These are neat.

This is a place for neat.

Cosmology (fantasy):
If matter is just energy condensed* into a new form, then could there be something else further along the scale that matter and energy rest on? What if that next step is mana, or even the soul? Perhaps a person's spiritual energy or soul could be converted into material objects or energy blasts. If we're going to give objective (-cosmologically speaking,) weight to a person's soul, why not go all the way and have souls gravitate towards some forms over others? Is your soul a race car or a rapier? Or do souls transform into beings that reflect our inner selves like our bodies never could? And do such creatures engage in fantastic battles with one another?

*not a properly applicable term, but it's hard not to feel a sense of progression when so little of one equates to so much of the other. A minute amount of matter equates to a city-flattening amount of energy, and that just doesn't match up with what human experience tells us is "a lot" of energy doesn't translate to "a lot" of matter.

Cosmology (fantasy):
Reality as we perceive it is actually a metareality- an amalgm of connecting and overlapping realities. Not all these realities share the same rules or histories. Different realities dominate metareality in different places, sometimes leading to incongruities within metareality. In the shared meta we all experience a single event could have multiple causes- one for each reality contributing to that part of the meta. For example the creation of the stars can be fairly attributed to any number of gods, and all can be true because the end result is the same.
To be close to the meta- To be part of the meta- truly real as most people perceive it, a phenomena must not conflict with the other realities of the meta. A mage can reify it into the meta even if it conflicts; the difficulty of the task being equivalent to the degree of conflict between the alternate reality (the maybe), and the meta. Extreme modification of the meta can change which maybes dominate the meta to produce a time or space permanently out of sync with the outside world.
Mages are people who can perceive the meta as more than one reality. Mages can identify the differences between realities, escape into the pseudoreality of the maybes, and choose which aspects of which reality dominate the meta, to pull off the impossible.
Corollary:
Each person is their own reality. An individual's reality is a combination of their beliefs, the beliefs of people they are connected with, both heavily anchored by the earthly physics that seem to pervade the dominant realities of the meta.
The most likely alien abductees are conspiracy theorists with latent mage potential.
Souls are the only constant between realities. Though you can exist in multiple overlapping realities, you only have one soul across all of metareality. It is what makes you you. To affect a soul from just one reality is an incredible feat of magecraft.
Souls are in fact the source or reality, will the power that supports it.
I think this would work nicely as an RPG (the World Of Darkness was a big influence afterall).

I feel lke 'alien abductees' is a bit of a digression from the topic because it isn't explained-

I like the permanence of 'souls being a source'.

i feel like there needs to be a 'why' for 'magecraft affecting souls from one reality being incredible'.

This is an amazing piece of words. I'm assuming 'cosmology' is a 'thing' already?

Reading this piece gave me a fright, indeed, when i pondered the possibility that a mage can go to hades.

What happens if a mage becomes 'out of sync'- is that bad, or can it be good?

The alien abductees bit was just supposed to be an off-the-wall example of unconscious reality-warping to show how weird stuff could get.
Souls being permanent holds great allure for me; I've long longed to believe in an afterlife. The notion of cessation terrifies me.
I figured if souls are unique across multiple realities, then something that affects them must work on multiple realities simultaneously.
Thanks. "Cosmology" is a study of the nature of the universe, and I've seen it used to refer to the workings of fantasy worlds. Should I put stuff like this under "setting" instead?
Hades should be visitable. I'm not sure how coherent a place it would be though- might get blurred with other afterlifes. If you knew what you were doing you could keep them separate I suppose.
Being out of sync means not all the same rules apply to you. Maybe the way your gravity works means you can jump really high, but you could end up enable to land or smashed into a roof if you mess it up, and if the dominant reality reasserts itself at the wrong moment you could smash into the floor really hard (maybe reality would overcompensate in the shift?). Being out of sync can be good or bad depending on whether you're in control of it and you're aware of the effects it will have. Hopefully only your enemies are put out of sync in a bad way.

Is there a 'Premier' or 'main' dimension?

How funny that, the idea of souls in other dimensions affecting this one can be waved off with an infinity, considering our imaginations?

So... Our 'first dimension profiles' are merely a summary of all the other souls. So the matters of variables are expediantly rendered through 'degrees'.

each soul within its dynamic exists on a spectrum between chaos and peace, no doubt.

Perhaps we're perfectly in the middle.

dominant reality reasserts itself at the wrong moment you could smash into the floor really hard

how do realities reassert themselves?

how do we know what the dominant reality is?

Assertion needs a mind to percieve it. The dominant reality is this one. All others, no matter the turmoil, are merely awake for the moment of our perfect passing.

I like how our reality has a perfect balance between soft and hard, even our reasoning.


Wouldn't that be sad, for the other souls? Having to awake to madness for a time?

I didn't want a premier or main dimension. Just a sort of meta world where the most dimensions overlap and share influence. Effectively that metadimension is the main dimension. Theoretically you could push things in another direction and establish a new norm, but it would be hard to do, except in a limited space. All the other dimensions would slowly pull your new norm toward there norm. To change everything for good, you would have to change a majority of dimensions.

I figure a reality reasserts itself when the magic keeping you in attached to another reality fails. Realities also ebb and flow naturally over space and time, but typically in less dramatic fashion. When a mage artificially promotes one reality to dominance, the dominance is more fragile than if it occurred naturally.

So.. 'meta world' is like 'the main stream', and the only way to break free to is to strive, the 'majority of dimensions' being a connotation for 'the things we partake of'.

considering truth-

Creature - (fantasy):
Helldoves - Created by a benevolent force, helldoves feed off of pain and anguish. Intended to alleviate mortal suffering, natural selection led the species to develop offensive tendencies so they could ensure themselves a food supply.
Superficially they resemble doves with red and black feathers mingled amongst the white. Helldoves lack nonmagical digestive organs, their call is an eerie, piercing screech. Their claws are long and barbed, and their beaks have evolved into a single fused blade.
Helldoves try not to intentionally kill their prey- prolonging its suffering in the hopes it will attracct other animals.

Creature
A race (in the fantasy sense of the word) created by a powerful being (wizard, god, geneticist, AI, whatever) to host its consciousness. When the being's plans fall through the race is set free. Having been created to collectively host another's mind, they were not designed with good social skills. They may lack facial expressions or voices for example. Perhaps they get some sort of telepathy as a tradeoff. Given their intended function, it would make sense for them to be quite hardy.
Edit - i don't think it came across, but they were designed to host a hive mind.

Game mechanic (RPG):
For an RPG with level caps for player characters I have a work around. By adding handicaps to your character you could take a couple extra levels. Handicaps would come in the form of templates that restrict your character's actions and add weakness.
Some examples:

• A player could elect to become a lich, letting them take an extra level beyond their current max at the cost of becoming vulnerable to holy powers and gaining a new weakness in the form of a phylactery.
• Taking godly vows would might restrict you from performing heinous actions (or holy ones) but your patron would grant an additional level to your class.
• Maybe vampirism is just a set of weaknesses and all those powerful vampires only got that way by taking an extra century to study the arcane.

So the character is selling their soul, in a way?

I like the analogical nuance of things working in reverse.

The last thing you wrote is intriguing...

Essentially, vampires become weak to get strength.

Like gentle people, who reserve conflict.

Patience, a more solid thing than lashing out.

Vampires lean upon a fine understanding of infinity.

They are willing to be blotted out for a moment of bliss.


I imagine a demonic voice harping ' Sell Soul!' And coins, caching with a ghostly wail in the background.

PC Class (RPG):
The Animist
With massive debt owed to http://goblinpunch.blogspot.ca/2015/05/ ... ector.html. It's basically their idea, just reskinned.

Every night as they sleep, the animist communes with the spirits of the world around them, cajoling or coercing them to lend the animist their power. Thus, the animist wakes anew every morning with a fresh set of powers.
The powers available depend on the animist's location. Determine these powers by rolling dice at the outset of each day.
An animist has access to a wide variety of spells (though the term "spells" might not apply to the spirits summoned) though randomization robs them of that utility. The animist's real advantage is in the sheer number of spells they get each day. Just be sure to use them creatively, because they might not all be what you want.
To keep things really diverse add tables for terrain modifiers. Yeah, it's a city now, but what was it before? What season is it? Holy/unholy? Lots of places to go with this.
As the animist levels up, roll higher and higher dice to determine what spirits they have access to. The power level is fairly flat, but the highest number of every die in the progression is above par, ensuring spells get more powerful on average.
At certain levels, the animist should learn to preserve spells through their next period of rest, reroll a limited number of spells and roll a limited number of spirits off of their chosen biome, regardless of where in the world they are.
I like the idea of some spirits just being stat increases and passive abilities, not like spells at all.
Here are some example spirit lists for different environments (pretend they have names that sound like whatever you would call the spirits in your game world. I haven't found a naming scheme I like):

Cave

• Inky blackness - suck it darkvision!
• Spiderclimb - Because everythign in caves climb.
• Open fissure/ earthquake
• Summon earth elemental
• Some kind of a spell that boxes things up or puts them in a pocket dimension- like a cave inside the cave.
• Stone skin
• Does a Force blast make sense? I had it in my notes so I'd think it must

Urban
I felt that enough goes on in the city setting that I could safely divide it into commercial, residential and industrial subsections, though there would be some overlap.

• Create Tool - Limited to a certain monetary value and size, scaling with level. Vanishes in 24 hrs. (sell it anyways)
• Pave - A patch of terrain paves itself, covering rough terrain, bridging pits or pools. Follows the curve of the terrain or goes perfectly perpendicular to gravity. No ramps suspended over nothing.
• Summon Vermin
• Grease surface/object
• Eyes everywhere - Place eyes on surfaces within your line of sight. You can see out of these eyes.
• Commotion - Make a distraction.
• Charm
• Babblespeak - Target talks in nothing but meaningless babble for 1d4 * 15 min.
• Floating disc - It can carry stuff. Or smash into stuff. Or whatever. It floats.

For the desert, tundra and ocean depths biomes I'm toying with the idea of having fewer, more powerful spells that take up extra slots. These are largely empty, monotonous biomes with singular defining features. I've long thought that if such places had nature spirits they should be larger than average.

Tundra

• Cone of cold analogue
• Gigantify
• Slicken
• Harden
• Obscuring blizzard

Desert

• Some sort of fast travelling spell. Become wind? I dunno.
• Locate object
• Whirlwind
• Wish

Creature (Horror):
The monsters in slasher films are all about punishing people for being too sexy for traditional social norms, right? So why not take this to its logical conclusion? Make a slasher villain that's an angel. It doesn't even have to be overt- hinting would be fine. Not only is there novelty in subverting the formula like that, it adds a new layer of horror. Like of Lovecraft likes to suggest that we are insignificant and our beliefs amount to nothing, an angel slasher villain would suggest that our beliefs are wrong and imply dreadful things.

Setting (Fantasy): The Sinklands
The clergy say that the local people angered the gods, the druids- that they angered the earth itself. Scholars insist that the geography of the area simply lends itself powerfully towards liquefaction. Whatever the case, it's undeniable, buildings built on the sinklands sink. That's why it's called the sinklands. Because things sink.
Any artificial structure- and only artificial structures, built there sink into the earth. Houses, roads, statues, anything manmade will, over a period of years sink deep into the earth.

Family homesteads sink downward over generations, and, over generations, are rebuilt atop themselves. Old homes form inverted towers driving into the earth. Sinkland houses tend to have removable windows and doors (because they are expensive to replace), door frames that extend to the ceiling, high ceilings (to forestall the move up a floor) and tall door steps. Since having 20 levels of basement is kind of unsettling, and kids tend to get lost down there people tend to lock off their basements. Still, having a couple houses worth of storage space is pretty cool. It's a variety of architecture much appreciated by smugglers.
This tower arrangement is supported by the hardpacking of earth around the sunken structure.

The fortress of Deep Spike was designed to take full advantage of Sinklands geography. It has been under construction for 80 years. It will always be under constructed. Deep Spike is perhaps not the greatest fortress upon this earth, but certainly the greatest within it. For an invader to seize the upper levels would mean nothing. A fortress cannot truly be held while hundreds of enemies lie in waiting beneath. To drive the defenders further down is to play into their- and the architect's, expectations. To besiege the guard is a fool's game. The supplies laid in at Deep Spike would last 10 years and it is thought that there are secret means of escape or ambush from below.

Roads too sink into the earth, and their courses are replotted when they sink too low for practical use. It is the nature of the sinklands that roads- being unwalled and unroofed, aren't simply covered over by new dirt, but are converted into archways lined with hard packed dirt. Bridges are built where the new roads cross over the old, marking the nexi of a crisscrossing tunnel system.

Shrines stand out in the sinklands. Holy shrines are not considered replaceable or rebuildable, so as they sink the worshippers follow their gods down into the earth, descending ever more stairs to sing heaven's praise. A church must truly sink deep before the "reception area" above it becomes the accepted place of worship. Only strange folk remain down so low as the true churches of the sinklands.

Setting (universal): Museum of Architecture
It's kind of a weird thought isn't it- a building full of buildings*? It sounds like an intriguing setting doesn't it?
Who would make such a thing? They would have to have a lot of resources at their disposal. Particularly they will have need of land. Beyond that, it depends on the nature of the work:

• Fantasy - A high elf/dwarf made it. It's all reconstructions of ancient wonders/ things your DM neve got to use. Lots of traps.
• Scifi - It's actually just a simulation. Or aliens did it. There's a lot of space in space.
• Contemporary - Howard Hughes' reincarnation?

In a fantasy setting I like to think that magic would be used to protect against wear, but the curator would view using magic to actually help support the buildings as cheating.

And what would be in such a thing?

• World's longest bridge (a hillside had to be carved out to accommodate it's length)
• World's tallest tower ( a whole was made in the world's largest dome to accommodate it)
• The Royal Palace, but built to the originally intended specifications (tax revolts halted construction of the original's western wing)
• Examples of housing from different cultures.
• The world's oldest known building (not a recreation, the original was reconstructed here)
• Maintenance crew's barracks is a Zaha Hadid original

*A real museum of architecture would probably just have all its supports showing and be chockful of models. That would be cool too, but not as cool.

Oh can I leave it here and ask you what you think ?

I guess that works just as well here as in its original thread.