Mckeedee123

Well, yeah. Imean, I always imagined them as microorganisms too, just colonies of them, like specks on a petri dish floating and whizzing around.

My visual anchor was fireflies. They'd have been little dust specks floating around in the air and glowing.

Oh. Now I see why you did the biology the way you did. Um... The entire point of the current model is that it can be structured however people want it to be. If the whole thing is too rigid (and I'm not just talking about "hotspots" here. The whole Spirit thing especially is best left vague) the world will end up looking pretty similar. And Honey Badger... wait, what? Where did you... yes, you haven't really been imagining it wrong. The way you described is basically the way I was imagining the average ecosystem to work... I think? I guess that everybody got off on a different tangent somewhere in the magic system discussion, based on how many different ideas there are on how it works. It probably stems from the fact that the first model was poorly described, and I'm not sure what to do about it. The basic idea is this: aside from a few errors we've seen in how people visualize lumuoles (Winter, for example,) everybody's right! Lumuole spawning works however you want it to in your region. I've tried stating this multiple times, because based on how many ideas people have gotten about how it works, any other way would stifle our creativity. I'm pretty sure Kobold and Badge were actually describing different things, but I hope that answers both of you as to why I think we need it this way.

Looks good to me. I have no objections.

Ah. I misread you request for information as a request for a picture. :/ Well, in the wild, you can think of Snifflers as burrowing grazers, like rabbits. Wild varieties have long claws and shorter snouts. They life in deep group burrows in hutches of 12-15 members, venturing aboveground to forage and graze. Their trunks help them both eat without having to let their guard down towards the small, saurian carnivores that prey on them, and allow them to carry bundles of grass back to the burrows to sustain females whose eggs hatched recently. The claws of domesticated populations have shrunk down into vestigial structures, preventing them from burrowing or attacking handlers, and this allows people to keep them in different ways. In my region, farmers build small, wooden hutches aboveground that allow them to access the animal products through various doors. The more common way though, I think, would be basic herding (though caring for fertilized eggs would be an issue, obviously.) As for lumuoles, yeah. The word refers both to the microorganisms that make up the colonies and the tiny portals that feed them. A single colony will subsist off of a single portal, and the whole thing is about the size of... a piece of dandruff, maybe? Anyway, it would vary slightly, which strengthens that comparison. On the question of Lumures, yeah, bugs are too big, but if you don't care about specs on the creature, you could have it be a sort of floating rotifer that mimics lumuoles instead of attaching itself to them. Also, I'm not too hot on the "causing inevitable death" thing. Could you have them be either be highly regionalized or simply causing sickness? Okay, finally (I'm using my phone, and therefore cannot use "Enter," which is why this is just a big block of text) there's hotspots. Hotspot distribution is pretty much whatever whoever's making the region in question wants it to be. Yes, the type of lumuoles who spawn in different hotspots can be the same or different, because (if we subscribe to Curiosity's model) it's different layers of the spiritual plane spawning different energy portals. one hotspot might have all reds, another might have 15% green, 70% blue, and 15% white. Some might be big, some might be small. Some might be weak, some might be strong. In some regions, there aren't really traditional hotspots and instead the portals can be willed into existence through biological processes. Anything you could possibly think of. Oh, wait, three more things to add: one, Winter, did you happen to imagine the Dromeans as four-legged? I got the impression they were two-legged, like raptors. Two, good point (whoever it was,) water's state has to do with density, not temperature (darn it, Avatar, you got me all messed up.) Do we want to go with temperature manipulation anyway? Three, I think we'ved moved on from the original lumuole model to one where creatures (except demigods) use biological processes to control the lumuoles themselves instead of some sort of magical "residue." Kob, do you want to edit that in the TDP OP?

I don't suppose we actually even need a subforum, or even multiple pages. :/ If Kobold is willing, we could probably just use the OP as our library.

That's pretty long. How did you write it so quic...? You know what? Nevermind. I don't really care what we end up doing, but I might as well throw in my idea of what human/non-human interactions would have looked like, historically, and what I've been basing my region on. So we have the arrival of humans at about 12,000 BCE (with the premodern era that we consider to be the present to be around 1,000 CE.) Early humans are, of course, outcompeted by Dromean groups in most areas, but the two species are able to coexist because while Dromeans tend to feed off of medium-sized terrestrial herbivores and their own herds of animals, humans stick primarily to plants and carrion (as historians seem to think that the earliest human societies did.) Human settlements attract small, omnivorous dromeosaurs which are slowly bred into raptids (a movement that I would consider to be analogous to the domestication of the dog.) Within a thousand years or so, humans have spread to occupy almost every corner of the main continent. These humans would primarily identify with the tribe rather than with the concept of "humanity," and population movements would be very similar to those on earth, ie. more advanced groups would grow and outcompete other groups, and over long-ish periods of time, language groups and races spread over each other on the continent through population expansion. Some human groups develop hunting techniques and weapons advanced enough that they can go after megafauna even the Dromeans avoid hunting, and in some places, they simply outcompete the reptilian race, their 5-fingered dexterity being more valuable than saurians' strength and natural arsenal. I'm placing this period as starting at 11,000 BCE and ending in some areas as early as 9,000 BCE. In others, it's still going on. Example: In the Emeezim region (where the Torbud Empire is,) the tall, medium-skinned Taiviev had lived disparately alongside Dromean hunters since the first human migrations. At around 9,500 BCE, however, lighter-skinned, large-nosed Emzimite societies expanded from out of the highlands with atlatls and advanced spearpoints, and displaced many of the Taiviev tribes as their population grew. Most of the Dromeans were also driven away by these groups. Nowadays, the region is racially and linguistically Emzimite with a few Taiviev holdouts living in the northern areas. With the development of agriculture (kicked off by some sort of climate change and starting as early as 9,000 BCE in some areas) humans really did become more formidable than Dromeans. Dromeans had always been limited by their need for meat, but humans could farm plants instead of just animals, leading to massive population explosions. Walls and professional militaries also made humans more formidable in areas suitable for agriculture. Even in places where growing plants was difficult, humans often became pastoralists, possessing horses, which enabled them to stand their ground against Dromean attack. Of course, this didn't happen everywhere, but in many places the balance of power was tipped. Also, in the period we witness the first ascended humans giving birth to demigods, and these spirits could assist the human race. Example: In the Emeezim region, human foragers sort of begin cultivating the Abab Tree for its starchy tubers to supplement a diet based on an environment that has become less productive in the face of temporary climate changes. The fire spirit Termid is created, and he modifies the emrunath plant to make it a suitable agricultural crop. Agriculture begins in earnest and prehistorical human towns grow along rivers over a period of 6,000 years. These city-states push pastoralists out as they take more and more farmland for themselves. Snifflers and Shupaks are domesticated, and the Termidine bloodline begins to rule over human society. Civilizations arise, the first appearing about 3,000 BCE. Dromean "civilizations" had existed before, but they really take shape here as they defend territories to graze and hunt in. In some areas, Dromeans dominate. In others, humans shove the lizards out. Bronze metallurgy is adopted and the first empires arise. Humans establish dominance over the environment. Epidemic diseases ravage human populations, but remain local to specific centers of agriculture. I'd say this era continues until around 0 CE, with iron metallurgy taking root at around 1,000 BCE. Example: The settlements along the Aums River give way to the First Torbud Empire. Over the course of the next few centuries, it uses military dominance to establish control over the entire region. Culture flourishes, and slowly homogenizes until the Ritsu language and societal structure stretch across the entire region. Some pastoralist Dromeans are allowed to return in exchange for paying taxes and whatnot. Carnivorous megafauna are driven extinct in the Emeezim region. Disease pool homogenization. Increased trade and expanding political groups bring human diseases from one side of the continent to the other. The human population actually decreases, and many human empires experience instability, but the contacts lead to relatively rapid technological growth. By 1,000 CE, the functional "present," technology can be considered premodern (Earth 1,500's-ish?), with steel being relatively common. Example: The Torbud Empire is weakened by disease and civil war, and Sesset tribes migrate in and turn the prosperous region into a series of warring city-states. By 700 CE, the region is reunited and enters an era of prosperity. So there. Now, this model of history sort of ignores the other two races (this is mostly just for agricultural human societies, after all,) but the assumption is that they'd follow similar patterns in order to counter the human power shift. Dromeans in certain areas would have to band together to prevent themselves from being displaced, and the Rachnyx would respond by... doing whatever the heck Rachnyx do (those guys are wierd.) I look at it this way because I try to see everything in terms of historical precedents. This was the underlying pattern of human history from 10,000 BCE onwards, and so I'm pretty sure it would be repeated in Diaemus, just with velociraptors and giant spiders and T-rex's running around.

I thought they were brought to the planet by aliens or... something. Did I miss something? Either way, I'm sort of apprehensive about this because I imagined humans as having a short (2,000 year-ish minimum) history of being hunter-gatherers before they picked up the plow. This would allow for the establishment of races and ethnicities and languages and whatnot.

Is this supposed to be a new idea or a compilation what we've come up with so far?

I don't think that we really need a special thread for magic. As far as I can tell, everything we have to say about magic (and maps) could be stated in the OP of this thread. Here are some threads we probably do need if we're doing this, though: Diaemus- Biology (already up. This would cover the plants and animals of the world, as well as the biology and basic culture of the sapient races. I'd suggest structuring it by putting all sapient races in the OP and then having each region have its own post for all climate, flora, and fauna info.) Diaemus- Societies (This is where people would post about the culture, composition, and history of their societies. The OP would contain a very basic history of Diaemus, and then each region would have its own post for... well, the culture, composition, and history of it and its societies Diaemus- Stories (This is where people would post the lore of the world... not sure if it's really necessary, but we have written quite a bit of it so far...) The Diaemus Project (The equivalent of Questions Threads in RP's. This is where people would notify others about edits and new content in their projects, and is where all of the discussion would take place (including questions, requests for help, fishing for compliments, etc.) The OP would contain the maps and basic info, like races and the magic system.) Dinosaurs are cool. 'Nuff said. Not very many megafauna continue to exist in my Mediterranean climate zone (most were driven extinct by millennia of human dominance) but the few that do are either herbivorous dinosaurs or ground sloths. I'm on board with the whole dinosaur thing, is what I'm trying to say. It's difficult to imagine human history without horses, though, which is why I've been assuming that they exist in Diaemus. I guess cavalry mounted on terrorbirds is not out of the question... I've also been assuming that chickens don't exist, but I did invent a dromeosaur called a Raptid. These would have been tiny pack hunters domesticated early on by humans. Raptids would fulfill all functions performed by dogs in our society. They could be used as guard animals, pest control, hunters, or just simple companionship. Naturally, their eyes would have become bigger and "cuter," and their coats would have become fluffier and taken on a huge variety of shapes and sizes due to artificial selection. Here's a picture I "drew":

I'm no artist, so I'll just give you this:

Depends on how many characters you have and whether or not you actually want to read through the Questions thread. You could probably get by on about an hour a week if you only have one guy to write for.

You think anyone wants to interact with Timeport?

I imagined it being the former, but Kobold's creatures made me realize that there were a lot of different ways to look at this. It depends on how they spawn in each region, but basically, lumuoles die a few weeks after being removed from their hotspot, and then the portal disappears. Some animals can keep them alive longer, but humans can't. Animals and most sapients use them as a renewable energy source, using chemical or neural signals to control how the lumuoles behave. Humans (and all demigods, regardless of species,) do use them up, however, and the rate of decay depends on how much magic is being done. Use imgur or photobucket. You just copy/paste it into the image upload thing and then you get the url for it.

For all intents and purposes, they don't exist. That's how invisible they are.

That still seems a little too nice... you sure we can't use poisoned vegemite instead?

I've been working off of a close mirror of human society so far. Humans arrived about 13,000 years ago Agriculture was developed in some areas about 11,000 years ago Complex societies appeared around 4,000 years ago, along with bronzeworking and the domestication and increase in size of the horse. Horses allowed nomadic humans to outcompete Dromeans in many areas and really begin spreading. The iron age started about 2,000 years ago Disease pool homogenization weakened human civilizations around 1,500 years ago, leading to the collapse of many empires States begin recentralizing around 500 years ago.

You'd have to have a pretty compelling reason why they have advanced metalworking techniques but still chose not to take up food production. Hunter-Gatherers can't really carry around a whole lot of stuff, and the tools required for working anything other than copper are pretty heavy

Is that a thing? I only get one spot? I'm currently working on a pretty comprehensive description of the coastal mediterranean climate region, as well as the section of steppe above it. I do, however, also have plans for the general settlement patterns of the islands, and some ideas for how to set up a large archipelago. I'd love to have two areas to work with, but I'd keep the one I have currently over the island one if it came down to it.

Are you planning to do any islands?

Every time I type in the word "pyromancer," I get a mental of image of some guy taking a pastry in a wig out on a dinner date.

I started with made-up words, but then I got stuck and just grabbed a list of random Basque words to tweak whenever I needed a new name for something. It looks pretty good, but I'm sure that if there are any Basque speakers out there, they'd think it was pretty funny that the word for "flatbread" is being used to denote a class of ceremonial swords.

Oh, really? Well tell me next time you want to give an MEE character a perspective.

Ooooh I don't even want to know what coffee would do to me. Even a can of caffeinated soda keeps me up til three. Two cans will keep me awake and alert for 2 days straight.

At this rate, they'll have posted the entire book online by the time it comes out