colonies of lumuoles spread throughout the abdoment, giving the Rachnyx access to the most streamlined, efficient magic systems on Diaemus. Common abilities include the production of silk with radically improved tensile strength and venom with heightened potency, but ESP and even dramatic powers of elemental control are well within the limits of Rachnyx parabiology. Originally, the Rachnyx and all their subspecies appeared to be solitary predators with no language, culture, or civilization, dwelling entirely in the vibrant caverns deep underneath the surface. Their opposable digits appear to have evolved for weaving huge and mindbogglingly complex web systems throughout the caves. Their minds developed to enhance the efficiency of their labors, and seem especially geared towards memorizing the movements of hundreds of individual prey animals and calculating long-range statistics. Rachnyx at this stage in their development would usually eat any others that entered their territories, even if those others were their own offspring. The details of the modern Rachnyx's evolution are sketchy, but it appears that a period of geologic instability roughly ten thousand years ago caused enormous ecological damage in the subterranean caverns. Thousands of Rachnyx starved, and the survivors were forced to conglomerate into loosely bound societies in order to cooperatively hunt what prey remained. The social systems they came up with either ended with one enormous, very well fed Rachnyx sitting among the remains of the others, or in successful constructs that are still around today. Nowadays there are Rachnyx living in almost every way imaginable. Some live in eusocial colonies akin to ant nests or bee hives. Some have built sprawling underground cities. Some have even taken to slowly colonizing the surface world. A pregnant mother Rachnyx gives birth to thousands of live young, each about as large as a common house spider. Parental care was once non-existent, and close individual care like in human and Dromean socities is impossible, but some Rachnyx colonies have taken to feeding prey animals and foreigners to swarms of their young offspring. The Rachnyx are everywhere, just under your feet. Some are no more malevolent than the worms in the soil. Some are as sage and learned as the wisest scholar. Some are hordes of violent conquerors that could convert entire cities into tightly crammed slaughterhouses. They are not vertebrates, and they seldom follow the rules of conduct that vertebrates take for granted. They are so innately magical that the conventional laws of physics might as well not apply to them. If you have reason to meet with Rachnyx, expect the unexpectable.

My mind is already racing with potential applications of blue lumuoles in regards to ice. Let me know if any of these are too far out: Changing the temperature and state of matter of quantities of water, allowing for the easy sculpting of ice or, for a sufficiently clever society, cheap and easy steam power. Drastically slowing the melting rate of ice in a similar way to pykrete; even better if ice could be rendered completely unmeltable or if steam could be made completely uncondensable. Again, the potential for hydro power could be almost limitless. OH MY GOSH UNMELTABLE ICE CASTLES WITH COMPLEX MECHANISMS CONTROLLING DOORS AND DRAWBRIDGES. CLOCKWORK AND GEARS MADE OF ICE. What would it take to manipulate blizzards and avalanches with blue lumuoles, I wonder? Could make for a nasty surprise to anyone who tries climbing the mountain with malicious intentions... Last but not least: what would happen if you froze a living brain in ice with the right mixture of blue and green lumuoles? After centuries of trial and error, could you figure out how to create a living snowman with an organic brain? I'm getting carried away. Somebody stop me.

Just a thought--I was planning on making my tundra-mountain raptors a fairly scholarly bunch, possibly with a few monasteries sprinkled around the mountain range. If blue lumuoles are associated with water, could they allow entities to form an affinity with ice or snow as well?