(Project Tellus until I come up with a proper name for it)
Name is now Gêma as of 2021-11-28

Here's me, trying to make an effort to share, since I've been chipping away at this world idea for about a year or so and I just generally should be more active on these forums.

This is going to be a bit more of a personal passion project for me than usual, as in, I'm not really hoping to show off whatever it is I have or look for feedback necessarily (though I have asked relevant questions in the Inquiries thread from time to time) since I have a... somewhat clear vision of what I want out of this world.

I'm building it while trying to get around a lot of my biases towards/against certain concepts like religion or gods, which have always been a pet peeve of mine in fantasy worlds. This world:

• Does not have real-world cosmology or physics
• Does not have permanent, immortal gods who created and govern it
• Does not have germs and other microscopic organisms
• Is governed by the four classical elements of earth, air, fire, and water
• Has different cultures within each race
• Follows some rudimentary laws of evolution
• Has many humanoid species, many following the moé mentality of being mostly-human in design

(list might be updated as I recall and refine important details)

Gêma is going to largely be based on Roman and Greek concepts, hence the name. From mythology to societies to technology, I want to ground it in a Roman-style fantasy, and will adopt many Latin or derived-from-Latin terms to describe it in-universe. It's probably worth listing these here in the opening post:

Latin term | usage | origin
Gêma | the plane | a contraction of Ancient Greek "Gê" (another name for Gaea or earth) and Latin "mater" [mother], another possibility is Greek goddess Demeter stemming from Gê-meter (earth-mother)
Telluria | the plane | based on real-world element named tellurium, stemming from Tellus (Latin for soil and another name for Terra)
Ma'te'ra | the plane | distortion of Latin "Terra Mater" (mother earth)
Kúthòn | the plane | from Greek chthon or khthon meaning earth/soil
anima | mana or soul-energy | Latin for "soul"
animus | soul, particularly of intelligent creatures | also Latin for "soul"
Anima Mundi | "soul of the Earth", origin of anima | probably new-age pseudoscience term, may have had historical Greek/Roman origins
leyline / ley line | boundary where one element meets with another, which creates a sort of release of energy from the friction | not Latin (new age pseudoscience term) but relevant to define
Lyciani | Elves, possibly just a specific "tribe" of them | from Lycia, but has somewhat unclear etymological origins
Tarvos | Minotaurs | from Gaulish god Tavros Trigaranus "the bull god[...]", cognate with tauros/taurus to mean "bull"
Carnutes / Carnuti | a tribe of minotaurs | historical name of Gallic/Celtic tribe of northern France, shares meaning with Cernunnos ("horned one(s)")
(list will be updated as needed)

As mentioned, Gêma does not have the normal cosmology and physics that is typically found in fantasy worlds. I think the metaphysical arrangement of planes like in D&D is messy, and the more "realistic" cosmologies which include solar systems and a universe as we would think of it (like in Pathfinder) is troublesome. Instead, the cosmology is more-or-less as the Ancients believed it. The Earth (capital Earth to refer to the world itself) is the center of the cosmos, where a gravitational force keeps all the disparate elements together and mixes them into new, impure forms.

Here's something I wrote down in flowery language about the gods (or lack thereof). It's worth noting that I do want to have worship and also tap slightly into the modern trope of gods-that-exist-because-of-belief, but I do not like the idea of them being permanent, immortal, or otherwise existing a priori. Rather, The overall "will of the world" gives birth to these temporary consciousnesses which may end up having their own agendas.

It's important to note that I had not yet nailed down what the Anima Mundi would be when I wrote this, and imagined it as a gestalt of all the myriad souls that have passed over the eons (akin to modern representations of Gaia). As of now, my new picture of the Anima Mundi is simply the combination of all the uncountable leylines where the elements meet and clash on the Earth, giving rise to a gigantic pseudo-consciousness by simply by being so complex (much like how all the atoms of a human being come together to form a living thing).

I rather like the concept that thought and souls could arise for the complex blending of elements, much as life on our world began in complex chemical interactions.

The 4 elements sorting out like layers of sediment is a cool lens to view the world through.

My understanding of the world is that all matter on the plane is drawn into a single (or perhaps several far-flung) planet's core where it is basically stirred into a fiery primal soup of higher cosmic goodness. But where does the new material come from? Does the world just grow denser every year? Does falling star stuff make up for the lost material? Is there a new material coming into being somewhere out in space? If there are newer and older "worlds" then does the densification/mixing process ramp up every so often, or is it just called a "new world" even though nothing really ends? Is there enough material from the earth's core being thrown up to the surface to keep the cycle churning forever, or will it reach a final point?

So magic is largely a matter of intent? Are rituals more of a focal aid for the mage, or a pattern that the itself world recognizes like an access code or request form?

I'm glad you're taking an interest. Thanks.



There’s answers to some questions here that will need to be fully outlined at some time, because answering them will have a lot of ramifications. A lot of it is still wibbly-wobbly and not nailed down, or else I have no interest in exploring that aspect.

Like, I don’t see a need, as yet, to make the world infinite and self-sustaining, because the process of earth→compression→earth is something that happens over geologic or astronomical timescales (I haven’t decided exactly, but “big” is the answer regardless) and I’m only really interested in telling stories of this world in a tiny sliver of that timescale. I simply imagine a universe like a jawbreaker or Matryoshka doll, with many layers already existing, rather than it being filled with more over time.

As of right now, my current “understanding” of the… let’s just call it the Big Crunch, is that the elements at the very core are broken down into “elemental energy” (mana/anima), so it would basically maintain the same density over time. Leylines slowly disappear as elements are destroyed, so as the Big Crunch draws closer, mana is going crazy, besides the land physically shrinking, the sky fire getting closer and burning everything, the moon impacting/melding with the Earth. Eventually the Earth cannot support life anymore, though there could still be eons before the next Earth forms, so basically even immortal races couldn’t survive the time between one world dying and the next being formed. HOWEVER, I’m thinking there’s still a small few that would put up a fight. Think eldritch-god-beings as planetary-cores eventually dying because of the compression effect, or gigantic draconic beings not quite able to dig through the earth above them and leaving their bones for the denizens of the future world to find.


Out of character, the former, in character, the latter. If the physical world (the Earth) is the magical result of the strange complex miracle of the Anima Mundi (like we're a weird complex state of inanimate molecules), then spellwork is the magical result of a mage mimicking the Anima Mundi on a much smaller scale. Mages direct the power of anima according to their will, but most would see that as a plea towards whatever gods they believe in and, ultimately, to the world itself. I feel that all races, no matter what other gods they may believe in or how they personify the world, would have to recognize the presence of the Anima Mundi.

Ghosts and spirits exist, populating the invisible portion of the world alongside the living, and influencing it in what subtle ways they can. The spirits of primitive beasts from primordial times up to now truly do cause disease by messing with the natural balances, their wild natures imprinting harmfully upon the infected.

I did have a bit more on the subject of ghosts and spirits, but this was from before I landed on "anima" as my word of choice for mana and energy, and I also need to do more research on Roman "spiritus" and related concepts (like lemures). The point here is that the belief that "evil spirits cause disease" is actually true for this world.

Another concept that I'm toying with is that the action of spirits influencing evolution. Oni/tieflings/demons/whatever would thrive in high concentrations of spirits because they'd be resistant to their harmful effects while also feeding on the spirits themselves, elves are highly sensitive to spiritual influence and thrive in areas of very low or no spiritual influence, humans happen to be exceptionally hardy against spiritual influence, stuff like that. I haven't fully worked it out yet.

Of all the races I'd like to include, I'm thinking of having a few major "origins" for the fleshy ones. I'm entertaining the possibility of a couple of primordial "shapeshifter" races which eventually lost that ability like in Elfquest, but truth be told I'm just trying to justify certain races being able to cross-breed without outside help, like elves and humans forming half-elves. There's some fun possibilities in there like hints of catfolk in a family tree giving someone just cat-eyes or nails (really just making a catgirl/catboy), but I've mentioned the issue before of "how do I keep a race propogating if there's all this cross-breeding?" so I haven't figured out just how I want it to work, just that I want humans and elves to be in a different category than cacaelia and other merfolk to be in a different category than eumidians and driders, et cetera.

If spirits impact your health by messing with your elemental balance then you could tie that straight into the 4 humors of classical medicine.

Maybe the local effects of the Anima Mundi in your region can influence children in uetero? Their elemental compositions are delicate and unsettled after all. Just make sure they aren't drawn to the left side of the womb or you'll have a girl child!

Trying to put my notes on Lyciani into something that’s legible to anyone that’s not me, since I have more than a few lines on what I want out of them.

Firstly, as noted in the first post, I’m using Lyciani as my word for elves – the Latin exonym for the Lycian people. The name Lycia has somewhat unclear etymological origins, but it’s similar to Greek lykos meaning “wolf” (see: lycanthrope). I chose this specifically because I want to base my elves on wolves, most likely because of my love of the Elfquest series, though I suppose it’s worth saying that I strangely don’t have the same desire for wolf-folk as I do for catfolk (along any range of the furry spectrum).

Some basic dog/wolf biology and the likely implications for my elves:
Aspect | Wolf / Dog | Implication
Senses | acute sense of hearing and smell, better night vision and motion sensitivity but less visual acuity, less sensitive taste | possibly prefer “overly spiced” foods, and/or are all highly sensitive to stimuli
Pack/social animals | packs are formed of nuclear families of breeding parent pairs and their younger children | great importance could be placed on “lineage” and clans
Territory | keep, mark, and defend territory from other packs | could be territorial, expansionist, and even colonialist
Hunting | capable of maintaining chase over long periods without tiring | ties in with elven stereotypes for being unmatched hunters etc.
Diet | not obligate carnivores, can eat many different meats, insects, fruit, even grass (mainly to induce vomiting) | cannot stomach leafy greens or root vegetables, but fond of fruit and wine; cultivated fruit trees and berry bushes rather than vegetables and grains
Growth rate | pups grow into adults very quickly | adulthood comes quickly, with longevity coming from other sources
Mating seasons | defined mating seasons (at least for Gray Wolves) in late winter to have pups in spring | have a “rutting” season which plays havoc with their hormones*, especially with adventurers (who may have other hormonal problems because of travel); those living in warmer climates might experience problems with their health because of less-clearly-defined seasons
Sex features | (hidden for propriety) internal male genitalia, bacculum, “tieing” for long periods | other races would mistake male and female elves due to more subtle sexual differences, they might be known as “sex-crazed” between rutting seasons and long intimacy sessions

*hormones will need to be replaced with some other concept, given I’m doing away with tiny molecules and such

A number of factors above point me towards Lyciani shaping and caring for their territory to preserve the wild nature of it, so as to entice prey and keep good hunting grounds – as opposed to the more human inclination to terraform. I don’t want to model them after the Plains Indian tribes (e.g. Lakota) that followed the giant buffalo herds but that is the kind of visual that comes to mind: quote-unquote “savages” that eschew “civilized” life with destructive farming in favor of hunting wild game (plus if the humans are the “Romans” of my setting, incorporating conquered peoples but still looking down at them as “barbarians”, it helps that narrative angle). They would lean towards being naturalists (i.e. elves) simply because of their manner of living.
Visually speaking, I’m lightly tapping into the “androgynous elves” trope because I like the idea of outsiders not being able to tell them apart even naked and all the awkward cultural comedy that would come with that; however I’m not so in love with the trope that I’m not toying with some way to make them more… voluptuous if I can just say that outright, since I highly enjoy the more human-proportioned elves (as opposed to the lanky, often-sinewy design seen in elves like Norwood Ranger). It might require figuring out the entire logistics of their biology, but that will come with time. They have sharp features with very long ears resembling WoW elves, though rather than the cloudy eyes I always see in WoW (fan)art, they simply have eyes that shine in the dark, and small fangs (possibly also sharp fingernails, still debating). Originally, I figured to keep hair and eye color closer to that found in wolves, as well as a darker, tan-like skin tone, but those are things that realistically vary across the world, which is part of what makes me think “Lyciani” might just be a single nation of elves rather than the entire race.

While it truthfully doesn’t really “make sense” for Lyciani to both grow into adulthood quickly and still live considerably longer than humans, I’m still enamored with the idea, and have been floating ideas to figure out how to make it work. I’ve been working with the idea that Lyciani “evolved” to live in areas of low-mana density – like the jagd from FF12 that saps magic from the area – which is why they’re extremely sensitive to anima and spirits. Living in such “deserts” would lead them to hibernate from time to time to basically “recharge their battery” on what little ambient mana was around. Hibernation cycles would easily tie into having mating seasons, but it also implies that living in more vibrant climates would:
a) cause them to not hibernate or hibernate for much shorter periods;
b) have shorter lifespans if their hibernation is what extends their lifespan;
c) mature more slowly since hibernation is a thing for adults to do and isn’t so easy on children.
That means a “warmer climate” elf would more closely resemble a human in terms of growth and lifespan, while their “colder climate” brethren would grow quickly and age slowly.

Lastly, Slurs:
Bright-eyes (due to their eye shine)
Fox-face (due to their long ears and sharp features)
Night rabbits (long ears and a reputation as nocturnal)

While the exact nature of the world of the dead hasn't been nailed down for Gêma yet, I'm going to tap into the Ancient belief that sleep is "akin to death" and the idea of the soul leaving the body at nights. Dreams would then literally be the remnant memories of a person's wandering soul. Visions from the gods would thus be real and true, and deeper sleeps could accompany astral projection like techniques. This will likely have deep implications for Lyciani (elves), who hibernate, and driders, who will be weavers and the association silk and webbing has had with such things, and possibly other races which perhaps don't sleep at all.

It's worth noting that this world is/will be where some of my other stories take place, such as A Lesson in Necromancy, so it will kind of cannibalize some of those earlier concepts like my portrayal of the "Land of the Dead" in that story being the flowing, liquid memories of the dead rather than a physical place.

In addition, a clarifying point about gods: I do still want there to be powerful individual beings that end up being worshipped as gods (akin to oldwalkers), but the idea of native gods are as detailed before: rather than there being gods that are responsible for the world's creation, they're a kind of amalgam of willpower that living beings impose upon the surrounding anima, however temporary. I'll have to toy around with the exact mechanics of it later, after doing more research into Roman religion (though some posts on what I've already found can be seen in the Inquiries thread).

I've been hesitant to post any sort of list of races and near-races (e.g. angels) before actually developing some understanding of what they are and where they fit in, but I think it's worth talking about some of them at the very least, and the problems I'm struggling with as I consider them.

Tiefling / Oni / Azra
Given the push lately away from D&D- and Tolkein-style "this race is all stereotypically this way", one major thing I've been struggling with in including some of my favorite visually-designed humanoids is the idea that they are literally descended from demons. Even ignoring the oft-misguided attempts at smoothing the different races to dullness, that concept specifically doesn't sit well with me, especially given my Greco-Roman inspirations and the comparative lack of equivalent entities. Using demons directly is a possibility but I'm not sure if that would be any better or worse, and one doesn't necessarily preclude the other.

One of the concepts I originally had pegged to separate them from demons was that they evolved from humans to live in areas of dangerously high amounts of anima/spirits, possibly as a direct opposition to Lyciani (elves) who evolved for the opposite.

Lyciani (Elves)
It's worth mentioning that my wolfish elves are giving me a few of the same problems as my as-yet-only-conceptual tieflings, and is making me question just how big this world may be and where certain races are located. I'm fond of elves of all skin tones, and in point of fact I think really dark-skinned elves would be a better fit for savannah-like plains than underground, but I digress. The point is, on the one hand I have the option to have one race name to describe a far-reaching and varied people, and on the other I have the option of what I've been describing as simply one of many pole-proportioned dendrophiles across the face of Gêma.

Caruntes (Minotaur)
These are more-or-less the typical animé representation of minotaurs: humans with horns, usually a bit bigger and either more muscularly built ("bull") or more heavy-set ("cow"). They'll kind of reflect the Gauls a bit in this Roman fantasy I'm constructing, possibly with influence from Plains Indian nations (e.g. Lakota) as I look to bison as my bovid of choice to base them on. I'll also be incorporating the weird social dynamics that I've talked about before.

Catfolk
Catfolk bring several points to the table that would need to be addressed at some point (mostly still being worked on as I do the necessary research). Firstly there's the clear comparison to be made to my elves, because while I chose to make a completely "human" race (elf) wolfish, I also have the expected feline counterpart as a "furry" race. To be honest, I've just never liked canine "races" -- from Starfox to werewolves to Holo the Wise Wolf -- as appealing as fuzzy cat people. Even so, it seems natural to go for the low-hanging fruit regarding catfolk: they don't get along well with the wolfish elves, they are aligned with the element of water (because "cats are liquid"), etc.

Another point is that of interbreeding and hybridization, because of course I'd like to allow some possibility of catgirls in addition to my cat girls. That (along with implications of half-elves and such) motivated me to sketch out an outline of "genera" of my humanoid races -- i.e. the races that can and cannot inter-breed to create hybrids. One possible explanation for this (still up in the air) is the idea of different lineages, like for instance if tieflings were literally spawned from demons and thus wouldn't be able to interbreed with non-demonspawn. Hybridization and the passing of traits is a more complicated subject, both because I don't yet know much of what the pre-modern notion of heredity was, and because I'm not sure how much I'd like to toy around with blended bloodlines and "blood gifts" (such as an otherwise-human family with vague cattish traits like sharp nails and limber bodies). I'd like to simplify the whole thing to not worry so much about accounting for real-world phenomena like recessive traits.

Merfolk and their ilk
In past stories, I've defined differences between merfolk as natural humanoids and selkies as human-hybrids (often via individual transformation). While I do like this concept, the sheer range of merfolk that can be found based on numerous fish, sharks, octopuses (cecaelia), and other oceanic animals (such as jellyfish) prompted me to expand my concept of "merfolk" for my world. One of the above-mentioned "genera" would be the Oceanids, which while not yet highly defined would include most of the water-dwelling humanoids (and if we're going by the "lineages" theory are probably the distant descendants of whatever abyssal eldritch-spawn that was inserted into the "new world" from the last). Like the selkies mentioned above, I'm still toying with the idea of at least one "merfolk" type to be able to interbreed, possibly because they went to the water rather than coming from the water.

Insect morphs
Originally, I was simply going to include eumidians (a MtG-specific race name for wasp-people which haven't been seen since... Onslaught I think? Long before my time) because I enjoy a good bee-person but feel like they're done to death (and not all wasps are bad asses), but after opening up the merfolk race(s) I realized I could do the same with a myriad of insects. While I think it's obvious that they should be from a different "genera" than humans and merfolk, at current I can only think to lump them into a sort-of "forest" group that could include plant-people.

Asura (for lack of a better name)
Machamp (Pokémon), Goro and Sheeva (Mortal Kombat), Four Arms (Ben 10): there's a number of depictions of four-armed people across media, often with colored skin, but there doesn't seem to be any common name for them. Most seem to pay homage to Asura or Deva from Hindu mythology, the same way multi-armed naga/lamia are (though in my research it seems that such depictions do not exist in Hinduism, outside of a single instance of a "local god" type shrine I found for some village). While not common, Greco-Roman mythology has multi-armed giants as well, and I know that Alexander the Great made it all the way to India, though I know little of how much the two cultures interacted. While I do not like traditional orcs or giants, I am considering having these by my "orcs" or "giants", as tall four-armed humanoid people. Allowing interbreeding opens up odd new directions for hybrids, too, like six-limbed cat people (like a displacer beast), but also really needs the question of heredity addressed since four arms just cannot propagate infinitely.

You might want to check how you spelled insect morphs.

F_$#ing oops.

I can't even blame autocorrect, because I am certain that I wrote that post on my computer. I can only guess that I mistyped and didn't pay attention to what the suggestion was.

I edited a few lines on the Lyciani/elf post because I was growing uncomfortable with my phrasing while I stewed on it.

Also while I always get anxious over posting obviously-unfinished writings, I feel I should post a few of the "biological laws" which I wrote out sometime recently (italics signify other concepts that would need to be explained):



Aging

Aging is a Sickness – a death from the thousand cuts inflicted imperceptibly by time – and like any other Sickness is carried and imparted by malevolent and misguided Spirits and Remnants which pervade the world of Gêma. Lowly animals and plants can do nothing against such sickness, and often unwittingly invite it into their bodies (though through the greater machinations of the Anima Mundi this may be purposeful, such as with the death of summer flowers before the chill of winter), but reasoning souls may act to counter this toll on their beings. This is why the races of Homines are so long-lived compared to baser animals, even those resembling themselves: with the power of reasoning, they are able to resist and even banish the spirits of aging. Most are able to do this without conscious thought, through the many customs and rituals that have been invented again and again across the various cultures, but some few are capable of furthering their lives even more through the use of special rites.

In plain language, the process of aging, and the body healing from aging, is tied in to the pervasive spirits which cause all sicknesses. The humanoid races are long-lived for creatures of their size and type (e.g. insect-folk) because they are capable of banishing these spirits using the simple markings of civilization. Simple rituals such as bathing or teeth-cleansing help remove the smaller malevolent forces that the body attracts, while more complicated services like religious rites can do more thorough cleansing (often on a group rather than individual). Death, of course, eventually comes because these spiritual forces vastly outnumber the living and one cannot fight them every moment of their lives – and also certain actions attract these forces more powerfully anyway, such as consuming or defecating – but some powerful magic-users are capable of powerful cleansing and resistance spells that would keep them alive near-indefinitely.

Elemental Lineage

While all creatures of Gêma are composite beings of all four elements – earth, air, fire, and water – most tend towards one element specifically. In some cases, this is manifest directly in their biology, such as the fire which Drakes tend to breathe, but many other effects are far more subtle. These different tendencies are present in each race of the Homines, and are referred to as that race’s elemental lineage.

Example Race|Lineage|Manifestations
Human| None| Most freely able to adapt
Elf| Fire| Higher temperature; affected by cold (hibernation)
Catfolk| Water| Flexible
Alraune/treefolk| Earth| Reflects the typing of plants
Harpy| Air| Wings
Asura| Earth| Great strength and resilience
Merfolk| Water| Reflects the typing of fish
Slimes| Water| Blob of thick water
Angel| Air| Beings born of air itself
Dragon| Fire| Beings of elemental fire
Demon| Earth| Beings born of earth
Nymphs| (Varies)| Elementals

As listed here, there are beings that are elementals themselves, or are birthed from the elements and have no parentage. They always resonate with their element strongest, though in contrast to Spirits possess some manner of body reflecting that of flesh-bound mortals (though their lives may not be measured the same as mortals do).

Æther

As a purely philosophical exercise, there exists a fifth element, one which acts as a void or medium through which the other four travel, or from which the other four spring. This unseen fifth element is referred to as æther. One of the “proofs” of its existence is the order of density of the elements (and the way they morph to each other as they are compressed). In the same reflection of the Cosmos, fire occupies the lightest spot and has no physical mass behind it, merely force; air follows one step below as a void which possesses some small mass but weaker force; next is water which has considerable mass and little intrinsic force; finally comes earth as a solid mass which absorbs rather than emits force. Some scholars think that aether is something even lighter than fire, others that it is denser than that most dense of earths, metal, while still others bend this line into a circle and say that aether resides where both these extremes touch.

An important point of debate in the study of æther is that of reproduction – specifically that of pregnancy and development. Women hold the key to æther, for within their wombs, elements are combined where none were before.

Sickness and Disease

Sickness and disease are spread by the malevolent Spirits and Remnants that pervade the world. Only those few who are attuned to the Spirits and the Anima Mundi are actually aware of these forces by themselves, but barring the most insidious sicknesses passed on by the most devious of these wicked souls, all people can see their effects. Some illnesses are only conferred to some particular person, typically through their own unprincipled or dishonorable actions which attract these Spirits of corruption. Others are caused by such bestial forces that they will lash out and afflict any which come near enough to them. Certain physical things, such as uncovered feces, and certain “immoral” actions, such as cavorting with the dead, attract these forces of affliction, and as such the effluvium which the sick give off tend to infect others nearby, such as the family of the sick. The best defense against these forces is the proper rituals of cleanliness that every culture of Gêma invent, and the rites of religions which can properly banish them.

In plain language, while germs do not actually exist, the same principles still apply while having interesting implications from the Ancient concept of “evil spirits” causing disease. For one, causes of diseases can be much more broad than in reality — “sinful” actions (which can vary from culture to culture) can actually cause sickness or simply interacting with the wrong materials, like a curse. For another, these spirits might take a particular interest in an individual or their bloodline because of their actions and no one else. While common modern understandings of “cleanliness” as well as religious purification can have actual effects, but some certain people are truly capable of seeing or sensing the spiritual forces which cause sickness; typically those people are capable of seeing deeper into the Land of the Dead than simply these Remnants, but whether they are capable of interacting with the forces is another issue.

Remnants

Not every Spirit which wander across Gêma are fully capable of reason, or even the wild instinct of animals. The dead may outnumber the living several times over, but life was not always as complex as it is today. And, as it is also known how grudges may affect Souls in the afterlife, how much might a soul change over vast times, longer than many generations? Remnants encompass both these spiritual forces: the half-formed Spirits with little will of their own which cling to the living as their only instinct, and the shriveled husks of once-full Spirits affected by multiple lifetimes of harmful emotions which want nothing more than to lash out. Both are little more than tiny pieces of Will which flow through the Anima of the world and collect like so much flotsam upon the bodies of the living.

I wrote what will hopefully be a more clear description of the cosmology of the celestial spheres (including some words on how the stars and other celestial bodies work), but I'm not going to put in the effort right this moment to format it for the forums.

Instead, I'm going to break down the names that I think might actually be the finalized names for this project, where they came from, how I imagine them to be pronounced, et cetera.



Pronunciation: /ge:ma/ or /gɛ:ma/ - meaning [geh-ma] or [gay-ma] with a hard g and a lengthened first vowel

Source: Gê, another name for Gaea or word for earth/soil in Ancient Greek, and Latin mater as in Terra Mater (mother earth). Demeter might have also had an ancient name of Gê-meter (earth-mother).

Notes: Essentially the macron (the ^) is used here in the French style to guide pronunciation, but Ancient Greek was (probably) a tonal language, and the ê indicated a falling tone. I personally cannot understand tones at all, but the falling tone does not sound "right" for the name, so instead I defaulted to a manner of pronunciation that's more understandable to my American mind.



Pronunciation: /te.lu:ɾia/ - [tell-ooh-ria] with the stress on the middle syllable and a flapped "r" sound (the way many dialects of English pronounce the double-t in words like "better")

Source: a real-world element named tellurium, which itself derives its name from Tellus, Latin for soil and another name for Terra (Roman Gaea or the earth).

Notes: Perhaps the most straightforward of the names I came up with, it also feels the least inspired due to the lack of distortion from the word I used as a base and the common -ia ending.



Pronunciation: /matɛɾa/ or /matɛra/ - [mah-teh-rah] with a flapped "r" sound and no stressed syllable

Source: Latin Terra Mater (mother earth), distorted slightly

Notes: In wanting to obfuscate the source a bit I did away with the double letters and shaped it to look more like the way syllabic languages such as Hawaiian, where vowels always stand by themselves and pronunciation is not changed by other vowels in sequence -- are transliterated.



Pronunciation: something like /kuθõn/ - something like [coo-thōn] with a "soft" th like in "thought" and a slight nasal pronunciation of the "o" - I do not understand pitch at all and cannot even properly hear this name in my own head

Source: Greek chthon or kthon meaning soil/earth, from where we get "chthonic"

Notes: The accents over the vowels might be the wrong way around (Kùthón) but because I cannot grasp tones I cannot say. It's shape (for lack of a better word) opened it up to use in a pitch-accent language, though, so I thought I would write it as such, though there's still room for changing its presentation for other methods of pronunciation, simply by changing the accent marks.

As promised, here is another treatise on the layering of the cosmos. Most important new information is:

• the sky is dark for the same reason the sky is blue or polar bears are white: density
• pure elemental fire is a waxy substance, rather than the ethereal one we're used to
• long strands of the celestial fire that bubbles out into the sky like a lava lamp are what make up stars
• wandering stars are bubbles that broke off, or hunks of rock from the earthen sphere
• the earthen sphere is uneven, which means the "stars" are scattered unevenly and form a Milky Way type of thing

Still spitballing a number of things like a possibly-living sun, a possibly-liveable moon, deep forests, and the origins of tieflings/azra/oni/ogres (I don't know what to call them yet), but I want to make sure I have a chunk of readable lore and not be accidentally anti-Semitic when I post.

I've got a few more scraps to post, mostly about dragons.


I'll need to work on these two a bit more, not least because it's made me think about gods again. While I still have a bugbear about gods and religion as they are commonly used in D&D-like settings, beings that are literally the sun and the molten core of the earth are too powerful not to be considered gods in some fashion. They also make me realize I need to nail down the Gaea-like consciousness of my world (and whether to call it Gaea or Gêma).



For a reminder, dragons are beings of pure elemental fire and reproduce by burning away another person's soul and leaving part of their inner fire in its place in a kind-of fission. I happened to think what the logical conclusion of that would be when I happened across some cutsey kid dragons like from FF14. I think there would be room for "savior" types which took a child from a warzone and/or on their deathbed, but it wouldn't be the norm.

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I've also nailed down some physical distances in my cosmology. I decided to just straight-up go with the Ancient Greek measurements I found of how they thought the Sun and Moon were (specifically Aristarchus's measurements):

| Sun | Moon
Size (radius) | ~7x Earth | ~1/3x Earth
Distance | 380 radii away | 20 radii away

Obviously Gêma is of comparable size to Earth, though I think either way the ratios would work out well enough. The distances are such that a terrestrial bird could not simply visit the sun or winter on the moon (though I'm debating having angels on the moon). Even some of the best long-distance fliers we know of on Earth would take most of a year to fly to the moon at that distance and close to 7 years to make it to the sun.

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A last note on names: I changed Carnutes for the race name of minotaurs to Tavros. Tavros Trigaranus was a Gaulish god whose name partially means "the bull god", and tavros is cognate with taurus/tauros. Time will tell if I stick with that name or go back. I've also grown displeased with Lyciani as a race name for elves, but I haven't found a suitable replacement yet.

There's a character concept for this world that hasn't left my head and I am starting to seriously consider commissioning art for it since I cannot find anything close to a good visual for it. I call her the Lady of Ash.

Firstly, I want to describe the way she came about because the whole process was my specific brand of weird:

Like two weeks ago I had this idea for a Pokémon story involving Ninetales -- which is basically just a kitsune yokai anyway but that's not too important -- and thought that "surely somebody has written something like this already," and decided to reach an exploratory tentacle into Archive Of Our Own. Well, from my tentative searching it appears maybe not, but one of the little ditties I decided to inflict upon my eyeballs (I never realized how bad fanfiction is, I don't think I've ever read such badly-written works) caught my attention. Without getting too far into describing it, it involved a fire-type pokemon and "sharing body heat," and I wanted to copy it to some extent.

What followed was the birthing of a Dark-Souls-like pit of undead babies, like Nito's tomb.



Out of the few races that I've put any thought into of this world of mine, it made the most sense to involve Dragons as beings of fire. However, since my dragons do not reproduce biologically, I realized the only way to have a woman pregnant with a baby dragon would be to have the draconic "parent" burn away the baby's soul while the mother was still pregnant with it. After I established this fact, I thought through the implications of it all:

1. Given the typical draconic personality (I'm going with the general trope of "proud dragon race" for this one), the idea of pursuing having weak tiny offspring would probably be the domain of some particularly eccentric dragon, in the first place, some "mad science" type.
2. There is no way this would just work the first time. Or probably the first few dozen or hundreds of times. Undoubtedly, the mother would not survive the process in pretty much all circumstances.
3. Assuming the "mad science" type who would continue to try until finding the right woman who could survive the flames, that would still mean they'd have to dispose of the bodies somewhere.
4. Now, we have a dark pit (probably under a castle somewhere given many dragons would like to rule as kings) which has the little remnant cinders of draconic babies never born, and all the "kindling" of their dead mothers. Basically they would be ashen undead, crawling around in the darkness in a setpiece somewhere between Resident Evil and Dark Souls.
5. Enter: the first woman to survive the process. Now pregnant with a being of elemental fire.
6. Firstly, even if she survives the process, she doesn't have an actual growing child inside of her, rather something more like a little candle flame, kept alight by the same bodily functions that would be growing a baby in her womb.
7. Essentially that means she would become permanently pregnant -- and as a side-note it also implies that many mothers in this experiment were consumed by their unborn child being too ravenous, rather than dying outright.
8. The process of burning away her child's soul would undoubtedly leave her scarred, as well, so we have a basic silhouette now: permanently pregnant and heavily burned.
9. Imagine now, how violent the conversion process must be. Surely, with as burned as this mother became, she still nearly died. Probably even given no hope for survival, given how many times this had already happened, unsuccessfully. And we've already got a pit full of dead mothers...
10. So this woman, left for dead, is thrown into the dark pit of dead and burned bodies and the ashen undead babies which they were killed for. Only, she is not dead. She is alive, and pregnant with the "live" sibling of all these little ashen ones.
11. No matter her feelings on the matter, she would become the surrogate mother to these ashen infants.

Once I had all that established, and I was left with this Lady of Ash character, and realizing how much it would just fit right into a Souls game, there were a few finishing touches I wanted to put on her, but don't yet know how to justify. I think a true Souls game would have her usurp the dragon who did this to her, rule in their place, but I'm not sure how that would come about. She would have all of the ashen spirits at her beck and call, but I'm not sure of anything beyond that. Perhaps part of her soul was also transformed when her baby was changed, making her a half-dragon, or maybe she can channel the power of her unborn child, and would either possibility make her immortal?

Like I said at the top, I tried looking for some visuals in all the usual places. There's no denying the character came about from a place of kink, and I would want/expect a type of "tragically beautiful waifu" design, but there is so little art of pregnant women out there, even fewer of burned or scarred women (especially if it's not a small scar over one eye), and across all the big art sites I only found 4 images that even had those tags together, none of which were fitting enough, of course. It's why I'm considering commissioning art, because I am becoming preoccupied with this character and want to actually see it since I cannot seem to visualize it myself.

I had a bit of a worldbuilding epiphany this weekend, thinking through some of the implications of what I most want to be true for my elves.

So I've already said that I've been basing my elves (previously referred to as Lyciani but I find that name cumbersome and have been looking for alternatives) on wolves, but there are some particulars that are outside the scope of canine biology and behavior that I'd like to include. Relevant to this post is that, rather than having a "breeding season" every year, I would rather individual elves to "come into heat" every few years. Surprisingly, I discovered that's already something brown bears -- famous for hibernating through the winter -- already do, so it's not even an awkward inclusion.

Another minor point that I've so far been working under is that elves and humans are closely related, moreso than most other races. Until I revise the evolutionary history of Gêma's races, this may as well be true.

Now part of the foundation of Gêma is that I'm working with Classical physics and biology, where things were made of the Four Elements and evil spirits caused illnesses. It would stand to reason, then, that other phenomenon, like breeding seasons, are also caused by spiritual influence.

So, then, with the above taken into account, it implies that sometime, eons ago, the elves must have made a pact with the "spirits of spring" or whatever you'd call them, to only visit every few years. In order to honor their end of the pact, it must be exceedingly difficult if not impossible for an elf to ignore this call or banish the spirits which grip them (something others may likely practice as a cleansing ritual).

Of course, this is wrapped up in the whole cultural misunderstanding between humans and elves, who each think the other is sex-crazed because they don't understand their culture or biology -- with elves seeing humans as constantly "in heat" and humans thinking any elf can become a predatory lunatic.