Though I failed to maintain #dungeon23, I am back again to attempt a daily rpg creation challenge. #lore24 is a challenge where you write up some worldbuilding for a setting, new or old. This seems much better suited to me for a daily challange, as bits of lore don't have to connect directly to previous bits, can vary in kind so they aren't all rooms (like #dungeon23) but can vary from places and items to factions and people.
This is made for the same world I've been making fantasy creatures for in some of my previous posts.
So, here's a summary of januari (not formatted by date, because some ideas got several days of attention):
- Dwarven ruins located in an inhospitable wasteland with no signs of any life. This huge fallen metropolis ran out of oil which was the foundation of their food source. Now only a ghost town remains.
- Elven oracles store information for the community in their bodies while locked away in sterile vaults. Body parts are send in after sterilization to add to the corpus of knowledge. They send out knowledge through their own bodyparts whenever circumstances force the elves to merge and lose their individual knowledge.
- Goblin are invasive fungi which infect you through ingestion. To procreate Goblins have to get you to consume spores. The early stages of infection are erratic, causing stereotypical goblin behaviour. Their are various kinds of Goblin, each with different signs of infection, behavioural disprution during onset, and fruiting bodies. Many goblin bodies die as they fruit, but some mature into fungal-animal hybrids in which the fungus maintains stable control. These are often so different in their behaviour to the early stage 'goblin' that they gain different names, such as bugbears and hobs. Due to this parasitic nature of Goblin fungi, few people tolerate them as close neighbours. Often, they are seen as a scourge by and actively hunted. However, sovereigns have many times formed tennous alliances with goblin folk to destroy common enemies, with the promis of a goblin enclave and a stock of host bodies as a common part of the deal. (Inspired by goblinpunch goblins from this post and this Ze Frank video)
- Burster goblins target humans and halflings. Initial infection causes emotions to become extremely intens and shift suddenly. Memory and personality otherwise remain intact during this phase. Over the course of infection the host loses weight and becomes more and more restless until their original personality completely disappears. At the same time, collective memories surface in the mind of Goblin: work together with your kind or suffer like the others who chose solitude, capture halflings and humans alive to secure our future. Around this time the fungus has started to make spores in the belly, causing it to swell while the rest of their bodies have become gaunt. Their name comes from the endstage of infection: once their host body has become to weak to continue carrying them, their bellies burst open, flinging spores everywhere with the hope of infecting as much food as possible. Even before this final stage is reached do sharp attacks against the creature cause its belly to burst and spores to cover its assailant, with the hope of contaminating their food.
- Bugbears target humans exclusively, preferably human children, which they raise as their own once the stages of infection have been completed. Once infected the hosts lose all inhibition and decorum. As infection progresses, lims and ears elongate, hair starts falling out, and hosts become increasingly sensitive to sound. The final stage of infection causes 'hairs' to cover the body. These contain spores that drop when the bugbear scratches itself. Only at this stage does a new personality develop, which remembers the hosts life only as a faint nightmare they are glad to have woken up from, looking back on their "goblin phase" as embarassing adolesance. Their intelligence is similar to that of their host. (Inspired by the folklore bugbear which kidnaps children according to wikipedia)
- Perching goblins infect elves and orcs (which are basically elves). Because elves only merge once every few hundred years (or even less often if possible), the spores remain dormant in still water, infecting elves who drink it. There is little to no sign of infection of these elves right up until they prepare for merger. When elves liquify for fission or merger the fungus releases pheromones which cause rapid fungal growth in another infected elf. This rapidly deforming elf does not liquify and instead tries to get high, settles in place and starts to fruit a mushroon. If the timing is forgunate for the Goblin, their spores rain down on the merged elves, infecting the whole lot of them. From now on, the fungus enters a different stage. The elves which emerge from infected merger have increased aggression and decreased empathy and selfreflection, as well as false memories of being slighted by their neighbours. The result is almost always a sudden, brutal war the corrupted elves almost always lose. As they bleed out on the battlefields, their blood infects water where the spores lie dormant for future infection.
- When dormant spores of perching goblins manage to infect an orc broodmother, she starts to release pheremones as well. If an infected elf is near, this will trigger a similar perching behaviour as it does when elves merge. Only after active spores make it into the broodmother, she mass produces corrupted orces (same as corrupted elves), causing her to die.
- Garment goblins target warmblooded animals. They infect hosts by barfing food in their mouth, after which they consume the body beneath the skin almost entirely. With incredible speed, these goblins are able to alter their mass distribution, allowing them to i) wear the skin of their hosts much like those originally would and using their abilities accordingly, ii) take on a bipedal form wearing their host skin more like an ill fitting suit, and iii) anything in between these two forms. Though these goblins can technically infect humans and halflings, most of their communities found it not worth the retaliation humans and halflings tend to inflict upon them. Also, compared to flying herons, strong bears, and swift deer, humans and halflings are kind of boring. (Clearly inspired by the Boy and the Heron).
- Stone goblins infect dwarfs through contaminated wood. Like garment goblins, they quickly kill their host, hollowing out the dwarfs body as their fungal body develops, leaving a stone shell to cover their soft bodies, which shrivel away in sunlight. They require warmth to grow and reproduce, which they do not produce themselves, causing them to capture dwarfs and warmblooded creatures alive, and burn down camps and villages. They also hoard dead wood to build pyres and feed to captive dwarfs to keep them alive. When they rest, they cuddle captives as if their body pillows, using the body heat to grow in size or to produce spores as they sleep. As they infect the wood they feed their captives, they continuously have to find new warm bodies.
- A halfling village with a single mother queen. Folks living here seem normal enough, but have cult like tendencies to go to extremes for 'the greater good'.
- Griffins can sense gold because: i) they need to display strength to attract a mate and gold is covetted by powerful entities and groups, or ii) because they are the king of beasts and gold is the king of metals, or iii) maybe the queen of metals? Do griffins fuck gold to procreate? Or iv) do they eat it to make golden griffing eggs? Or v) do the males use gold to make nests to attract females like some paradise birds use blue? (This is all one day's entree. I've been tired a lot).
- A society of orcs that has deified their broodmother. Fancy ornamentation surrounds her. Feeding her is a huge ritual.
- A society of orcs that has depersonalised their broodmother, seeing it as a biofactory which produces orcs as long as you provide raw materials.
- A strain of Goblin that takes over the central nervous system by not the brain. Victims are like the victims in Get Out: only able to watch as their bodies are used by the fungus to erattically destroy everything around them with the goal of spreading spores.
- Elves make sentient objects by incorporating their own flesh into them, creating an object that is like a close of the they are themselves at the moment of creation.
- Dwarves make sentient objects by freeing them from the stone much the same way they free other dwarves, creating unique persons in object form.
- Gilly Reefwalker sells trinkets scavanged from sunken ships they reach by walking the seafloor in their submersion suit. They ask for compensation only because they know it is expected, though really they don't care for money. What they do want is for someone to listen to their stories: each recovered treasure a tale. Gilly doesn't stare out their wares. Potential customers ask what they have in store, upon which Gilly produces one item at a time, leasurely telling you the details of where they found it, what they think it is, etc. only proceeding to the next item once the story of one item is done. Interruption or attempts to hurry offend. Gilly would always rather nothing than sell something to someone who 'clearly has no real interest'.
- Gilly's treasures:
- Bottle covered in whisperpocks: stores one whispered message at a time.
- Treeshells: sound like wind through leaves when raised to one's ear.
- Horrorscope: Cracked telescope that shows the greates fear of whomever is looking.
- Leviathan line: Unbreakable wire.
- Messbell: all who hear it become incredibly hungry.
- Brinewine: loved by collecters, salty profile.
- Dimensional porthole: open the window and salt water comes pouring out.
- Rustlas: rusty cutlas, rusts away other metals on contact.
- Blood pearl: Cure against anemia, beloved by vampires.
- Tridentures: Trident carved from seemonster tooth, seeks flesh eagerly during combat.
- Cursed pegleg: All who touch it can only use salty language.
- Damp lantern: Only shines when wet.
- Calamity compas: points to where the nearest natural disaster will be.
- Sea idol: Mummified sea elf; contains memories of ancient sea elf society.
- Hag slime: apply to be super slippery and immune to magic.
- Wind catcher: Sack made of sails of the fastest ship in history. Can capture gusts to be stored and released later.
- Water resistant log: logbook of waterproof material. Half filled detailing a harrowing tale of a crew facing certain doom at sea.
- Sappin net: incredibly light, byt feels unbearably heavy to those trapped underneath.
- Gilly's shack is a patchwork mess of shipwrecks and driftwood. Closer to a midden than anything that could be called a house. When Gully is home they are either sorting through their posessions or working on diving equipment to get even further out into the water. Most of the time, however, Gilly is out hunting treasure or oily fish they use to make food from.
- A sunken island covered in ruins resurfaces, weird fish mosters attack the nearby shores. As it resurfaces a ship gets stranded on it. PCs are on it and have to fight their way off towards a smaller fishing vessle that ran aground closer to shore.
- The Academy of Dreams seek to maintain their independence through the hoarding of arcane knowledge. By maintaining their monopoly they hope to stay safe of persecution.
- The Hidden Coven aims to make life of commoners bearable, both now and in the future. Their cures are ruthlessly pragmatic, targetting the root cause. This makes them very impopular with those in power (who the coven often deems the root cause of a lot of suffering).
- The Joyous Knights wish to bring happiness to all and to eradicate sadness, no matter the cost.
- The Wilderness Wardens are sponsored by well meaning nobles to protect the status quo, while being a 'neutral' force for 'good'. Monstrous threats that upset the balance need to be eliminated.
- The local base of the Wilderness Wardens is a large hunting lodge. Walls of the main hall are crowded with hunting trophies of celebrated members.
- Wart Tongue Atris is senior warden at the lodge and overseens initiations. She is rumored to have tasted over a thousand different kinds of scat and can still describe each of them in nausiating vivid detail. Her knowledge of creatures is encyclopedic, but her specific interet means that no one voluntarily sits next to her during banquets more than once.
- Snake Eyed Jurgen is quartermaster at the lodge. His long canines, ashy skin, cold touch and titular snake eyes make him offputting to most the first time they meet him. He is also a very strict quartermaster, demanding good explanations for each item requested and his companion, Cane, helps him guard the stock closely. Really a big softy that just wants to do his job as good as possible. Quickly warms up to anyone who shows him kindness. (Coldblooded creatures heat up through external sources, it is weird we use it to describe someone who stays cold even when treated warm).
- Basper the Hidden Master is a halfling huntress using a spear. She greatly prefers the freedom of the outdoors, especially hard to reach places. To her, life is about proving yourself. This means so few people have ever seen her that descriptions vary wildly. Some suggest she is just a legend, or already dead. She stands short, even for a halfling, with hair clumped to her head, skin cracked like bark and a layer of insulating fat hiding her bulging muscles. When she isn't hunting, she listens to the gossip of local vegetation. Basper will only train those who prove themselves by completing some unreasonable request and show proper respect to plantlife. (This is meant to be a way PCs can do martial training in their downtime like described in this marizian's garden blogpost).
In Sum
I started with random ideas, tried to make some goblins which need some polishing before I make a dedicated post about them, got inspired to make a weird dwarven treasure hunter, which made me want to make a location I could put them in. If this focus on this one area remains I'd love to run a game in it some time. The funnel idea I had seems like it could be cool and gives incentive for the organisations to want to recruit these people: They know more about the weird island than anyone else.
