Some running commentary as I go through this.
World of forms


There could still totally be family clan structures. The lack of family resemblance wouldn't even be considered weird to these people, and I imagine they'd treat their children just like people on other planes.

Again, the same social structures would apply as on other planes. There might not be a biological impetus, but if the forms everyone's based on are the same as on other planes then I imagine people would have the same taboos. There might not be an evolutionary reason, but then there's no evolution, so you can do whatever you want with forms and social norms.

Heck no, that's not a problem! That poses a question with real interesting solutions. Maybe the species of some one's birth works as some kind of caste system? Or you could explore how different civilizations treat this phenomenon. Maybe it's a cosmopolitan plane and nobody cares? Only nations matter? Or you could just make family ties trump everything and explore what that means.

Thanks for reading and commenting! I had actually forgotten some of the things you're commenting on as I had been working on finding a place for all the creatures I wanted to include.


Well, I remember writing that with the understanding that instead of "keeping the blood pure" like we've had in so many societies throughout history, that "strong families" would end up not related by blood at all, as they "adopt" (read: kidnap, enslave, brainwash, et cetera) children with signs of great potential. I had not thought beyond that, but it was a societal thing I wanted to zoom in on at a later time.


So, I'm actually kind of waffling a bit on this because I've been reading up (or listening) to actual ancient history as well as mythologies, and incest just seems so rampant that I'm almost to the point where I'm willing to let it be included — even if I'm still kind of grossed out by the idea.


You raise some interesting points. I had kind of left this idea behind as I changed my race list around (I don't actually much care for dwarves, for one), but I'd also just been plowing ahead with notions like a mother passes or impresses her Form onto her unborn child. But then raising all this again makes me question the purpose of what I'm building again, because I definitely have ideas for different races that are based on concepts which don't work using the World of Forms framework.

For instance, elves have a number of adaptations that would make them better plains predators than humans (taller [can see further], longer-legged, needs less sleep, etc.), and thus it would be great to have surface-dwelling "dark elves" as the norm for what an elf should be, but then adaptations don't matter much in a World of Forms and might even apply backwards: rather than your form changing to adapt to your environment, Forms are tied to different environments, and if you move your Form will change to that area's Form.

Actually, that might be a good workaround if it's tied to the land and mana system. I'd already figured that mana and leylines would contain the information of Form, so maybe that would be it: the mana itself impresses its Forms upon you. Still something that needs work.

So, you'd have a basic humanoid form with the specifics shaped by the local mana conditions? NEat. Centera has toyed with similar concepts.
Centera also had dragons as beings that live in symbiosis with their breath-attack granting elementals which I really dug. I slots in great with the Ancient Greek vibe everything so far puts off.

Orgathra
I get a big Greek cosmology vibe from the elements-laid-out-according-to-map-directions thing. Both the classical elements and the XY graph element both tie into the Greek philosophy math angle. That's some pretty neat cosmology there. Is this the same as the world of forms? Never mind I see now that world has another name.
Obviously, if it's an MTG thing you'd be better off with 5 elements, and the graph aspect would still work fine. Actually, it would make a great into to the color pie. Perfect world for a core set.
None of that stuff really ties in with the world tree elements though. World trees put me in the mind of the Norse and having this location that's central to the whole plane really butts up against the co-ordinates stuff I really dug. Unless maybe the tree is a 5th elemental coordinate in the exact center of the world? It would also lend itself to a civilization vs nature theme that would fit with a truly ancient culture, although the all-encompassing-ness of the world tree and fact it has people living on it kind of kybosh that. Maybe the civilized people have yet to realize how the tree fits in with the cosmology? NEver mind- again I mashed two seperate things together in my head.
THe interplay of different elemntal systems is a thing I spent a great deal of thought on in years past, so the Wuxing/classical element stuff is pretty cool to me.
I brainstormed a TRPG setting called "Cartesia" based on math terms once, and I've posted an alternate alignment scheme on these boards somewhere which I can't findright here, so this is all very much my deal.

Ultea
Honestly, I've just seen enough world trees in my life. I've never really liked any of them.

A while back I ran across a long opinion post that argued that most high fantasy isn't actually Medieval fantasy, but actually Roman fantasy with funny costumes, based on the common tropes like army sizes, engineering capabilities, and social structures. I was reminded about it as I was listening to the Hardcore Histories episode about Rome's conquering of the Celts, and it's put me a bit in the mind to actually embrace that a bit. I'm going to need to look into where Rome's mythology really differed from Greek mythology (a cursory glance told me that ritual was more important to Romans than the actual mythology when compared to the Greeks), but it could easily help me fill out the world as a whole, if I focus on a growing empire of mortal races (perhaps an alliance first between elves and humans and then slowly growing as conquered people become part of their society?) that would seek to encompass their known world. It's been so long since I learned anything about Roman history that I'd need to do a lot of research into their history to see what "Roman fantasy" might look like.


EDIT: I've kind of stalled on this thread as a whole because I've been losing focus again, and need to re-examine just what I wanted to get out of this process and what concepts fit where, because I'm building three or four different worlds and thinking it's just one.




I'm not sure I recognize the name Centera -- but I'm suddenly wondering if I accidentally ran across you on reddit. The dragons-are-actually-symbiotes thing was something I came across on the Worldbuilding subreddit and thought it sounded neat, but I changed it to adapt better to my ideals.

Also I'm somewhat surprised any of this is giving off Ancient Greek vibes. It all seems so mish-mashed to me, but maybe that's because I'm working too closely with it.


You've actually got a decent point on making it five-directional, if I commit to making it a Magic plane, but I want to make it clear that I stole the idea of "the plane dissolves into the elements along the compass directions" from the TTRPG Exalted and it's pseudo-Eastern setting. All of Ultea is like that: concepts stolen from various places and just mashed together: a world tree (Norse mythology, ostensibly), 13 moons (adapted originally from Chinese mythology, but I've since learned a more similar Philippine myths), elves living on the moon (Goblin Punch), scub-corals (Eureka Seven), et cetera. I got lazy and never posted all the old documents I have for it listing these things out.


I still quite love world trees, and I'm the type of person who really enjoys seeing what new tiny quirks can be added to a familiar trope. I'll also add that, back when I was first mashing Ultea together, I was on more of a Norse mythology streak, even reading the original Eddas, though that was some time ago now. Ultea was never really supposed to be consistent, like I was going to have Orgathra be (before losing track of myself); I was throwing ideas in a blender to make a weird fantasy setting which I could run a game in (that never happened, either). I just bit off more than I could chew.

Centerra is the name of Goblin Punch's setting.

I've only read bits and pieces of Goblin Punch, but it's entirely possible I just forgot. If there's a specific blog post about Centerra's dragons, I'd be interested in seeing it, but that isn't where I took my idea from.

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Speaking of my ideas for dragons and such, while I think that world has potential — I am kind of weirdly attached to the Scylla/Charybdis demonesses I created — I need to re-examine the foundations again because I've been building without a solid one. I got too involved in the cool factor of ancient, powerful beings and kind of forgot about the flesh-and-blood races I was wanting in the first place.

I need to look into this Azra race again, since I know nothing about them other than they're Magic's Tieflings.

I didn't find anything about them on GoblinPunch's blog, but apparently they're on Coins&Scrolls. Not sure if I was mistaken or if they both do the elemntal dragon thing.
https://coinsandscrolls.blogspot.com/20 ... agons.html
Goblin punch definitely has a multipart soul though. https://goblinpunch.blogspot.com/2017/0 ... adoom.html


Orgatha demons
- I like the idea of the demons of this world being creatures without a capital F form. So are they essentially the only "natural" life without a spirit world blueprint? It sounds like some sort of chaotic and horrifying thing. It sounds like the basic concept could apply to elemntals or horrors though. Other than being something the people of this world sound like they would hate- something almost cosmologically wrong, I don't know what makes them "demons" specifically.
I've often wondered about a conflict of naturally-evolved vs divinely-designed life forms. Probably not the angle you were going for, but I always figured it would be cool.
I also like the cobbled together psyche blending in amongst its prey approach. Sounds like a good platform for storytelling. If demons' minds are made up of the things they eat, how much of what they're doing do they even understand? Everything you eat has a hunger instinct, but do they actually need to consume all the people they do? Could a demon overcome its monstrous compulsions by reasoning that it needn't be defined as such, or just by eating a bunch of saints? Cuts right to the heart of the setting.
The fact that demons could look or act like pretty much anything is also great for paranoia and witch hunts.

Sphinxes
A tough nut to crack there. Can 2 forms be mashed together somehow? Maybe it could be tied into blue's love of self perfection or nurture over nature? Could the sphinxes have some power over the world of forms that allows them to be this way? Would it be hokey for sphinxes to be the original form and birds and cats to be their creations?
The missing factor in your griffon/harpy/catfolk scheme might be curiosity? You seem to have basically puzzled this out yourself.


The Scylla Charybdis thing has me thinking about what mechanics this world would have as an mtg plane. You'd want to show the interaction between the worlds. Double face cards? Bestow? Mutate? All good places to start.
Sagas that transform into creatures? Or something like the Quests of Zendikar?
Edit- Divinity counters.

Also Kaldheim got me thinking about what it would mean to be a god in the world of forms. If you wanted gods would they be the singular/highest manifestations of a concept? Or maybe the universe just acknowledges the best at something and seers can see that they are the "god" of it?
On that note, Akasha is a concept to look into. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akasha

Yeah, as a concept, there's actually a lot I like about the "Formless demons," but I think I put a little too much focus on what they are before I could figure out how they fit in. When I get back around to the level that demons should occupy, I might make them something like horrors instead of demons, like you say, but it would mostly be a matter of semantics, which you might be noticing I'm playing fast and loose with for a lot of my entries.

I attached pretty early to The Bearded One's opinion that fantasy monsters shouldn't be as clearly delineated and known to the populace as the monster manuals make them out to be, and the more I look into mythology the more I realize that one monster might have many names, or that an originally-singular monster like Scylla might become plural as the mythos evolve, like Scyllae. As a result, a lot of my entries give these creatures multiple names — demons are also changelings at some point in their lives, and dragons are also salamanders, et cetera.

Honestly I was so focused on, like, the "ecology" of my demons that I missed a lot of the narrative angles you're presenting here, and I like those a lot.


Spinxes are kind of a weird inclusion for a world with Platonic Forms because the original myths definitely just mash together different parts to form a monster. I promise I didn't just include sphinxes because they're the iconic, but I like them as an intelligent monster. I was originally trying to go for the self-perfection angle, hence the theorizing of them just being able to mash other forms into their own, but doing it the other way around might be one way to do it.

Part of the problem is that I don't want clear-cut "gods" and maybe not even a "celestial realm" because I usually have bugbears about that, particularly the way it's done in D&D. I'm not quite sure if I can make this world work without at least one of those, though. Maybe things like sphinxes and dragons are the equivalent of gods (like how Greek gods were kind of like a species of divine beings), and that they hail from whatever celestial realm oversees the material one? I don't want the "celestial realm" just be this perfect place where all the perfect blueprints of Form are, though; the concept is so perfect that it borders on madness.


I had not, but that is great, thank you.

I'm not sure if my full puzzle of wisdom, ferocity, and curiosity fits together correctly the way I want it to, though. Using wisdom to mean quiet, accepting, and diplomatic, and having harpies lack wisdom puts odd symbolism on cats to be wise.



I have been away from Magic for too long to even recognize most of those terms. Also I know this whole thread has been such a mess that I haven't presented ideas cleanly and you might have gotten confused among the myriad of different worlds I'm actually presenting, so I'm not sure if "interaction between the worlds" is necessarily the right angle to even explore.


I started rambling above that I generally dislike including gods as physical entities in my worlds, most likely because I grew up on media without it — Magic didn't have gods for most of its life, anime typically has kami at best which aren't really equivalent in most settings, et cetera.

I briefly tossed around the notion that the plane's natural laws got put in place and then tweaked by various oldwalkers that visited and set themselves up as gods, but I dropped that idea pretty quick because I, personally want to focus on the world and not 'walkers or their influence on it.