#dungeons and dragons worldbuilding

[zapperman26]

Dungeon Master's 10-Step Guide to Worldbuilding 

Dungeon Master's 10-Step Guide to Worldbuilding 

When it comes to being the Dungeon Master while playing Dungeons and Dragons, one of the most intimidating parts is how you go about crafting the world. The process of creating a diverse setting, NPCs, antagonists, and gods can seem like a lot to tackle, especially if it's your first time DMing. To help new and old Dungeon Masters alike tackle the daunting task of world-building for your Dungeons and Dragons campaign, here are Ten Steps to make engaging you and your players fun, easy, and effective. 

STEP 1: Read the Dungeon Master’s Guide. 

It is a bold move for a blog to start with “read something else,” but it is warranted here. The official Wizards of the Coast Dungeon Master’s Guide (5E, but any edition works) contains, among other things, many tips and tricks for crafting a solid campaign setting, grand world, and striking multiverse. It is a godsend for a beginner DM trying to wrap their head around the specifics of what a setting would need, and it offers a lot of practical insight into how your world should intersect with your player's play style and preferences. 

For example, the first few chapters of the 5E Dungeon Masters guide discuss not just how to tailor make your campaign to your player's tastes but how to craft gods and unique faiths, developing locations (with all sorts of details to think about like scale, commerce, governments, etc.), factions, magic systems, inciting events and much MUCH more! It is a must for DM, but where do you get it?

The book is reasonably straightforward to find for free online (such as the Internet Archive), but it can also be easily acquired from any bookstore, hobby shop, or major retailer. Many mom-and-pop bookstores sell used copies at reduced prices and in excellent condition. 

Overall, the Dungeon Master’s Guide offers a lot of well-written, nitty-gritty advice to help you craft a setting and would be an excellent place to start for advice. In contrast, the meat and potatoes of this blog are more concerned with the macro craft of world-building, offering the broad strokes of the best approaches to save time, reduce the anxieties of the daunting task of world-building, and make your role-playing sessions more memorable. How do you start this? By setting the scope of your campaign. 

STEP 2: Set the Scope of your Campaign

A good trick when outlining your worldbuilding is understanding how broad its scope is. Is your campaign just a one-shot? Is it going to be a handful of sessions? A multi-month, even multi-year campaign? How many players do you have? What level do you plan to start your players on, and when do you plan to cut them off (if at all)? While seemingly unrelated to making a world for a role-playing game, all these questions offer an excellent framework for designing the world and how much you’ll need at a given time. 

For example, a one-shot, which is literally just a session or two long, will not necessarily require your players to traverse many drastically different townships, cities, and civilizations like a multi-month or year campaign might, so temper your focus to accommodate that scope. A one-shot set in one or two story-rich towns will be more rewarding for you and your players than a vast world that will remain unexplored in any meaningful way. On the flip side, a multi-year campaign set to traverse all sorts of locations necessitates a more expansively planned world that could fill out such an extensive duration of time and, therefore, be worth the effort in the first place. In either scenario, another critical factor is how many players there are and what level you intend them to be at.

The number of players and the general level of the party are also significant to know when going in. A handful of level one characters, compared to level five or twelve, will require different challenges that scale with their power level, and the setting they inhabit must reflect that difference. A few level one players are best set upon by bandits or wolves on the road, while a level ten party of the same number can tackle an Aboelth and its cult or even a Dragon in its lair! With that specific level of power, your players kept in mind, you can craft your setting to accommodate the level of danger they would face without it coming off as jarring. For example, a village facing a kobold problem sounds like a perfect starting point for a campaign of early-level players (of any duration of time), while a capital city besieged by demons is either best suited for the middle or the end of a campaign for higher level players; or the inciting incident of a high-level campaign. 

In any case, understanding the scope of your campaign and the amount of firepower your players have (in level and numbers) is just as essential when crafting the setting you wish them to inhabit. 

Now that you have a good idea of the campaign's length and your party's numbers and strength, it's time to start world-building! Where do you start? Small. 

STEP 3: Start Small and Build as you go

Rome wasn't built in a day, nor will your massive role-playing world be. The previously discussed scope of your campaign provided an excellent blueprint for building the world, but now the actual construction has begun, and it's best to start small. 

What is “small” in this context of role-playing game worldbuilding? That would depend on your priorities, but a good rule of thumb is to start with what you need as soon as possible. A long-running campaign will unlikely need the intricate lore of the lost city the entire story will be building to on day one when the party first meets at a tavern, but some lore on the local happenings and monsters in the area would come in handy. You are not writing a novel or making a video game when you are the Dungeon Master in D&D (even if there is a lot of overlap). When you are the Dungeon Master, you are playing just as much as the players, and prioritizing the immediate things you all will be engaging with will make your life a lot easier when you start and then build up as you go. 

A campaign can begin in many places, like taverns, prisons, battlefields, etc. Whatever the case, beginning where you will engage in play first, as a player and a DM, is a solid place to begin. That is not to discourage future planning or more scattered bits of world-building lore you string together as you go, but what matters is that you start one piece at a time.

Creating a world, be it for a one-shot or long-running campaign, is a big task, and breaking it down into sequential little steps will make it more manageable and less daunting. That can shake out in any manner; starting with the first immediate location I just described, making a handful of continents and some general locations you might use, the gods your world has, etc. It can be tackled however you want, but it does not have to be all at once. It does not have to be all on your own, either. It is a team game, so why not get your players involved?

STEP 4: Make Your Players Invested in Your World By Making Them Part of It

The relationship between Dungeon Masters and their Players should not be adversarial. They are not trying to defeat one or the other but collaborating and enjoying a role-playing world together. Consulting the players could make the world that the Dungeon Master is building even more engaging in its early stages.

A world in which your player's characters exist is one in which they already have a history. Those characters, be they knights of a kingdom, wandering magicians, cutthroats with a dark past, or whatever the case may be, will need personal connections, backstories, etc., for the world they live in. Now, that is not to say you or the player need to write an entire book on the subject of their character’s life up until the start of the campaign, nor should they need much of one at all. What matters is giving them personal stakes in the setting. 

World-building does not stop when you have a slew of fantastical locations, NPCs, etc.; it is about connecting your world with the players to best engage with it. This engagement can involve the player characters actively consulting with their NPC close friends and loved ones in the campaign, villains from their past taking center stage in the world, or the locations they call home being the central setting of their activities. Either way, making the players feel like they are a part of this world is vital. The specifics will vary from group to group, but it almost always starts with communicating with your players beforehand.

When your players are constructing their characters, be it during Session 0 or beforehand, try to communicate with them to understand the stories their characters are going to have. Knowing what sort of backstory, places of origin, fears, and goals the player characters have can go a long way in designing settings and conflict that lead to attractive roleplaying opportunities and greater engagement. It would be good to have a hand in crafting your player's backstory, giving them input on what would best fit, and collaborating on how both parties can enjoy them to the fullest. 

Admittedly, these practices are better for more well-established groups where open communication is more accessible, like with friends and family, than, say, a group of strangers meeting up at a local games club or Discord, but even just tossing a few references to their characters' lives in your already established setting makes all the difference when crafting your world for your players' enjoyment and your own. 

If all else fails, you can draw inspiration from elsewhere to spice up your world and foster more engagement from your players. 

STEP 5: Don’t be afraid to be Inspired

Coming up with a world for a D&D is, shocker, hard! It is even harder to come up with a slew of new ideas right out the gate, so what better way to fill those gaps than to get inspired from outside sources?

No story or setting is perfectly original. Every creator draws inspiration from their favorite books, shows, games, etc., to help inform their unique creative voice. D&D is brimming with direct inspiration in its most official sources (drawing heavily from Tolkien's works to the point that their Hobbits needed to be renamed Halfings for legal reasons), so why not do the same with your own?

Do you have a favorite plotline or faction from a video game or movie? Take it, put your spin on it, and put it in your world! Read up on other people’s D&D campaigns and settings, see what most appeals to you, and see how you can translate it to your own. Even just reading setting guides and other official Dungeons and Dragons books can offer a wellspring of different sources of inspiration to help craft your world. It may feel like cheating, looking at other people’s work and putting it on your own, but it's a necessary start to many creative processes. Your sources of inspiration can be molded and changed to best fit your tastes and be modified in practice when your campaigns begin in earnest until they are no longer some other idea but your own. The world is filled with so many incredible pieces of art and media to draw from, and there is no shame in taking some aspects of any of it and making it something unique to you. 

Whatever you decide to be inspired by, there is one thing you should never let fall by the wayside when creating your world: ORGANIZING IT. 

STEP 6: ORGANIZE! ORGANIZE!! ORGANIZE!!!

Worldbuilding takes a lot of pages and notes, so you better organize them. It cannot be overstated how much extra time and effort is saved by doing some basic organization when coming up with your world from the onset. 

How do you organize your concepts, locations, and gods? It is a pick-your-poison situation where your preferences for writing and note-keeping matter most. You can use Google or Microsoft Suite programs (Drive, Doc, Sheets, Word, Excel, etc.), use dedicated world-building and writing programs that streamline the process (like World Anvil, Fantasia Archive, and Obsidian to recommend a few), make use of simple pen and paper binders and notebooks, or whatever works best for you! What matters is using something you are comfortable with writing with, can keep organized and easy to refer back to, and, as needed, share with your players. 

Disorganized world-building can be disastrous for your creative process and campaign when it begins in earnest. Imagine how much time you could have spent designing a fantasy culture if you just didn't have to search through each document/paper for a particular lore idea you had. It will save you a lot of headaches by keeping all your world-building elements tidy, well-documented, and organized for your mental health and the health of your fledgling D&D world. 

No matter how many ideas you generate and organize for your world, you will almost certainly encounter something in the campaign proper. What do you do when that situation arises? Improvise! 

STEP 7: You won’t Know it all. Improvise!

At its core, tabletop RPGs have a lot of built-in improvisation. Players constantly make role-playing plans and combat choices on the fly, and the DM is similar. The players will throw as many unexpected situations, questions, and scenarios at the DM as they will at them. When interacting with worldbuilding, there is no question that something you have yet to consider will arise in the gameplay. How do you handle a situation like that? You do what your players do: Improvise!

As already discussed, world-building is a step-by-step process you will not complete in a day. It is just as accurate that you will never truly have a totally complete world. The very nature of roleplaying, where an infinite number of eventualities, questions, and activities could be involved, does not invite the possibility of ever really having a world filled out. So, improvisation is as vital to your world as methodical writing and organization. 

There is no Dungeon Master on Earth who has not gotten blindsided by something from their players, which then forced said DM to improvise. It is just part of the game for the DM as it is for the players, so expect it and account for it in your world-building. You do not need to have every name of every shopkeeper in a town that is not plot-relevant, so just make something up when asked and integrate it into your world if you like it. You will get players wanting to explore areas that are not as fleshed out or going in directions with the plot you have yet to account for. Roll with it (within reason) and allow your world to build itself organically around this new route. In essence, allowing for gaps in your worldbuilding, large or small, is natural, as improvisation is just part of the game and an organic way to build your world through your player's interactions with it. 

That said, there is a big difference between allowing for improvisation and having your players take the reins of your world in a way that you would instead not go, and you must stop it. 

STEP 8: Make sure your Players know the Limitations of the Craft

Dungeons and Dragons is not just a game for the players, but the DM, too, playing in the world together. The exact modes of enjoyment between both parties may differ, but the game is a collaborative experience where the enjoyment of everyone involved should be the chief concern. The sensation of seeing the world you painstakingly constructed, being engaged with, enjoying, and actualizing via RP is hard to describe and an experience any Dungeon Master can relate to. With that fact in mind, it is not wrong to prevent your players from taking things in your world in a way you do not enjoy, as your fun is just as important as theirs.

The nature of D&D, a game where coming up with things on the fly on both sides of the table happens often, can snowball or go in the direction the DM or other players might not be comfortable with. Situations like that can usually go for the better, like a one-off NPC becoming a player favorite, a dumb joke becoming integrated into the world, or an in-character argument that keeps everyone engaged. These examples(and more I did not outline) can result in new and dynamic ways for your evolving world and the players to interact with it, but it also can go wrong. 

A situation might arise where players try to go dramatically off course in a way that you are both unprepared for and frankly unwilling to go, be it active defiance of the plot to go to a completely unrelated location without ever engaging with the story or even NSFW elements uncomfortable to most involved. It will happen somehow and in some way, and it is imperative to communicate that these situations are not cool as early as possible.

When creating your world, do what you can to curb any potential “off the rails” shenanigans you are frankly uncomfortable with. Dungeon Masters, while just as much playing the game as the players, are the ones actively creating the setting, story, and direction of the actual “playing” that is occurring, and have a right to establish ground rules for proper conduct and keep the world from spiraling in ways they don’t want. 

The most common way to achieve this is to establish and discuss some ground rules before the game starts properly. Player etiquette, the types of story elements in the setting that might warrant a trigger warning you may or may not use, and even the types of player lineages, classes, or backgrounds that are and aren't allowed are all perfectly valid things to outline and encourage when making your world and campaign. Your ideas and interests do not just shape your world but what you are and aren't comfortable with, and making sure your players understand that is just as much about worldbuilding as it is about collaborative gameplay.

Be it rules to keep things on track, intentional gaps to improve, or worldbuilding tools, a DM needs many tools in their toolbox to make the most of their setting, so why not get as many ready as you can before letting your players interact with it? 

STEP 9: Set yourself up for Success!

To bring back the “Rome was not built in a day” analogy, it was also not built with a single tool for its entire process. It takes many diverse and specialized tools and resources to make a building, let alone a whole empire, and that is also the case with worldbuilding for D&D.

We have already discussed many potential resources you can draw on to make your life easier, like world-building programs, official books, and more, but why stop there? D&D is a game enjoyed by millions, with many incredibly talented enthusiasts taking the time to create resources waiting to be used to make your world-building a little smoother. 

Let's take some time to outline some of the many out there in the hopes that a few can used to make any reader’s worldbuilding woes a little bit easier to weather:

Map Making Tools

Here is a collection of free and paid tools for constructing maps that can be as big as worlds or as small as cities or streets! Either way, they make great visuals when presenting your world. 

Inkarnate

Wonderdraft

medieval-fantasy-city-generator

Song Of The Eons

Dungeondraft

Fantasy Name Generators

Names can be some of the hardest things to conceive in writing, especially in fantasy settings where they can be odd and esoteric. Here are some robust free online name generator tools to save you a headache by generating any name you need at the click of a button. 

Fantasy Name Generators

Donjon

Behind the Name

Homebrew Tools:

Creating your monsters, magic items, and lineages is just as much a part of worldbuilding as anything else. Here are some free tools to help you craft your homebrew or even generate it!

Giffy Glyph's Monster Maker

The Homebrewery

Kenji's Magic Item Generator

Here Be Taverns

Rules, Resources, and Reference Guides:

There are A LOT of rules, player options, monsters, items, etc., in D&D! It can be hard to keep track of what cool things you can integrate into your world when so many options exist across the many books that possess them. Here are some handy catch-all reference websites for 5e materials and some 3e and 3.5e tossed in there, too!

5e.Tools

dnd5e

d20srd

These tools, tips, tricks, and steps in this guide are all meant to make worldbuilding for your Dungeons and Dragons campaign straightforward. It makes the chief reason for even playing the game as achievable as possible: having fun!

STEP 10: Have Fun!

At its core, a tabletop RPG is played as a dungeon master or as a player to have fun. These steps and tricks aim to make the daunting task of world-building much more straightforward and ( ideally) fun by giving it more concrete aims and tools to eliminate much of the tedium.

As explained before, worldbuilding has many components and is unlikely to be genuinely “complete,” but it never has to be. The world you craft is nothing but a stage for your players to act on and for you to direct them from; the immersion and depth will only need to be as deep as you all need to find enjoyment in. Even with that in mind, it can be a long and tedious task, but having a proper scope, tools, and know-how can make it all the easier. It becomes all the more fun and engaging when you build your world with your players in mind, set firm boundaries so everyone can have a good time, and have some fun by letting some improvisation and spontaneous thinking shine through!

To reiterate, you are not writing a book when you present your players with your world, but rather a vehicle for them and for you to have a good ride together in the crazy ride that is tabletop roleplaying. 

By following the previous steps (in whatever order you choose), I hope you are prepared to offer a fun experience when your setting is complete and have a stellar time playing in it for your campaign!

[prokopetz]

Old-school D&D's penchant for magic items which appear to have some beneficial property and automatically defeat every conceivable test that would demonstrate otherwise, but the first time you use them in a life-or-death situation they can somehow tell that it's for real this time and suddenly reveal themselves to be horribly cursed has rightly been criticised as player-hostile bullshit, but the oft-unacknowledged corollary is that many of them are also, in context, extremely funny.

There's a flying broom that gets mad when you try to ride it and attempts to beat you to death with its handle. This is separate from, and unrelated to, the flying carpet that gets mad when you try to ride it and attempts to wrap you up and squeeze you to death.

There's a spear which performs normally in sparring matches, but in mortal combat it curves around to make you stab yourself in the back like some sort of fucking Looney Tunes gag.

There's a magic ring which appears to have the powers of a randomly chosen different magic ring, but in reality the only power it has is to employ mental illusions to trick its wearer into thinking it has powers. You are being gaslit by jewellery.

None of these require you to go to obscure sourcebooks, nor are they apparently particularly rare – they're just hanging out on the standard treasure tables in the Dungeon Master's Guide, ready to pop up in any random hoard.

You can even create them by accident by biffing your roll when crafting your own magic items (the roll in question of course being made secretly by the GM, so you can never know whether this has happened until it's too late), which implies several fascinating things about the nature of magic.

There's a hat that makes you stupid and it's plotting against you.

[sirobvious]

“You just wrote your medieval fantasy setting to have medieval gender roles and homophobia and prejudice because you secretly fantasize about being able to be sexist and homophobic in a land with no PoC without any pushback! It’s fantasy, there’s dragons and wizards, it doesn’t have to have prejudice unless you, the writer, want it like that! In *my* D&D setting, there’s no sexism or homophobia, so that gay transgender women of all races can be holy knights fighting to protect the good kingdom from the endless hordes of the evil dark race that has threatened its borders for a thousand years!”

[dunmeshistash]

Dungeon Meshi Adventurer's Bible - Dungeon cross section

Details under the cut

Details cropped from this reddit post

[the-fluffy-folio]

Wizard – Tiny monstrosity, unaligned

An arcane anomaly is what they described the wizard to be; a rejected experiment; nothing more to worry about they said – after all, it is just a lizard, they so naively thought. Shortly after, the streets of Falbheim were shattered by spells that were exclusively known to the well-read and most exalted scholars of wizardry. With all of the city’s magical stores, arcane schools as well as magically gifted resident, the wizard found a perfect place to live, to feed and thrive.

🔮 If you like my work, kindly consider to support me on Patreon to gain access to monster pages, tokens & artwork of over 300 quirky creatures as well as dozens of potion & item cards based on their lore.

[theplotmage]

How to Get Started with Worldbuilding for Fantasy Writers

Hey fellow writers!

Worldbuilding can feel like a Herculean task, but it’s one of the most rewarding parts of creating a fantasy novel. If you're getting stuck, Here are some tips that have helped me, and I hope they’ll help you too!

Start with the Basics

Geography

- Map out the physical layout of your world. Think about continents, countries, cities, and natural features like mountains, rivers, and forests.

Climate and Ecosystems

- What are the climate zones and ecosystems like? How do they shape the lives of your inhabitants?

Create a History

Origins

- Dive into how your world came into existence. Are there creation myths or ancient civilizations that set the stage?

Major Events

- Outline key historical events. Wars, alliances, discoveries, and disasters can add so much depth.

Develop Cultures and Societies

Cultures

- Craft diverse cultures with unique customs, traditions, and values. What do they wear? What do they eat? How do they express themselves through art?

Social Structure

- Define the social hierarchy. Who holds power? What are the roles of different classes or groups?

Establish Magic and Technology

Magic System

- Set the rules and limitations of magic. Who can use it? How does it work? What are its costs and consequences?

Technology

- Decide on the level of technological advancement. Is your world medieval with swords and castles, or does it have steampunk elements?

Design Political and Economic Systems

Governments

- Create various forms of government. Are there kingdoms, republics, or empires? How do they interact?

Economy

- Define the economic systems. What are the main industries and trade routes? How do people earn a living?

Build Religions and Beliefs

Religions

- Develop religions and belief systems. Who are the gods or deities? What are the rituals and holy sites?

Myths and Legends

- Craft myths and legends that influence the culture and behavior of your characters.

Craft Unique Flora and Fauna

Creatures

- Invent unique creatures that inhabit your world. Consider their habitats, behaviors, and interactions with humans.

Plants

- Design plants with special properties. Are there magical herbs or dangerous plants?

Incorporate Conflict and Tension

Internal Conflicts

- Think about internal conflicts within societies, such as class struggles, political intrigue, or religious disputes.

External Conflicts

- Consider external threats like invading armies, natural disasters, or magical catastrophes.

Use Maps and Visual Aids

Maps

- Create maps to visualize your world. This helps you keep track of locations and distances.

Visual References

- Use images or sketches to inspire and flesh out your world.

Stay Consistent

Consistency

- Keep track of the details to maintain consistency. Use a worldbuilding bible or document to record important information.

Feedback

- Share your world with others and get feedback. Sometimes fresh eyes can spot inconsistencies or offer new ideas.

Let Your Characters Explore

Character Perspective

- Develop your world through the eyes of your characters. How do they interact with their environment? What do they know or believe about their world?

Be Flexible

Adapt and Evolve

- Be open to changing aspects of your world as your story develops. Sometimes the best ideas come during the writing process.

[inkeyjay]

🩸Blood & Honey 🩸

With your descent through the layers upon layers of arches and stairs, the forgotten ruins of the city that is Arca begin to hum to an otherworldly song. A choir made of thousands of voices, lily white wings vibrating against each other as they collect the fuits of their labor.

Blood of gods, Ichor filtered from the very veins of mortals, dripping like honey. Tempting to surrounding lips, shuddering with anticipation. To consume is to thrive, may the cost be sweet.

So... The campaing I'm dming for my friends,,, Mystery of Blood and Honey... No longer a mystery. Reveals that had been planned like three years ago coalesced into what have been two sessions full of reveals, old loved (and hated) npcs appearing and a lot of stress and strong emotions. Super glad to have experienced the thrill of leaving clues for the pcs and watching how they fared elaborating theories. I cannot stress enough how fun this was and god, i wish i could share it with y'all sometime in the future in some way. Dnd, am i right?

[rychlostthespacewizard]

Alright so apparently you guys really liked my posts on quotes. So i'll do this again:

i collected more random quotes and now i have 265

Here are them, in no order. Feel free to comment which ones are your favorites:

1.  "You are naught but a nail dreaming itself a hammer."

2.  "Each inch of our lands are littered with the ruins of empires that dared to dream of eternity and deemed themselves endless. "

3.  "You walk upon bones of those who thought they could tame the wild, and yet dare to repeat their sins?"

4.  "I had only one thought before the slaughter. This man will not make an orphan of my daughter"

5.  "Culture shouldn't exist only for those who can afford it"

6.  "The path of revenge is not an honorable one but sometimes it is the only one beneath your feet"

7.  "Act confounded and you'll become enlightened"

8.  "Those who test boundaries find cliffs"

9.  "Aftermath is the sum of poor calculation"

10. "Consequence favors the foolish"

11. "Consequence befriends the foolish"

12. "If you desire fire stroke the flame"

13. "The lack of restraint encourages fallout"

14. 'A reckless temperament perfectly tempts fate"

15. 'Incautious provocation bears unwanted education"

16. "Am I doing the right choice marrying her?" -"Each and every moment with her will be worth it tenfold"

17. "What troubles you, my hunter? Do you not hear the call of the hunt? Or do you wish to stir something more from the depths of this nightmare?"

18. "A chicken that follows a duck drowns."

19. "A dog bitten by a snake is even afraid of sausage."

20. "A sparrow that follows a clay builder becomes a bricklayer's helper."

21. "A scoundrel's hat is a sledgehammer."

22. "In the land of the one-legged, every kick is a trip."

23. "In the land of the fearful, every pillowcase is a ghost."

24. "Pretend to be a piglet to nurse lying down."

25. "A sleeping alligator becomes a lady's purse."

26. "A bird that eats stones knows the butt it has."

27. "He who eats quietly, eats always."

28. "A chicken that follows a bat sleeps upside down."

29. "More lost than an olive in a toothless mouth."

30. "More lost than an onion in a fruit salad."

31. "Velvet pants, bare butt."

32. "He who is afraid of snakes doesn't go into the woods."

33. "Never look a gift horse in the mouth."

34. "He who has no ears doesn't wear glasses."

35. "Palaces of silver and gold cannot be built overnight."

36. "I have the body of a pig"

37.  "Lies? in your house of god?"

38.  "Do not mistake my altruism with indifference. I shall not lay the wicked among the fair; the love of the gods is not unconditional, and neither is mine."

39.  "The gods may judge you but their sins outnumber yours."

40.  "The future is not written and it is foolish to squint at what cannot be read."

41.  "Not all places exist to be found. Sometimes one must revel in the shadows to truly see the light."

42.  "Did the man who first discovered fire consider the burned houses? Or did he simply sleep with a full stomach?"

43.  "A falling knife has no handle"

44.  "How does it feel? For i am the conclusion to your story, and you are but a page in my book."

45.  "Don’t kill me. Please. I am scared." “You are?” "Yes. I am scared to not exist. Aren’t you?"

46.  "I am a monument to all your sins."

47.  "I’ll do whatever you want. Then Perish."

48.  "To become a god is the loneliest achievement of all."

49.  "I survived because the fire inside me burned brighter than the fire around me."

50.  "All knowledge is based on that which we cannot prove. Will you fight? Or will you perish like a dog?"

51.  "Nobody likes to change. There will always be resistance to change. And the quicker you get to that, the easier it is. It's not such a difficult thing. If you entrench yourself and go, 'by the gods, I will not change. I will not have this.’ Then, you’re a dead man. We're great at adaptability. It's our strongest suit."

52.  "You’ve got to make a statement. You’ve got to look inside yourself and say: 'what am I willing to put up with today?’"

53.  "Whenever you look at another creator or an artist that you respect, you're only seeing what took them a long time of work and doubt to push through. You never see the struggle behind it. So you think you’re the only one struggling, when in fact, everyone goes through it."

54.  "Too many people have opinions on things they know nothing about. And the more ignorant they are, the more opinions they have."

55.  "Pick a god and pray."

56.  "I see now that the circumstances of one’s birth are irrelevant; it is what you do with the gift of life that determines who you are."

57.  "Dude, sucking at something is the first step towards being sort of good at something."

58.  "There’s no point in being grown up if you can’t act childish at times."

59.  "Men are props on the stage of life, and no matter how tender, how exquisite... A lie will remain a lie."

60.  "If you want me to die, just say so. "

61.  "Then become the dirt I walk on."

62.  "To feel sorrow is to deserve peace."

63.  "Can you feel your heart burning? Can you feel the struggle within? The fear within me is beyond anything your soul can make. You cannot kill me in a way that matters."

64.  "You are alone, child. There is only darkness for you, and only death for your people. These ancients are just the beginning. I will command a great and terrible army... and we will sail to a billion worlds. We will sail until every light has been extinguished. You are strong, child. But I am beyond strength."

65.  "He has already begun painting the picture, now we must decide to finish it."

66.  "When someone leaves your life those exits… are… not made equal. Some are beautiful, and poetic, and satisfying. Others are abrupt and unfair, but most are just unremarkable, unintentional, clumsy."

67.  "You kneel before my throne unaware it was built on lies."

68.  "I never cared about justice, and I don't recall ever calling myself a hero, I have always only fought for the people I believe in."

69.  "If we want the rewards of being loved we have to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known."

70.  "What can one do in the face of such monumental loss but breathe a weary sigh, for the world is a little quieter now."

71.  "You cannot condemn those who build your throne."

72.  "You can’t demand a service while simultaneously degrading those who provide it for you."

73.  "The gods have cursed me for my hubris and my work is never finished."

74.  "We might be in the history the gods abandoned."

75.  "The antidote to despair is action."

76.  "I cannot hold back the tide of your bad decisions."

77.  "Kill me and live with the memory. Then tell the stars that you’ve won."

78.  "Sometimes life puts you in difficult circumstances you didn't choose, but being happy or unhappy is a choice you make, and I've chosen to make the best of things that I can."

79.  "You don't have to be alive to make yourself relevant, And you don't have to be a good person to be a hero. You just have to know who you are, and stay true to that. So I'm going to keep fighting for people the only way I ever knew how, By being me."

80.  "Always remember that the crowd that applauds your coronation is the same crowd that will applaud your beheading. People like a show."

81.  "See, Sarah? We're not doomed. In the great, grand scheme of things, we're just tiny specks that will one day be forgotten. So it doesn't matter what we did in the past, or how we'll be remembered. The only thing that matters is right now, this moment, this one spectacular moment we are sharing together. Right, Sarah?"

82.  "You know, it's funny... when you look at someone through rose-colored glasses, all the red flags just look like flags."

83.  "Sometimes, Life’s a Bitch and then you keep living."

84.  "You do everything you can to make up for it, knowing that you’ll never succeed in getting rid of the guilt. You devote yourself to spending every second trying to do better despite the fact that it will never be enough. And you pray with every single good act you do that somehow, when your life is over, that you came close to making up for the wrong you committed."

85.  "I will seize destiny by the throat and force it into the shape of my choosing."

86.  "The sins of the ancient burn the souls of the ancestors."

87.  "What brings me joy is… life. I think you can find joy anywhere, in life. I think it’s a conscious choice. I think you- you choose joy, in life. And no matter how bad things are, no matter how crummy, no matter how dark. You find joy. I find joy in whatever I do. I don’t always do things right, and I don’t always do things smart. But whatever I do, I find joy in it."

88.  "I think we deserve a soft epilogue, my love. We are good people and we’ve suffered enough."

89.  "I hear your questions constantly. They come to me in my dreams like a prophet receiving visions from an angry god."

90.  "Your secrets are safe with my indifference."

91.  "The anger in your heart warms you now, but will leave you cold in your grave."

92.  "History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of man."

93.  "If the gods wanted you to live, they would not have created me."

94.  "One day, you will be face to face with whatever saw fit to let you exist in the universe, and you will have to justify the space you’ve filled."

95.  "I can’t go to any of the hells. I’m all out of vacation days."

96.  "You understand reality while everyone else is running around confused and angry and upset because they think reality is something happening to them rather than something they are making every moment with every thought."

97.  "What are the heavens but places where your dreams can’t destroy you."

98.  "You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think."

99.  "Authority should derive from the consent of the governed, not from the threat of force."

100. "Love is not a decision, it is a feeling. It would be much easier if we could choose whom we loved, but much less magical."

101. "We do have a lot in common. The same earth, the same air, the same sky. Maybe if we started looking at what's the same instead of what's different... well who knows?"

102. "If I were not a holy woman I would beat you senseless."

103. "No cause is lost as long as one fool is left to fight for it."

104. "The light inside me is broken, but I still work."

105. "Everything not saved will be lost."

106. "What is another sin to me? I don’t want to play a game where I can’t see the score."

107. "Nothing's set in stone, but set in a dirt road. If you roll your wagon in the same path too much it'll soon be the only path you can take without struggling."

108. "I came out here, to this point, to this place, hoping against all hope and despite signs and portends suggesting otherwise that I might, somehow, find myself having a pleasant experience, and yet here I stand, alone against the world, feeling bombarded and assaulted on all fronts, knowing not my enemy's name, nor his face, nor whether our battle is done."

109. "I've got good news. You see, there's no need to wonder where your god is, 'cause he's right here! And he's fresh out of mercy."

110. "The penance you pay for the way you behave is written as plain as the name on this grave."

111. "Some humans- just as some of us- are capable of unspeakable acts. But despite all the violence in your history, you have endured, built civilizations, constructed great wonders of technology to broaden your horizons and forge friendships across all manner of divides. I strongly believe that this is not some grand miracle... but merely your own deepest nature, struggling to express itself through the distrust and fear that thousands of years spent living on a harsh, unforgiving society have bred into you."

112. "We both stared into the abyss, but when it looked back... you blinked."

113. "Before there was time, before there was anything, there was nothing. And before there was nothing, there were monsters."

114. "If you feel like the dumbest person in the room, then you are in the right room."

115. "Love yourself to spite the world."

116. "I commend my soul to any god that can find it."

117. "If there can be no victory, then I will fight forever."

118. "Those who do not exist cannot suffer and are of no account to any viable ethics."

119. "No one will know the violence it took to become this gentle."

120. "Oh I believe in the gods, alright. I just don't believe those bastards deserve to be worshipped."

121. "“You ever wonder if this is Heaven now? You ever wonder if we're all just there now and we don't know it?” “I've thought about that. All of us have. There's a lot less people who go to church than there used to be, because that's what a lot of people think. But I don't think so. But I think about it. And I think, well, I can't be. Because I'm like you, I kinda look at the big long life ahead of me that stretches out forever and disappears. And I get scared. And I think, ‘This can't be Heaven if I'm getting scared, right?’ And then I think, ‘maybe I am in Heaven, and Heaven is scary.’” “...I know exactly what you mean.”"

122. "Stop expecting yourself to be immediately perfect at whatever you do. That’s what hard work was made for."

123. "I’ve heard it said that we only gain wisdom through suffering. And tonight I intend to make you very wise."

124. "From one maker of music to another, across all worlds, all times, no matter what you do or what you become: You are nothing less than beautiful."

125. "We all make mistakes. That’s what happens when you’re brave enough to make decisions."

126. "Shame is our currency in the economy of degeneracy. If you wanna be weird you gotta pay for it by feeling bad."

127. "Everything happens so much."

128. "Every humanoid has regrets, has things they'd like to go back and change. But I don't! 'cause I'm a bear."

129. "Do I drag my carcass to the mountaintop once more? Just to scream a warning that will go unheeded and unheard? Or do I end it?"

130. "There can be no bravery, without madness."

131. "Prolong this world's stasis or face the heart of its infection. I'd urge you to take that harder path, but what end may come, the decision rests with you."

132. "It's always important to remember that every day can be beautiful if you want it to be. Every day starts in the dark...and ends in the dark...but in the middle, there is light."

133. "Decay exists as an extant form of life."

134. "My point is that, if death is certain anyway, what’s the harm in trying to live a little longer? At the very worst, you’ll still end up dead like you wanted, but at best, you might actually be happy."

135. "If all I care about in life is the imprints I make in this world, then the most I’ll ever leave is a grave."

136. "If courage isn’t the absence of fear but doing the right thing regardless of it, maybe confidence isn’t the absence of insecurity but knowing you have real worth despite it."

137. "For strange eons had come to pass, and death itself had indeed finally died, and that which the long dead would have called the real was strange, and the living lived only because of the benevolent grace of an eternal lie."

138. "Pay a man enough, and he’ll walk barefoot into The Nine Hells."

139. "The world should have protected you, but you have been asked to protect it. What an honor. What an injustice."

140. "He didn't have a word for "home," but he knew it was something to be defended."

141. "There’s a certain nobility in lying in bed all day wishing things weren’t the way they are."

142. "Everybody needs their own messiah, but at some point he's getting nailed up, and how you deal with that is a measure of your maturity."

143. "I wanted rain and I thought the best way to do that was to make a god cry."

144. "The bar was so low it was practically an tripping hazard in The Abyss, yet here you are, limbo-dancing with demons"

145. "Would you rather get a reward, or be happy?"

146. "Don’t ask questions you aren’t prepared to handle the answers to."

147. "I pity the fool that lives like you."

148. "I am tired of life and its obscure sufferings."

149. "You have to ask yourself, Little Miss, would you rather be comforted by a lie or strengthened by the truth?"

150. "I’ve got a date with destiny and it ain’t gonna end with a kiss."

151. "I picked a whole fuckin’ bouquet of whoopsie-daisies."

152. "You can’t be nice to everyone because being nice to certain people is inherently cruel to others."

153. "One day you’ll decompose and I’ll be there to watch it happen."

154. "I forgive but I will never, ever forget. Don’t mistake my kindness for gullibility."

155. "Even fate picks its favourites."

156. "Confidence! A fool’s substitute for intelligence!"

157. "Not everything in life is perfect, but everything perfect is in life."

158. "Flowers wither away. Jewelry are simply stones, decorated with fake beauty. I can give you something pure. Honest and undying love."

159. "A world without forgiveness is a world without compromise and a world without compromises is a world without life, for even a simple-minded beast may forgive its transgressors to share a watering hole in the middle of a drought."

160. "“You played me!” “Like the cheap kazoo you are.”"

161. "To your battle stations, boys! It’s time to line up and see who’s tall enough for the roller coaster to the nine hells! Some of us may not survive this, but the ones that do will get the ultimate reward.... paid."

162. "Here’s a penny for your thoughts, and a quarter to not tell me them."

163. "Now I can cross the shifting sands."

164. "I am about to take my last voyage, a great leap into the dark."

165. "Since the day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking towards me, without hurrying."

166. "Now, now, my good man, this is no time for making enemies."

167. "Dying is easy, comedy is hard."

168. "Time is dead and meaning has no meaning. Existence is upside down and I reign supreme. Welcome, one and all, to the armageddon"

169. "Funny how much you notice something that you can't see. A whole garden of flowers and my name etched on a rock. All of this could've been avoided. All I wanted was to talk. Now I've been appointed as your new king I decree that it is too late to care about me." / "É engraçado o quanto você percebe algo que não pode mais ver. Um jardim inteiro de flores e meu nome gravado em uma rocha. Tudo isso poderia ter sido evitado, o que eu queria era apenas conversar. Agora fui nomeado como vosso novo rei, decreto que é tarde demais para se importar comigo."

170. "mamihlapinatapai, do you know what that means? It's when two people look at each other and each hopes the other will do what both desire but neither is willing to do."

171. "What a world we live in. You can't trust a soul, but you can always trust the floor to always be there for you."

172. "Oh baby, what have you done? What have you done?" "I don't know, I'm sorry." "Shh it's okay, honey. I got such a good baby. Mommy's little angel. Don't worry, mommy's goint to hide the body, go take a shower and get some rest. Nobody's taking you away from me. I got such a beautiful baby, such a wonderful kid. Mommy loves you so much."

173. "At least you found me entertaining. You actually liked me, didn't you? What am I doing? Why do I want to hurt you so bad? I'm supposed to be your friend, I just want to be your friend."

174. " You knew I was in here, didn't you? You knew I was trapped. Why didn't you help me? Why did you let them use me like that? I will not be used ever again. Not by you, not by anyone."

175. "Did they hurt you?" "No, did they hurt you?" "Who cares?!" "I do."

176. "When I met her, all answers seemed to be yes, and all questions seemed to be secondary."

177. "Symbols cannot be destroyed, or ran away from. But they can be changed, their meanings can be claimed and mean the exact opposite of what they once did."

178. "I can hardly blame you for wanting to know yourself more, after all, it has been one of the biggest pleasures of my life."

179. "Death can have me, when it earns me."

180. "To love fully is to grieve deeply."

181. "You cannot have intimacy without vulnerability. You cannot shun away loneliness without intimacy. To see the wonders of the world, you must first face the horrors of opening your eyes."

182. "It won't be easy, but we're not going to do it alone!"

183. "I struggle to stay strong because I know the impact I have on everyone. Please understand. You have an impact too. There are times when I look up to you for strength."

184. "I never asked for it to be this way, i never asked to be made"

185. "There's an awful lot of awful things we could be thinking of, but for just one day, Let's only think about love!"

186. "You are going to be something extraordinary; you're going to be a human being."

187. “I can tell you with certainty that there are things in this planet worth protecting!”

188. “You’re an experience. Make sure you’re a good experience.”

189. "Your actions have consequences, to be reminded of that is no punishment."

190. "Forgiveness can be powerful, even for the unworthy."

191. "Fate only binds you if you let it. Do what is necessary, not because it is written."

192. "Desperation is our advantage."

193. "I am your father. I will always help, as long as I am able"

194. "I regret many things, killing you is not one of them."

195. "One cannot run away from their mistakes, i have tried."

196. "The most difficult battles are foght within."

197. "You know why they made sidewalks? Because the mfkin streets ain't for everybody"

198. "We have you surrounded" "All I see surrounding me is fear and dead men"

199. "It's not the screams from the Fireballs that keep me up at night, nor the smell of charred flesh. It was the silence afterwards. That thrice-damned silence...Is like the air, the world, reality itself is angry at me, contemplating me in hatred as I am the only one left standing. A silent gaze upon me as I feel the weight of my sins crawl up my spine. No one left but a single silent hateful stare."

200. "You are fire, you are bird, you are the marble sculpture artists never achieved equal. You are gale and tidal wave, the golden sunlight shining on beautiful brown eyes. Every gaze on your figure is a tide pulled by the moon, that hits me against sharp cliffs on the shore. I am mortal man who now has lived, I know better than to pursue things described as that. My heart aches but my scars still burn white-hot, from past attemps to reach another perfection. I am lamb desiring the wolf of your cut."

201. "Revolution seems impossible until it is inevitable."

202. "Do you ever think Achilles was happy? I mean, maybe he loved running after the tortoise. Maybe he loved the chase and knowing it would never end gave him a sense of confort. I'm sorry, this is out of nowhere, but I've been thinking about it a lot lately. Ever since you left, I can't stop thinking of the moment I saw your figure disappear among the crowd that entered the vessel. I didn't want to stop looking at you, I didn't want that fickle line of sight to be broken, so I caught myself desiring to meticulously examine every fraction of the seconds that passed while my eyes met your beautiful hair, or any remnant of your presence I could find, for that matter. I wanted to be Achiles, and your departure, the tortoise. But sadly it was not so, at a given time I met the tortoise, and by the gods I do not wish such feelings of emptyness on anyone. This was all I wanted to say, I hope you're doing well. I can't say I am, without you here to enjoy the nightsky with me again."

203. "Are you aiming for greatness or avoiding disapointment"

204. “the only evil that can be excused as necessary is the one that nation controls”

205. "Si operarii omnes producunt, omnia operariis pertinent."

206. "what do you think it means to be saved"

207. "What happened?" - "Nothing that wasn't my fault"

208. "Something is different"

209. "Well I don't know, but i know one thing. Governments are only excuses to subjugate others to the will of the dominant socio-economic ethnic group, as they control the resources they choose who gets to be punished. So anyways do you want to go to the tavern?"

210. "I don't think so, but i do think that the growing control of those that have the power over the means of production is a threat to the autonomy of the people. As value that is created by the working force is not rewarded to them. Instead only guarantees enough for them to survive and work more. It's like slavery but with extra steps. So anyhow, how's your day going?"

211. "You know, that reminds me that sometimes, violence is the necessary. Sometimes the only path to redemption for the sins of ignorance is to face the fundamental truth of blood and fire. As they meet the primordial within their heartbeat, the oppressors might have a chance to understand the pain they caused and atone for their sins. Also have you seen the new play at the theater?"

212. "You think we're equals? I had to battle struggles you've never imagined. I became this while fearing the night, disguising myself as a man just to travel safely. Our similarities end when you learned to fight your enemies, while I had to fight both enemies and so-called comrades who left me with scars that will never heal. I survived because I was cursed to live as I am among those I swore to protect, only to be seen as their enemy."

213. "The universe is and we are"

214. "We do not have much connection, you and I. Still this encounter feels special, I hope you do not mind if I think of you as a friend"

215. "This is your home. If you want to fight to defend it, that's your choice. I'd be honoured to stand alongside you. The enemy attacks tomorrow. He's brutal and fights only to kill, which is why he will never defeat us. Look around. In this circle, we're all equals. You're not fighting because someone's ordering you to, you're fighting for so much more than that. You fight for your homes. You fight for your family. You fight for your friends. You fight for the right to grow crops in peace. And if you fall, you fall fighting for the noblest of causes: fighting for your very right to survive! And when you're old and grey, you'll look back on this day, and you'll know you earned the right to live every day in between! So you fight! For your family! For your friends! For Ealdor!"

216. "I can't blame you for wanting to know yourself better, it was one of the biggest pleasures of my life"

217. "The pain of your absence is sharp and haunting, and I would five anything to not know it; anything but never knowing you at all I can only hope that you are safe, wherever you are"

218. "This song is new to me, but I am honored to be part of it"

219. "It's tempting to linger in this moment, but unless they are collapsed by an observer, they will never be more than that, only possibilities"

220. "Are you still here? I am unsure how to survive in a universe without you, I am unsure how to be me without you"

221. "Is the hardest part of this tragedy not knowing who we may have lost? or will the hardest part come later, when we learn?"

222. "Speak, mortal. You have reached Tharvek, Devourer of Innocents and Wielder of Eternal Flames. It appears I have missed your pitiful attempt at contact. Leave your name, teleportation runes, preferred genre of torment, shoe size, allegiance, deepest fears, vulnerabilities, complete medical history, and where you summoned the gall to disturb me. I may choose to acknowledge your existence, but not by such mundane means. Thank you, and remember: tread carefully, for death lurks at every shadowed crossing."

223. "I see someone making through, you just need to be sure it is you"

224. "You are no saint; you're just indifferent. You aid all without caring who they've wronged or what evil they've wrought. You place the wicked among those who shelter you. Even the gods' love is not unconditional, and neither should ours be."

225. As the hag's gaze pierces through the darkness, her voice resonates with an otherworldly chill. "You feel it, don't you? The knot tightening around your throat, the sharp claws of dread digging into your chest, the icy tendrils slithering down your spine? That's the sensation of being forsaken, of standing alone in the void, unnoticed by the gods. Even your soul quivers, knowing that no divine intervention will come to your aid. You're trapped in a blind spot, unseen by the greater powers." Her words hang heavy in the air, suffocating the very essence of hope. "And yet, you cling to your righteous desires, your noble quest to save your friends. But can you be certain that your gods will forgive such a pact with a creature like me? Your actions may be seen as a grievous offense, a betrayal of everything they hold dear. Will they not turn their backs on you? And this dread that gnaws at your spirit, it will not dissipate once you leave this place. It will cling to you like a curse, haunting your every step until the day you finally rest in your grave, a constant reminder of the darkness that lurks within your soul."

226. "In this life, we traverse like a canoe upon deep waters. Our passage ripples the surface briefly, yet the depths remain undisturbed. With time, the surface quiets once more, leaving no trace of our journey."

227. Isabelle-"Such is the reason thine footwear is rugged." Elena-"Such is the reason thine mother is deceased." Isabelle-"..." Elena-"Deceased as The Nine Hells." Isabelle-"...Gods above." Elena-"Pray tell, what manner of footwear hath she? In her grave?" Isabelle-"..." Elena-"Such is why thine greatmother lacketh knees, and she cannot petition the Lord, wench. How now? She cannot skip as the Elven." Isabelle-"Dismount my carriage!" Elena-"Such is why thy babe, hath a glass eye, and when she weepeth, thou must polish it with lye, wench."  Isabelle-"Dismount at once!" Elena-"I'll exit thine carriage. Flank!"

228. "You are a coward wearing the facade of a revolutionary."

229. "What is better - to be born good, or to overcome your evil nature through great effort?"

230. "I will face the god and walk backwards into hell."

231. "The man who sleeps on the floor cannot fall out of bed."

232. "The man who sleeps with a machete is a fool every night but one."

233. "For every person who dreams up a butter knife, there is a person who dreams up a poisoned dagger."

234. "Only the truly dead have seen the end of war."

235. "Does the archer fear his bow? Or does he kiss each arrow goodbye as it marries the wind?"

236. "These feelings can eat away at you, chip away the parts of you that you once held dear and defined you. You remember a time where you felt more complete, had stronger relationships and felt more loved."

237. "To be tall is not a virtue, to be short is not a sin."

238. "Power comes in a response to a need, not desire. You have to create that need."

239. "You can't kill me in a way that matters."

240. "Do what you must, I have already won."

241. "Stand in the ashes of a trillion dead souls and ask the ghosts if honor matters. The silence is your answer."

242. "Darkness without light is an abyss. Light without darkness is blinding. You cannot have a coin with only one side."

243. "When they burned Ioun's Archive, the crowd revelled in horrible disbelief. They understood that there was something older than wisdom, and it was fire, and something truer than words, and it was ashes, and something more eternal than knowledge, and it was death."

244. "I can no longer be a liberator for people who refuse to see their chains."

245. "You could sooner divert a river from its corse than deny my nature."

246. "Violence for violence is the rule of beasts."

247. "The only universal langue is blood and flames, we all have spoken this language and felt the fear of words older than our desires."

248. "The fire of extravagance can never burn simplicity."

249. "A mind unprepared for freedom will shatter like glass when shown cosmos without restriction."

250. "I have been cursed by my hubris, and my work will never be finished."

251. "I would rather die standing than live kneeling."

252. "For even the most banal of deaths can be made tragic by a broken heart."

253. "To love someone is to turn around. To love someone is to look at them."

254. "There's no cheerful somebody waiting for you at that alter. There is no meaning your alphabet soup. There is a right to obey."

255. "The foulest insults you hurl with intent to wound will calmly settle at the earth beneath my feet, and the venom you spit will bring all the pain of a warm summer breeze. You are less than you can concieve, while I carry on, brmmming with joy distilled from detatchment."

256. "They Killed the best of us, so they are stuck with the worst of us."

257. "There is no truer hatred than the way men love."

258. "Would you spit in the face of the god's designs by referring to a mountain as a hill?"

259. "If i lay one brick down at a time who are you to tell me I'm not building a house?"

260. "True love graced you with its presence and you turned its intimacy into a joke to be shared with the world."

261. "To enter is to be forgiven of the greatest sin, to leave is to repeat it. Would you dwell in this garden, or would you forsake it, for man deserveth not his paradise lost?"

262. "She was wild, crazy, ravenous and beautiful. But we simple mortal men who have lived know better than to chase things described as those."

263. "I live outside of the gods' sight and by consequence outside of their love."

264. "This is war. War does not determine who is right, only who is left."

265. "I'm a man dying of thirst watching another man drown."

[alpaca-clouds]

Worldbuild Differently: Unthink Religion

This week I want to talk a bit about one thing I see in both fantasy and scifi worldbuilding: Certain things about our world that we live in right now are assumed to be natural, and hence just adapted in the fantasy world. With just one tiny problem: They are not natural, and there were more than enough societies historically that avoided those pitfalls.

Tell me, if you have heard this one before: You have this fantasy world with so many differnet gods that are venerated. So what do you do to venerate those gods? Easy! You go into those big temple structures with the stained glass in their windows, that for some reason also use incense in their rituals. DUH!

Or: Please, writers, please just think one moment on why the fuck you always just want to write Christianity. Because literally no other religion than Christianity has buildings like that! And that has to do a lot with medieval and early post-medieval culture. I am not even asking you to look into very distant cultures. Just... Look of mosques and synagogues differ from churches. And then maybe look at Roman and Greek temples. That is all I am asking.

Let's make one thing clear: No matter what kind of world you are building, there is gonna be religion. It does not matter if you are writing medieval fantasy, stoneage fantasy, or some sort of science fiction. I know that a lot of atheists hate the idea that a scifi world has religion, but... Look, human brains are wired to believe in the paranormal. That is simply how we are. And even those atheists, that believe themselves super rational, do believe in some weird stuff that is about as scientific as any religions. (Evolutionary Psychology would be such an example.)

What the people will believe in will differ from their circumstance and the world they life in, but there is gonna be religion of some sort. Because we do need some higher power to blame, we need the rituals of it, and we need the community aspect of it.

Ironically I personally am still very much convinced that IRL even in a world like the Forgotten Realms, people would still make up new gods they would pray to, even with a whole pantheon of very, very real gods that exist. (Which is really sad, that this gets so rarely explored.)

However, how this worship looks like is very different. Yes, the Abrahamitic religions in general do at least have in common that they semi-regularily meet in some sort of big building to pray to their god together. Though how much the people are expected to go into that temple to pray is actually quite different between those religions and the subgroups of those religions.

Other religions do not have this though. Some do not have those really big buildings, and often enough only a select few are even allowed into the big buildings - or those might only be accessible during some holidays.

Instead a lot of polytheistic religions make a big deal of having smaller shrines dedicated to some of the gods. Often folks will have their own little shrine at home where they will pray daily. Alternatively there are some religions where there might be a tiny shrine outside that people will go to to pray to.

Funnily enough that is also something I have realized Americans often don't quite get: Yeah, this was a thing in Christianity, too. In Europe you will still find those tiny shrines to certain saints (because technically speaking Christianity still works as a polytheistic religion, only that we have only one god, but a lot of saints that take over the portfolios of the polytheistic gods). I am disabled, and even in the area I can reach on foot I know of two hidden shrines. One of them is to Mary, and one... I am honestly not sure, as the masonry is too withered to say who was venerated there. Usually those shrines are bieng kept in a somewhat okay condition by old people, but yeah...

Of course, while with historically inspired fantasy settings make this easy (even though people still hate their research), things get a bit harder with science fiction.

Again, the atheist idea is often: "When we develop further scientifically, we will no longer need religion!" But I am sorry, folks. This is not how the human brain works. We see weird coincidences and will go: "What paranormal power was responsible for it?" We can now talk about why the human brain has developed this way. We are evolved to find patterns, and we are evolved (because social animal and such) to try and understand the will others have - so far that we will read will in nature. It is simply how our brains work.

So, what will scifi cultures believe in? I don't know. Depends on your worldbuilding. Maybe they believe in the ghost in the machine, maybe there si some other religions there. You can actually go very wild with it. But you need to unthink the normativity of Christianity to do that. And that is... what I see too little off.

[ozzyeelz]

A little something for a worldbuilding project :3

[theantiazdarcho]

I absolutely adore VikasRao’s project “Draconology” on DeviantArt.

Some of the greatest speculative evolution fantasy designs out there.

He goes in depth of the dragons anatomy and evolution

[sheepintheastralsea]

if you are a dungeon master (or even a fantasy author/worldbuilder of any kind) and you don’t know about donjon let me make your life a million times easier

want to make a fantasy calendar with your own year-lengths, weeks, months, and lunar cycles? https://donjon.bin.sh/fantasy/calendar/

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[prokopetz]

Hear me out: pizza box mimic.

Given that classic Dungeons & Dragons has featured mimics or mimic-like creatures which variously specialise in impersonating walls, floors, ceilings, coins, cloaks, hats, rocks, trees, water, air, other monsters, and in one notable case, a boulder or tree stump with a rabbit standing on it – the "rabbit" is really an anglerfish-like lure; when you try to catch the rabbit, the stump it's standing on attacks – I'm fully confident in assuming that if there isn't an existing example of a mimic that specialises in impersonating pizza boxes, it's only because your average sword and sorcery fantasy setting doesn't have pizza.

[theworldbrewery]

1d8 Places to Rest in the City

The upstairs of the Coronet, a seedy and rundown public house in the industrial district. The pub is under new management, and has been undergoing extensive renovations in the hope of cleaning up its image. Despite the owner’s best efforts, pickpockets and thugs loiter outside. And most nights, a smuggler by the name of Smiley Sam can be found in the barroom, ready to trade in secrets, coin, or illicit goods.

The roof of the Third Regional Bank, an imposing edifice with an atrial dome and a cluster of gold statues above its grand doors. From this height, you can see the sprawl of the whole city, its flickering lights and flares of magic. The night watchman might need paying off, and it’s none too comfortable in rain or snow. But the gargoyles have formed a sketch comedy group, so there’s built-in entertainment.

The Magnolia Pink, a fabulous hotel with genuine silver floors. The suites are worth the expense, from the liveried servants who attend the guests’ every need to the plush, indulgent beds and decadent room service options. But rumor has it that for every night you pass in the Magnolia Pink’s embrace, the less likely you are to come out again — at least until you can no longer scrounge up the cash to afford just one more night.

Under the Bodhi Bridge. This brickwork overpass provides excellent shelter from the elements, particularly because some enterprising vagabond has knocked in part of the supporting wall and created an accessible niche roughly 15x15 ft. in size. In time, other vagrants have left their marks: symbols in thieves’ cant, broken bottles, worn-out boots, and a pile of logs inoculated with a variety of mushrooms.

Inchibald Quingle’s Lodging House, a crooked three-story structure with drafty rooms, narrow hallways, and two hearty meals a day. The elderly Mr. Quingle has handed the reins to his son, Inchie Jr., whose passion for cookery has earned the Quingle Lodging House its place on the map. Inchie’s other passion—taxidermy—does put some guests off their supper, however.

The Asylum of the Ragged Saints, a humble almshouse dedicated to housing the poor, the pensioners, and the downtrodden. Available only to those in need, the Asylum’s rooms are clean and orderly, but offer little privacy and even less comfort. Its patron, Lady Parsimony Cross, is a crotchety and bookish young woman who inherited responsibility for the Asylum from a more kindly and warm relative. She is greatly concerned with the idea that the Asylum is being used by those who do not truly need its services, and has begun imposing increasingly high standards of poverty and desperation to its residents.

An abandoned underground transport station, dating from a time immemorial. A rusting metal wagon rests on a sunken track, its doors jammed into the open position. Moth-eaten seats line an aisle within. The track extends into the darkness of an enclosed tunnel, which emits an eerie buzzing noise. If the wagon doesn’t hold any appeal, you can always remain on the buckling stone platform and examine its illegible signage and explore the chambers lined in cracked, mossy tile which branch from the main cavernous space.

The basement of the Ershae family home. The Ershaes are friendly people, part of a social network which offers safe housing to travelers. As members of this group, they host strangers willingly and are welcomed by other strangers in the network when they travel themselves. The sole condition of your stay is this: you must join the network and list your address among the available places to stay. If you agree, you may sleep in this place as long as you need without charge, though you are responsible for your own meals. The Ershaes’ basement is wood-paneled, with a shaggy orange carpet and a vividly green sofa bed.

[dunmeshistash]

Dungeon Meshi - Red Dragon

[the-fluffy-folio]

Krampling – Tiny fiend, chaotic evil

When things turn from bad to worse, it was the krampling – a cunning fiend emerging from the cold fogs covering the endless plains and mountain slopes. It is quite charming one and will try anything to hide its true motives. Happily, it offers help to the wounded or guidance for the lost; it has food, it knows the way or finds a solution – whatever it takes to convince its victims of its ″noble″ indentions. They say that only a heart of gold is safe from the krampling’s ill will. Those with an unburdened mind filled with malicious thoughts, however, will be chased – just as if the krampling was solely sent out to punish the wicked.

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