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I have the core world for my fantasy setting, known as Aneraph. But the galaxy, and the nearby starsystems, are occupied by various worlds as well. I've got five other planets with fully developed life, as opposed to planets like Eox, that blasted off their own atmosphere during a mage war which I outright copied from Golarion's solar system. I would like help fleshing these worlds out with nations, civilizations, races, religions, and more.
It's used for Pathfinder and GURPS mostly.
The Galaxy of Anuld: Set on the prime materal plane Anuld is home to the last two surviving Primordials, Creation and Oblivion, aside from The Creator (benevolent overgod of fate) they are the oldest beings in existance. While the rest of the primordials killed each other off at the beginning of time, with the death of the Time primordial itself creating linear history within the prime materal plane, these two had a moment of stockhold syndrome, and unable to kill each other, fell in love. They reside at the center of the galaxy, and their "star forge" gives birth to new solar systems in addtion to those that form naturally. (Which is why there are many more habitable systems close to each other.)
Aneraph: is the prime planet belonging to the central solar system, of a cluster near the starforge. It is protected from the forge by a shield wall of dead planets, meteorites, and black holes on the "western side" of the cluster. It's already developed my me as a fantasy world with dead civilizations layered underneath the crust stretching back billions of years, so the Underdark is actually layers of ruins and caverns.
The Planes: Earth, Water, Fire, Air, Positive, and Negitive, with their overlaping planes (ooze, magma, lightning, and so forth) are the inner planes. With various afterlives, odd realms, and the massive Asteral plane, as the outer plane. The etheral plane, and the Fae Realm, are out of phase with the materal world, but can be reached via magic, if the stars are right, ect. Anything summoned from the planes to a world is subject to the laws of the materal plane. (This is why you can kill elementals, demons, archons, ect.)
The five nearby system prime worlds: I want help developing ideas for various cultures, factions, nations, warlords, ect. I'm giving you premission to go crazy and create fluff.
Quasslam:A world where magic is used for everything. I got the idea from a player who continuiously created magical items to min-max himself and make money. Magic is everything, and it has created a rapid magic based economy where a Mage Guild is the equivilent of a cyberpunk Mega Corp in power. However many mages have become vapid, self-important, and shallow, and non-magical innivation has gone down the crapper. Why develop warm clothing when you can enchant endure elements on this weeks most popular dress?
Cereaph: At first a joke planet, and partly to taunt a player with a psycotic lesbian gnome, who went looking for an "amazon world" it became a real world. Cereaph is a world of tall amazonian women, all humanoids on seraph are female as the result of a million year breeding program of an elder civilization. It came to the conclusions that women were superior to men, just as real life greeks & romans believed in somthing simmilar5 for men. This civilization stumbled upon the concept of "eugenics" from studying noble bloodlines, and paired it with magic. Thus all of the major humanoids are "perfect" women. Dwarves were destroyed in the ensuing subtle conflicts. However the planetwide belief in prefection lives on after the civilization itself fell. They have mastered art, bronze, and magic, but their civilizations are extremely conservitive, and have a strong sense of Civic pride.
Duazzo: The Yang to Cereaph's Ying, and again, because I wanted to fustrate a lesbian gnome and her lewd player. Durazzo is an all male world. A demon lord of fertility & disease tried to destroy it by creating a pathogen that damaged the female cromozone. Thus rendering all humanoid women infertile or stillborn within a few generations. There's an elaborate return to nature idology behind it, but that's not important. Druids and other primal faiths did not survive the ensuing fallout. But the people of Durazzo survived via a simmilar magical proccess used on Cereaph. The planet is the only one of the five to have undergone an industrial revoloution due in large part to a lack of population for a long time, making it slightly steampunk in flavor. Religion and Knightly Chivalry still play a major roll on this world, due to their involvement in destroying the demonic hordes.
Bawia: a world ruled by two massive states, and their puppets, it originated from the idea "if China and Rome became superpowers and the parthians and persians weren't in the way." The Empire of Silver in the west and the Imperial Tribune States in the east are largely made up of fudal states and warlords that answer to powerful emperor. War is incessent, but neither side can triumph due to the sheer size of the other.
Geruth: a world where savagery triumphed, where life is short, hard, and stubborn. Humanoids live in tribes, small nomadic states, and occasionally city states. Geruth is trapped by it's own barbaric nature and lack of pack animals (no horses...). The worst aspects of primitive religions run free here, druids commit blood sacrifice to bless crops, priests tear hearts out on altars and commune with their gods using drugs. Wizards and sorcerers are almost unheard of, even written language is rare.
Additional note: Bonus points for creating and naming dead worlds.
Drama Avoidance Disclaimer: Some places this would cause a flame war and odd accusations with two mono-gender planets. especally with Ceraph having a bit of sexisim in it's past. Some of my players would start cracking heads if I used males. So by putting it on an amazonian style planet it is a way to explore, talk about, and confront with an uncomfortable topic. Without invoking the "it's evil, smash it in the face" reflex right away.
Please don't flame. It's not about politics, it's about telling a good story.
Cereaph and Duazzo (Durazzo?) seem a little... planet of silly hats and difficult to explain away. It's true that it's been theorized that women can procreate without men; and magic likely helps this out; but wouldn't men on Cereaph go underground... because surely not every woman hates men, right? See this pretty awful scifi movie for some ideas on how a society that has lost all its men might look like... The Last Man on Planet Earth.
As for the other side of things, Durazzo is confusing. Even as a gay man, I find it hard to believe that a planet of men would take the "No women" thing lying down. Also, how the heck do new men get born? A handwave of "Magic" might work; cloning might go so far as to work; but WHY? what is the actual point of getting rid of all the women? Just so that there's an opposite land? The rest of Durazzo's story is much more compelling, tbh. Steampunk Paladins could be very interesting.
Okay, here's an idea: The God sent a plague that renders many women infertile. As a result, fertile women are treated as queens, both revered, but also sort of enslaved to bear as many children as possible. (I know it's horrible, but you've got to be logical with society making.) This also makes it even more awkward for your Player, as she could be in danger of becoming permanently "Protected" for future reproduction.
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They started as "planet of silly hats" but quickly developed into an actual place as I fleshed out the setting, I like the idea of them becoming more, but I'm struggling with them. Part of why I asked for help.
I refrained from posting the sexual bits out of fear of forum lock.
I think I'll do somthing a bit reminicent of the Star Trek episode. Have men in a seriously deminished role. I'll say you don't see many men because they are far less numerious.
I'll say the gender ratio was skewed towards female, but men were not elminiated. To top it off in most places the men are servants and home makers, it's not cruel, but it is biased, and it's "known" they are inferior without any actual evidence.
With a more martial aspect to the world even after the magic, they have bread towards size and strengh with a warrior queen vibe. I'm sticking with various classical influences, greek, briton, persian, ect.
Durazzo popped into my head as a bit "courtly chivalry" gone steampunk, in contrast to the Greek style "harsh sexisim" of Ceraph, Durazzo had a "soft sexisim" aspect to it. Now that I think of it, that could play into the chivalric aspects of it.
They regard women so highly they are placed in gilded cages, often an entire city having one to five women of breeding age at any given time. Having various countries, from republics, kingdoms, to barbarian tribes, treat them with varying degress of freedom, respect, and control. But the cultural cage remains.
Probably have many nations all coming from the same gene pool, and trying to get more women out of the bloodline has resulted in a preference towards feminine features.
OOOOH thank you for kick starting my brain!
No problem. As for your other worlds, I think that the most interesting part for me on Bawia would be the lands that have been conquered and reconquered. Say "Subjugatia" is a province, currently in The Empire's control, but fifty years ago, it was Imperial; and twenty years before Empire again. The Subjugatians are likely sick of both powers, and maybe some of them are ready to rise up and declare independance?
For Geruth, it's hard to imagine why an entire world would prefer nomadic life to the easier life of domestication in small villages, at the least. What makes Geruthians cling to the nomadic way of life? In our own world, nomadic tribes have mainly switched to at least a small amount of village life; the few that I know about live in deserts where crops cannot grow, and they raise herds of animals by grazing on sparse vegetation. Is it a religion that keeps them wandering? Hostile climate? Maybe the world spins flat on its axis around the sun, shifting from severe winters on opposite poles that take up the entire hemisphere, so the tribes must be on the move throughout the year?
Quasslam is interesting because of its potential risks. What happens when you become dependant on a miracle and stop teaching your children to think? What happens to the Quass when a virus or other disease begins to spread that is 100% resistant to all forms of Magic? or if a species of monsters comes that has powers much like Leech from the Xmen? The beautiful cities are so fragile because they haven't faced a challenge in so long.
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Biawa: I think that would be a fantastic place to drop the players so they can get a feel for what the world itself is like. Probably have a lerge number of grumbling states in the "buffer zone" between the two massive states.
Geruth: I'll have planet tidal locked, a bit distant from their sun resulting in incredibly harsh winters, with rough settlements dotting the landscape. I think I'll remove the "nomads only" bit, in favor of a more primal and savage landscape. It's actually a smaller, older, but dense world with high mineral deposits. However the surface is largely desolate and in the grips of dust storms, freezing temperatures, akin to an ice age. Which makes settlement life hard and unpredictable.
I'm thinking closer to stone age britons, proto-celts, and horse nomads.
Iron and Bronze is rare, and hard to make, the technology just isn't well spread, and the facilities are hard to establish.
One of the big things is there's no material to make easy paper out of. There are trees, but no plant to make papyrus out of. The only written messages are in runic stone. There is the occasional paper made from pounded bark, but but like metal, it is rare because it requires an actual facility to do the lacquering and carving.
Probably give a few large enough tribes a "great hall" a religious site survives on pilgrimages and tribute from the surrounding tribes. Maybe have the priests as the only educated people on the surface, with them handing out "magical" items such as those made of metal.
That works actually, with most people seeing letters as a magic thing for priests & shaman. Anyone who's not a priest must therefore be playing with dark magic, and is going to get a club to the face.
Probably make druids a major tribal figure too, with wood and stone circles as meeting places.
The more I think on it the more such a world would favor it's underground residents, such as dwarves and drow. I'll make them the well educated residents of the planet. With the occasional odd ruin poking out of the mountains.
Quasslam: I'm not quite sure where to take it to be honest. I remember a book that had a future where american children were taught fashion, how to accessorize and shop, because you could look anything up on the internet faster than learning it in a class room. It was into it's third generation of that so even the "corporate overlords" were ignorant, so that when the internet crashed...