artiestroke

11 hours ago, Invocation said:

I never thought I'd see Homestuck content again. Violent clown flashbacks.

Yeah, I thought I was done with it too but man some of the recent content has just suckered me back in!

What with Homestuck have something of a Renaissance right now, I thought- hey, crossover?

I definitely put a bit more thought into the (mostly) main Homestuck cast on Roshar than the SBURB session of the primary Knights Radiant (plus Adolin), but I’ll include my thoughts on both here:

-John, Jane, and Jade are all in a Thaylen trading caravan. John is predominantly Herdazian with some Thaylen blood, Jane is mostly Thaylen, and Jade is also mostly Thaylen but has a bit of Horneater red to her hair. In the grand Herdazian tradition and so I don’t have to think about family trees too much, they all call each other cousin and I’m leaving it at that. Jane is training to be the next in charge of the trade caravan under the tutelage of Dads Egbert and Crocker, and is a fan of the conservative beauty of the Vorin havah. Jade is a wild woman and is as likely to remember to wear a glove on her safe hand as not. Both her and John are a source of constant shenanigans to their older cousin Jane.

-John is, unsurprisingly, a Windrunner- attracting the attention of an honorspren named Nana. I’m not making all the spren the kids’ sprites, but some are more fitting than other options.

-Jane is an Edgedancer with the surprisingly gruff cultivation spren who goes by Hegemonic (who despite his gruff exterior has some real “heart” if you catch my meaning. It’s Hearts Boxcars). Jane is none too pleased about being magic.

-Jade is a Bondsmith, as is fitting for the most powerful player in the Beta session. Seeing as how there’s a third godspren out there somewhere we don’t know about, I’ve decided to go with that untouched place and am currently flipping between Bec Noir or Bec Blanche as her spren.

-To complete the Egbert/Harley/Crocker/English family, Jake is a relative to them through Jade’s Horneater ancestry, and is alone out in the peaks somewhere, having a grand old time. Jake is a Willshaper- again not much is known about their powers but based on the name I’m currently assuming something to do with emotional control which seems thematic kind of to Hope as an aspect. AR/Hal is their spren and he’s a little insufferable.

-Over on the shattered plains, the Strider house is one of the minor noble houses fighting the war with the Parshendi. Dave and his half brother Dirk are both Brightlords, with Dirk representing the house with both plate and blade while Dave has just a blade. “Bro” is the man in charge of House Strider, with Dirk being his first kid before getting involved with the Lalondes.

-Speaking of, Mom Lalonde and her daughter Rose reside in Alethkar’s capital, Rose studying every bit of social science possible. Jasnah is most definitely her role model/gay awakening.

-Unbeknownst to the rest of them, Mom Lalonde has a tryst with a Reshi man and has a secret daughter and Rose’s secret half sister, Roxy. She’s living out on the isles doing sick Robin Hood crem dung.

-Dirk is a skybreaker, natch. His highspren, when he deems to talk to him, is Caliborn. He’s kind of a tool, which seems to be a thing for highspren.

-Dave is a Stoneward and TBH I don’t have too much reasoning behind this besides that I get the impression Stonewards are kind of big on defending folk if Talenel’s grit is anything to go by. His spren is a Vagabond of the Wayward sort.

-Rose is NOT a Lightweaver- she is actually a Truthwatcher, with Jaspers as her spren. Don’t worry, there’s a character with plenty of things to hide that’s the team Lightweaver later on.

Roxy is an Elsecaller, and in parallel with Dirk her Inkspren is Calliope! She’s very good at Soulcasting from seemingly nothing at all~

So those are the humans and they’re fine and good- but on the other side of the table (and the Parshendi war) we have some of the trolls- who are Parshendi!

-Karkat was a Parshman who awakened in the Everstorm- and boy does he have some Secrets he is keeping from the Listeners, making him the prime target for a bond from an incredibly angry liespren (Jack) Noir. He is for the most part staying in work form, but seems to be able to repress the repulsion to fight while in it- or at least he claims so.

-Kanaya is also an awakened Parshman and another edgedancer- I need a better name but her spren currently is just based on the Mother Grub. It might be a weird, corrupted spren? Could be interesting- anyways she’s hella gay and helps Rose escape Kholinar before the siege. She is full on war form and Rose finds it Incredibly Attractive.

-Vriska is from the Shattered Plains- and was one of the Parshendi to go storm form during the battle. She claims to be fine with what they did, but she’s really not. Very conflicted inner morals compounded by the arguments over the justification of it with her partner Terezi. Eventually she deserts around the time she bonds with an Ashspren named Snow who may or may not have some kind of spren royal countenance about her. Thusly, she is a Dustbringer.

-Speaking of Terezi, she is a nimble form seeker of justice who was definitely opposed to the whole storm form plan, and secreted away other Parshendi who were being rounded up. Her current placeholder Truthwatcher spren is Pyralspite- I seem to have developed kind of a theme of two parallel spren origins in each of these groups of four, so that’s something. 
 

-Not many of the other trolls are relevant, but in short order Aradia is another skybreaker bonded to Diamonds Droog- she is alive and she intends to stay that way. Sollux is with her and is like the third storming Truthwatcher wandering around, though his spren Clubs Deuce leaves much to be desired. Gamzee is a voidbringer bound to/possessed(?) by Doc Scratch.

And then on the OTHER side of the crossover...

I only really came up with god tiers for the main knights radiant (plus Adolin) and thinking of how the hell a session would go down with them is beyond me right now, but here goes:

-Kaladin is the Mage of Breath- he knows the price of freedom and sometimes suffers for his aspect, natch.

-Szeth is a Prince of Doom- he was beholden to rules before, but seems to be breaking them in the name of them now so that tracks

-Renarin is a Page of Light- lots of his issues stem from being unable to tap into his potential, absolute Page problems, and the future sight definitely fits with Light’s fortune

-Shallan is a Knight of Heart- she’s ABSOLUTELY got the Knight facade thing going on with Veil and Radiant, and soul splinters are yet another Heart issue.

-Lift is a Rogue of Life- she does the healy thing and the stealy thing but she doesn’t strike me as a total Thief, so Rogue.

-Dalinar is a Seer of Blood- bonds are Blood’s purview and his role as a dignitary right now is less combative and more informational.

-Jasnah is a Witch of Space- yet another classpect already taken by a canon character but... She’s Jasnah Kholin. Who am I to argue?

-Venli is a Maid of Mind- admittedly this was tougher, but I settled on it what with her arc seemingly now trying to clean up her past decisions, which fits.

-And finally, Adolin is... the Heir of Time. Why Time, you ask? Aside from being one of the absolute necessary 2 aspects present in a session, Time players are all described as fighters- always active in whatever their quest is. Alongside his other personal turmoil over his literal inheriting of leader of house Kholin eventually, so being the Heir of anything is something he has to deal with.

Anyways, I hope this provides someone with some entertainment, and I’d love to get a discussion going about either of these concepts!

1 hour ago, Wyndlerunner said:

So, If you've ever read The Wheel of Time, there's a character in there (Whom I shall not name, to avoid spoilers) who develops luck based abilities. The way Jordan wrote the story caused this character's luck to always aid in overall character development, but still land the character in tricky situations quite a bit. I think this was a great direction to take these powers, because it doesn't always get the character out of issues, but rather, gets them into issues which to be frank, they'd rather not be in.

1 hour ago, not an Evil Librarian said:

The luck doesn't work all the time. at the midpoint of the story, have the main character rely on her luck to solve a problem, and have her fail utterly. 

Perhaps this trait could be tied in with a character arch. for the first half of the story, she could rely on her luck to solve problems. at the midpoint, her luck fails her when it matters most. So for the rest of the story, she is trying to solve problems without taking any chances. during the third act, she could be put in a situation where she must rely on her luck once more. She could go from a character who always trusts the roll of the dice since, more often than not, the odds come up in her favor, to a character who is terrified of relying on luck. In the end, she must come to terms with the fact that sometimes she must rely on chance. 

Just a thought

(Edit) one of the most common and effective ways to take bad writing and making it work is to tie it in with the themes of the story. Shrek and One Punch Man are good examples of this. In Shrek, the protagonist is an oger who has lived a simple and lonely life and is suddenly forced out of it and into the world of fairy tale knights and princesses. so while crude humor is usually a big no-no in writing, it works for Shrek because of the crude humor ties into the story thematically.

One Punch Man is about an overpowered superhero who can defeat any enemy, no matter how powerful with just one punch. while overpowered protagonists are usually bad writing, the show is great because it is more about the protagonist's inner conflict. the main character is bored with life because he does not have any challenges or obstacles that he can't easily solve with a single punch.

These have actually given me an idea- specifically regarding the “the Luck fails” part of an arc- if it’s only her that is lucky, maybe having the cost of her being too reliant on it gets someone else hurt in her stead- a kind of wake up call that it’s not all about her

So one of my character’s magical quirks is being blessed with supernatural good fortune- but I fear straying too close to just writing her into Deus ex Machina after Deus ex Machina. For example- the opening scene that both features this ability and gets the party together involves her being chased into a broken down transportation hub by anti-magic raiders at just the right moment that our Main Protagonist is fiddling with a transportation hub near her own hometown, activating it and starting the plot. Is there a way to write Luck that doesn’t feel contrived?

7 hours ago, Hemalurgic Headshot said:

I've considered the plausibility of a skybound civilization before, and the economics of such a place is hard to justify. I've settled on two sources of income large enough to fund a nation with a very limited supply of resources: either they have access to a very rare luxury resource they can sell at a premium, or the entire government is entrenched in organized crime.

Though neither of these solutions provide literal material resources, they generate the capital necessary to import them. In the case of "rare luxury," the leylines might create some sort of natural phenomenon, a byproduct of the flow of magical energy through them. This phenomenon might manifest itself in magical creatures or a harvestable substance that then can be sold for a premium elsewhere. In the organized crime scenario, I suggest looking at Andy Weir's Artemis, which not only is a great read, but explains this with more realism than I will now.

However, there is a problem in the particular situation you have. The surface is a polluted wasteland. However, this does not mean that they are unpopulated. Despite being literally toxic, the surface does have something that the islands do not: resources in virtually infinite supply. Of course, surface wood is not as... well, healthy as the fabricated version the islands can create, but it is a heck-of-a-lot cheaper than transmutation. Even with shipping costs. Now, for political reasons, public knowledge of people living on the surface might not be the best thing, but a grounded (heh heh) resource base is what your islands need to survive.

You know, harvesting rock from quarries in the surface and scooping up ash to transmute both into useable goods does provide a certain worker aesthetic that goes with the sort of late 1800’s style I’m trying for (coal miner types and soot stained chimney sweeps and all that), so having a profession of folk who brave the surface for such things makes a lot of sense.

As for the second half, I absolutely do already have Plans (TM) Involving whoever may or may not have been left on the surface after those wealthy enough rode up on their islands in the sky 

I also suppose such limitations would also force a kind of culture where nothing goes to waste- anything not useable for goods off of organic things would go for composting and such, and things carved from wood would be a luxury as opposed to more easily transmuted mineral objects 

I've run into an interesting worldbuilding dilemma- the main setting is a gaslamp fantasy series of man-made floating islands, sailing along leylines to gather magical energy to do stuff with. One of the things this magic can do is transmute, similar to soulcasting, which helps a bit with the resource problem, but there's still a very finite source of material to transmute into needed goods- and the islands are in the sky to begin with is because man-made disasters choked the surface with smog and ash. How can these sky islands collect new resources without mining the ground out from under them for stone, or leeching the limited nutrients from whatever soil they have for wood?

1 hour ago, not an Evil Librarian said:

Earth does have a shard. 

  Hide contents

Calamity!

 

Awwwwwwwwww sparks

6 hours ago, Inky said:

Uh... in the form of a gas, liquid, or solid? Not sure what you mean here

Yeah basically what I meant was had anyone asked Sanderson, if Earth was hypothetically part of the Cosmere, what kind of magic system he might make for it. I didn’t know this information about the Rithmatist everyone else is mentioning in the thread- I think I’ll have to pick that book up once I’ve gottwn through Words of Radiance and Oathbringer 

Has anyone ever asked, hypothetically speaking, what form Investiture might take if it were on Earth?

2 hours ago, Weltall said:

Oh, and from an in-universe perspective you're looking at this backwards; there are sixteen metals because there are sixteen Shards.

Oh, I meant how the 16 metals fall into a pattern of the internal/external and pushing/pulling metals that, even with a few of the metals missing you could figure out what they’d do in allomancy. I felt like what the shards represent had some kind of grander pattern to it or something? 

4 hours ago, Steel Inquisitive said:

Out-of-world answer, Brandon picked the ones that sounded cool, would make an interesting story and interested him the most.

In-world answer, I theorize it had something to do with the vessels. If they had been different people things might have shaked out differently.

It also could have been complete randomness...

1 minute ago, RShara said:

That's just how Adonalsium happened to Shatter. He could have Shattered in a different way, but it turned out to be in this particular way.

 

Well that answers that, then. The out-of-world answer drives me absolutely feral though, I thought it would have been something a bit more... I guess mathematically elegant, like the sixteen metals 

Why specifically do the shards of Adonalsium embody those particular aspects? Are they supposed to be axiomatic aspects of the universe? Of people? What makes Ambition, Honor, and Odium a shard but not something like Apathy, Deception, or Ecstasy?

After developing a bit, I think I’ve got the solution- the MC will entrust the Adventurer with the secret that she’s been secretly studying magic, and proves her skill in it. Adventurer will go to the mom, explain her daughter is brilliant in this field, and on a more equal adult ground convince her to let the Adventurer hire her on so the MC’s talents don’t wilt out in the middle of nowhere with nothing to really challenge her. An offer of mentorship- the Obi-Wan to her Luke, except less Alec Guinness and more Ewan McGregor

19 minutes ago, Eagle of the Forest Path said:

Ok, how about the opposite of Pagliacci's question: What's keeping her in the town? She wants to leave, so why is she still there?
Now you can have a problem to overcome, instead of an action to justify.

The big thing keeping her in town is her mom- both pressuring her to stay emotionally and MC’s perceived responsibility to stay and not leave her to run the bar mostly alone

1 hour ago, Kureshi Ironclaw said:

What if she accidentally teleports herself away in the teleportation hub? From your description it seems like you already did that but brought her back to the town. You could just leave her stranded somewhere else.

Ah, no that’s not what happened- she just teleported the adventurer to her, not herself to the adventurer and then back.

23 minutes ago, Pagliacci said:

That's work. Though perhaps make it so that the Adventurer is reluctant at first but is convinced by the MC? Just to give her some more agency.

That’s a good point- I’m thinking now maybe the adventurer gives her like a secret test of character type thing before offering to hire her on. The MC does hide things from her mom that the adventurer picks up on because she was still conscious when magic happened, and probably does a “hey why are you lying to your folks?” Bit, where we get MC’s I Want moment 

20 minutes ago, Pagliacci said:

Why does the MC want to leave town? I'm just asking so I can help formulate an answer.

Much like why any young girl wants to leave their small town- feeling stuck in a place where nothing new happens and you already know everybody by name, staying with the family more out of obligation- plus a little bit of envy that she’s still stuck there when her dad’s been long gone and her brother went off to join the service of their relatively fresh country. She feels almost trapped there and chafes against that feeling. Maybe I could have the adventurer offer to hire her on?

Since going by the seat of my pants hasn’t worked so far, I’m trying to actively plot out and plan my story- and I’ve hit a snag in act one. 

Thus far, our main character is a young lady from a frontier town in a fantasy world, long after a magical apocalypse has occurred. She’s been secretly studying arcane devices in a building that was once a teleportation hub, learning to read the language of magic and make her own spells. An incident occurred where she activated one of the teleportation circles, which by happenstance saves the life of a more experienced adventurer as it whisks her away from a dead end battle in a corresponding hub. 

My problem comes with figuring out how to get my MC to leave town- I don’t want her to just lie to her mom or leave a note, running away with the adventurer. I’m also not keen on pulling an Aunt Beru and killing her/the town off. What can I do?

2 hours ago, Etherealness said:

That's half of the cosmere books 

By mass, I wouldn’t doubt it. Those audiobook files are absolutely massive X,D

I literally had to take a break at the halfway mark of Way of Kings because it was just so long. Finished up a bunch of the short stories, like Sixth of Dusk and Shadows for Silence, as well as the three Wax and Wayne books before coming back to it. Kaladin has it... particularly rough. And Shallan’s life choices so far leave me in a state of second-hand embarrassment a good chunk of the time. Kinda drains my emotions a little. I really enjoy the Dalinar/Adolin chapters tho.

4 hours ago, Nohadon said:

I was going for an Ocean's feel with some fantasy elements mixed in, what do you mean by tropey? I'm new to writing and I can't tell when I'm being cliche or falling into tropes. Could you elaborate?

The “Religious Country who thinks Magic is Evil” is the first one that really jumped at me- personally, I’m not a big fan of it, but sometimes it can still be done well and surprise me (Elantris being a prime example) 

I WOULD be cautious about making the antagonistic religious country also a mercantile state, as it could be taken as unintentionally anti-Semitic. Tread carefully, and just remember that no one culture is 100% homogenous. ATLA did a great job of having a whole country as an antagonistic force and still showing that individuals in the Fire Nation were still individuals, and not all of them happy with what’s going on. 

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The star afterwards has to be refilled by the master artificer, all the exhausted coins are sent back and redistributed into the economy every month, which has the continent's economy in a life cycle state, where items are more or less valuable depending on how close it is to the stars being refilled, the amount of stars still with that spark still around, etc.

Alright that makes sense- then is there a sort of subsidized income for the general populace? If you have to give your money back to the government to recharge it every, let’s say month, that would make it pretty darn impossible to actually save it up. Which ALSO has an interesting effect on our thieving crew here- they’ve got a serious time limit on how long that money is valuable to them before it becomes a liability- unless one of them can recharge it. Being able to recharge your own money in this setting feels almost vaguely like a parallel to counterfeiting, which could be interesting.

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I'm setting up the story as several parts. The first part is going to be the crew coming together, training and meeting each other. This will be expanding on the world and characters, the second part will be one big heist or maybe a couple of smaller heists (I don't know which is better, I'm leaning towards multiple heists instead to really set up how efficient the group is) And the third part is a cat and mouse style chase between Tallas Cav and the Crooked Cap which leads to a legitimate threat to the Crooked Cap's existence.

Do you mean that as in a three-act structure in one book, or three, separate stories that tie together? I’m assuming more the latter due to you saying short stories.

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Each continent needs to be primarily self-sustaining due to the giant war thats raging out around the world, I was thinking that there was a large trade network throughout Urial, between Uriu, the four other cities and the countryside towns, all working together and profiting from it on the side.

Trade within a country is a given, for sure- just keep in mind what exactly it is that each city has and lacks. Maybe something the country as a whole lacks which would motivate them to either find allies not working with Tavarean to trade, or also try to conquer some territory that has what they need. 

The ideas in the worldbuilding are interesting, if a bit tropey. I think where this really shines is in the characters and potential plot- so, the part that matters most in storytelling, I'd say. It's definitely an engaging, classical thieving crew- each person with a specialty to bring to the table, a regular Ocean's 8. 

I do have a question about the money, though- if it's only valuable because it holds a magical spark, and that spark fades out or is used, what happens to the coin afterward? Do you have to pay to get them refilled? Is it a Stormlight kind of situation where they'll still take it but give you dirty looks?

Back to the plot itself, what's the crew's big score? Their plan, the core part of this story? The characters are interesting, I want to know what exactly they're up to- is it more of a serialized thing, like Lupin III and Zenigata or Sly Cooper and Carmelita Fox? Or is this a standalone, one-time, one-shot, big-time heist? 

There's a lot of info in the worldbuilding, but most of it seems to be stuff happening leagues away from the core of this particular story- this is fine, but seems less important since the focus seems to be on Urial. It's like- in the original Mistborn, there were other cities offhandedly mentioned, sure, and we later find out more about the world in Era 2- but it's not quite relevant to the story of Kelsier robbing the Lord Ruler, so there wasn't much of a need to focus on it at the time. I'd definitely say focus on developing Urial and Uriu itself. Keep in mind certain things as to why countries form like they do- capital cities, more often than not, end up that way due to being a central location for trade/have easy access to quicker methods of travel, like rivers and coasts. If a city is big and relatively modern enough, it's going to need a lot of resources pouring in to feed the populace. At least one valuable the city produces (things like mines, lumber, wool, etc) for trade and one staple local food resource (arable farmland, sea life, rice fields, etc) would be a good start to creating a basis for the working culture there- bring it to it's logical conclusion. 

5 hours ago, Karger said:

You could just use the word spelling or incantating.  You could translate a word from another language like the Latin carmen which means something similar.

I think I’ve finally settle on Scripturgy as the name of the magic, and Scripturgist as a practitioner- Latin is so useful 

3 hours ago, Wander89 said:

Welcome to the Shard! Stormlight is such a huge undertaking that I can only imagine the influence it has had. Have you tried Rithmatist, Legion or Snapshot? You mentioned Reckoners but I feel that these 3 short books are such great stories that they cannot be missed!

I haven’t yet- I’m hoping to catch up on the rest of Stormlight before tackling other works- but I’ll definitely be checking all of those out eventually! I’m thinking of reading Skyward next, sci-fi pilot stuff is my jam!

15 minutes ago, Karger said:

Why not say that the actual pronunciation of the method has been lost along with the language.  As such the method could have a verity to names depending on what people use it for and how they use it. 

Mostly because, due to the loss of the verbal component, the magic really only “works” in one way- find a valid phrase (kind of like awakening except written), carve it onto an item, channel ambient energy either through yourself (dangerous) or through a stored battery (safer) to produce the spell effect. I’m just looking for a name that carries the concept of “writing down magic words” in a more elegant package. Figuring out one name is hard enough X,D

On 11/10/2018 at 0:41 PM, Quantus said:

It kind of depends, How do you want to name each of the four subcategories.  Bending is nice because it naturally fits slapping the element on the front while standing alone as a generic term for all for four, while Bending in particular because it's used as a verb and evokes a sense of externally warping something already there.  But my point is that you need to find a fitting set of Five names.

 

As @kaellok said, what you use will depend a lot on how you want the magic to be viewed in context.  So a fundamental question might be whether you want it to be a Verb which characterizes the action of using the magic, or a Noun that characterizes the user of the magic. For example: Are your people described as Using Lashings or Being Windrunners?  Or is it all just Awakeners doing Awakening?

 

That being said, here's a random suggestion.  Since your talking about the four scientific fundamental forces I went with more academic than mysticism:

Call the Magic force Impetus, call a generic user a Conatus, but with more colloquial names for people who use each one, possibly with a second set of names/titles for those that can use combinations, all very descriptive of their flavors of abilities.  Very Metallic arts in concept

Gravity = Attractors (slang: Pullers, Crushers, etc)

Electromagnetism = Oscillators (Slang: pulsers, zappers, Ringers, etc)

Weak and Strong = ??? (Depends on the sorts of visible abilities each will manifest)

 

 

Honestly, all of this. I remember Brandon saying somewhere (I think it was a Writing Excuses episode) that most of his in-universe magic system words came from combining two descriptor words, so that's also a good place to start- though my first thought was combining physics with magician to make "physician" so it might do to put more thought into it XD

So, you've got yourself a wand, yeah? Nice magically reactive wood for the main "barrel" of it, with a fine metal chamber housing gems with various spells programmed into them. You spin the chamber to the spell you want, thumb the activation rune on top of the grip, and fire. Maybe have a finger ring mounted on the bottom to help prevent disarming. Personally, I'd probably load it up with some kind of energy blasting spell, point-and-click teleportation, a conjurable blade attachment for when I've got to mix it up in melee, a force shield, lighter attachment, and a flashlight spell.

Mostly I just love the aesthetic of "wands wielded like pistols"