World Building #13: Nations of Man

Let's start fleshing out the human societies of Makara.

If you'll look to Makara's map you'll notice that humans are concentrated on three different regions: north, west, east.

The northern region is what lies between the Selkie Empire and the Dwarven Republic. Given that the nations are fantasy counterparts of Rome and China respectively, its natural to make the nothern region a fantasy counterpart of the Middle East, complete with a Silk Road connecting the two nations.

With a vaguely dry and warm climate and a mountain range to create rain shadow, the area immediately to the west of the Dwarven Republic is a perfect place to put a desert. I've decided that the Dwarven Emperor-in-Exile doesn't hold his own nation, but is instead stays at the leisure of one of the rulers in that desert area, interfering with the local politics and gathering strength to take back his nation.

I like the idea of placing a river flowing through there where civilization can gather. Perhaps with a Mesoptamian feel, with city states dotting the river and a single large powerful city holding dominance over the others.

To the south of the river valley is a region bordering the elves, with only a series of hills separating them from the point-ears. Here is a militaristic and perhaps theocratic nation, united and strong to be able to fend off elven and selkie incursions. Let's give them a priest-king and call it the Caliphate.

The rest of the regions are hot dry plains, with lakes, streams, and oases dotting the area. Let's putting some nomads there, nomads that regulate the trade within the region and between the Selkie and Dwarf nations.

To the west we have a human region that is caught in the middle between the Selkies and the Orcs. Now, we need something there that is tough enough to weather invasions by both Mongol-Viking-Russians and the Roman Empire. I decided to put a Mesoamerican-ish nation there. Heart ripping Aztecs are terrifying enough to fend off other nations, right? Plus, heart ripping might have a qi-based purpose.

A friend of mine mentioned that the Incans had legends of mummified kings ruling the emprie from beyond, so why not give the Western Humans a pantheon of lich-god-kings ruling their nation, drawing qi energy from the hundreds of sapient sacrifices performed by their priests. That qi sustains their unlife and also gives them the ability to empower their warriors with incredible strength, at the cost of countless lives. Frightening and powerful, well enough that orcs and selkie alike stay away from their borders.

Finally, to the east, let's place our traditional European fantasy kingdoms. Knights, kings, princesses in peril, etc. There's plenty of room there for a multitude of nations, with perhaps three or four large major kingdoms and a dozen or two smaller kingdoms that swear fealty to the others.

I'm not quite sure what kingdoms I want to place on the east yet, but I like the idea of putting a Camelot-ish kingdom up to the northernmost portion of the region. An peaceful countryside defended by an order of Arthurian knights against the Celtic elves and Roman selkies.

Also, to the south, there's a small grouping of human-controlled islands. I like the idea of these being mist-covered mystical islands of mystery, with qi wizards holed in their tower, looking out upon the world.

World Building #12: Makara

Time to give you a cartographical update:



As you can see, I've finally named my setting. Now, some of you might be wondering where this name comes from. Some obscure piece of myth? Some literary reference? Some fascinating etymological search?

Nah. It happened mostly by happenstance.

I was discussing what I should name my setting with a few IRC buddies when my good friend Makari came into the channel. Hilarity ensued.

[9:44pm] [Ominous] Let's name it Makara.
[9:44pm] [Ominous] After Makari.
[9:44pm] [Makari] o.O?
[9:44pm] [Virgil] Right place, right time. :)
[9:44pm] [Makari] What are we naming now?
[9:44pm] [AdStroh] >.>
[9:44pm] [kpenguin] Makara
[9:44pm] [Makari] you?

[9:44pm] [kpenguin] that actually has a nice ring to it
[9:44pm] [kpenguin] Makara
[9:45pm] [Ominous] That's why I suggeste dit.
[9:45pm] [HOURAISAN] Occidentalia dammit
[9:45pm] [Ominous] Most of my names are derivatives of other names.
[9:45pm] [HOURAISAN] YAAAAAAAA
[9:45pm] [Virgil] Not everyday you get a continent named after you.
[9:45pm] » Virgil applauds
[9:45pm] [Makari] Yaaaaay. :D
[9:46pm] [kpenguin] Okay, Makari
[9:46pm] [kpenguin] The continent my setting is set in is named after you

Now, as for the map itself, you'll notice that I've moved around the elf and human nations, placing the elves in the center of the continent and decentralizing the humans into three different regions. Furthermore, the entire continent as shifted onto the equator, which gives the elves a jungle to live in. Appropriate, since the jungle is where wood is most wild.

Now, I want the orcs to still be in a fairly cold area, so I'm shrinking the planet into half the size of Earth. The planet is also twice as dense, so the gravity will be the same.

Any other physics problems with this will be resolved with magic.

Ugly Artwork: Faster than a Speeding Bullet...

First of all, yes, it's been a month since my last post. Shut up already.

Secondly, as you may or may not know, I am now a moderator on Giant in the Playground. This is an incredible honor for me. I have been a member of the community for over three years now and love it dearly. To serve it is incredibly satisfying.

Anyway, I'm putting up a worldbuilding post pretty soon. I need to get some logs from an IRC chat and a friend of mine is searching for them. To tide you over until then, here's this picture:

It's a character I'm playing in a superhero play-by-post. The concept of the campaign is essentially "A crippled Bruce Wayne founds the Xavier Institute and forms an X-Men/JLA amalgam". My character is Peter Parker, your friendly neighborhood Superman. As you can see, the costume is very inspired by that of Invincible, who is also a bit of a Spidey-Supes mix.

Ugly Artwork: Will You be my Pocket?

A bit of art I did on a request. Nothing too special, but I thought I'd show it off.

You might recognize the medic on the right as the same as the Inequalizer. It's a request by the same person. For the uninitiated, in Team Fortress 2, a medic might choose to follow around one player in particular and continuously heal him or her. This patient is called a pocket.

World Building #11: Mapping It Out

I've decided that I want to place the setting on the Western Continent™. The sea at the bottom is very nice and gives the Selkies a way to touch almost every other piece of the continent. After some consideration, serious consideration, I decided I wanted to shrink the continent and move it under the equator. Having the setting encompass a continent the size of Eurasia feels a bit... off to me. The scale is too big.

I made my own version of the map, focusing on the western continent and making a few adjustments to the continent.

Lots of islands, flatten some mountain ranges and added others. I overlayed it with the outlines of the plates to give me an idea of where to put ranges. I may draw up climate zones later, but first I decided to draw some vague borders.


This map represents the political make up of the continent at the height of the Selkie Empire's influence. The dark grey, as you may have deduced, represents the selkies. The silvery gray are orcish lands. The blue is for elves, the brown is for the human kingdoms and the yellow is the Dwarven Empire.

At the time of the setting, Selkie territory has shrunk some as humans, elves, and orcs reclaim territory as the selkies wage civil war amongst themselves. The dwarven empire is now the dwarven republic.

The smallfolk are located on islands somewhere on the map. Most likely they'll be on the islands on the eastern gulf.

World Building #10: More Musings on Race

Some more thoughts on the various races.

Selkies

• Selkies by tradition are seals that can take human form. In this setting, they're humans who by the influence of Water magic transform into seals. What if that's not the only creature they can transform into? Perhaps with the proper amount of training or perhaps by region or perhaps by bloodline, some selkies can transform into other marine mammals. I'm going to be honest here: I'm partial to this idea because this means sea otter selkies. I find otters ridiculously adorable. Also, beware the orca selkie!
• Looking at the map, the best places to put the Selkie empire would be on either the long thin sea on the Western Continent or on the more rounded sea on the Eastern Continent. The Eastern Continent is a bit more appealing for its sea's obvious parallel to the Mediterranean, although that might be a reason to put it on the Western continent. Distancing oneself from the real world and whatnot.
  

Smallfolk

• Smallfolk, I've decided, live on an archipelago. A volcanic archipelago. The islands will likely be located in the sea that is dominated by the Selkies.
• Volcanic ash means that the smallfolk lands make for good farms. I can see these islands becoming a breadbasket. The Elves could be agricultural powerhouses with Wood magic, but agriculture is a perversion of the Wood. Dwarves too could be good farmers, since Earth has fertile connotations, but they're too distant to have that sort of impact. Of course, we'd need a fairly large island to support large farms, but we can deal with that later.
• And, of course, farmer smallfolk are probably different than the smallfolk that spend all their times in the main cities. Any thoughts on that?
  

Elves

• A friend of mine linked me to the Lorwyn elves of Magic the Gathering. These are elves that are obsessed with physical beauty to the point that their society revolves around it. A silly idea, perhaps, but I'm willing to make the elves look ridiculous. When I was reading up on them, I immediately thought "flowers". Flowers, after all, exist only to be physically beautiful to pollinating animals and the continuation of the plant species depends somewhat on those flowers being attractive. So, let's have a "Flower Tribe" that embraces physical beauty to the fullest extent, a bunch of pretty looking, flowery smelling, elves that do not bow down to ugly druid blood trees but who live out in a hierarchy based on being beautiful. Those with perfect looks are at the top, and those who are ugly, non-elves essentially and any elfs with deformations, are at the bottom and are nothing better than prey.
• I probably need to add a sympathetic elf division at some point. Probably.
  

Orcs

• Tribal nomad units of orcs don't work well for getting mining large deposits of metal to be forged into metal weapons and armor. Since metal is the scthick of orcs, they will probably need to be a few stable mining towns, villages, or even cities to provide the rest of the orcs with their metal needs. These orcs will be more merchant than warrior, focusing on the materialistic connotations of metal than the warlike ones.
  

Dwarves

• Dwarf women. Beards or no beards? Its a very important question! The universal answer I seem to get is "no beards" and, given that this isn't an entirely comedy setting, I suppose I must concur. As hilarious as Discworld dwarves are, unisex dwarves don't exactly fit the bill.
• What happened the the loyalist dwarves? Were they all hunted down by the Revolution or did they escape somewhere. It is possible that a remnant of the Dwarf Empire still exists with a Prince-Emperor in exile. Possibly in one of the nations they once conquered, a human nation. This allows for a human-dwarf mixed nation. How about a desert? Humans, a lower class, labor on the surface while the dwarves live in cool tunnels underneath.
  

World Building #9.5: More Cartographical Madness

Hey guys. Just a quick update. My good friend Mad Mask decided to do me a favor and whip up their own version of my map:

Beautiful, isn't? A very, very pretty illustration of what the world looks like, although not quite usable as a political map. What I really like that Mad Mask has done is add more water, opening up the seas, adding little bays, drawing rivers. The rivers in particular inspire to think of civilization boundaries. Nice job Masky. Very nice.

World Building #9: It's Just a Model

Let's take a break from design cultures and races and buckle down with one of the most memorable parts of any setting: geography! I, of course, am no cartographer nor do I play one in a situational comedy. So, I turned to the help of one of my good friends, JulyFlame. You might notice her under my followers on the right. Yes, I have followers. I was surprised as anyone else.

Anyway, July, who is incredibly cool, told me that she was going to help me make a map using a method with tectonic plates and subcontinents. I was thoroughly confused. She commanded me to just draw a bunch of basic shapes. These basic shapes would be mini-tectonic plates and subcontinents.

Of course, this isn't my first try. My first try at making tectonic plates, I simply put a bunch of jagged lines everywhere after looking at a map of tectonic plates. July, politely, corrected me and from there I made what you see above. I may have made them a bit too big and fill to much of the area. Earth, after all, is 71% sea water. Oh well.

July then asked me to mash the subcontinents together to form whole continents. Mash them together at random, fit them together, connect some, leave some unconnected. Whatever floated my boat. Where the plates overlapped would be where mountains form.
In the end, I made two large continents. I also tried to fit the plates around fairly tightly, something I may change in the future.

After I showed this to July, she worked some cartographical magic and came up with this:


Have I mentioned how cool she was? I didn't even asked and she pulled this up. Intrigued by what I could do by putting a bunch of shapes together, I thanked July and went to bed. Little did I know what a lovely surprise would await me when I signed back on to the IRC channel where we chat...

THIS!

It's a simple map, but one that shows so much promise.

Already, I'm plotting where the campaign world is on the map. It will probably be centered around the vertical sea on the western continent or the other sea on the eastern continent. The Selkies seem to have become the center of the setting, all roads lead to Rome and whatnot, so it makes sense to have a Meditteranean analogue.

While July's work is lovely, I do have modifications I want to make to it before I adopt the map for my setting.

One of my personal pet peeves about a lot of fantasy maps is the lack of water. They're often big round blobs of land. This doesn't work for a setting where a race based around water is one of the anchors. So, I'm thinking of widening the seas, adding some more inland bodies of water, and perhaps even shrinking the continents a bit.

I'd also like to add some more mountains and perhaps a volcanic area for the smallfolk.

All in all, a good map. A very good map. An awesome map, in fact. Thank you so much, July!

World Building #8: OH THE HUMANITY!

Humans are the base race of most settings and mine is no different. Of course, in most settings humans are a young, brash race. In mine, they are ancient, the base race. One might say that all races in my setting are human, since the elemental races are descended from them.

The largest issue with humans in my setting is how they would interact with the elemental magic. If they couldn't use elemental magic at all, then they would be significantly weaker than the rest of the races. If they could use any elemental magic, they would be significantly more powerful than the rest of the races. I could have them be an elemental jack of all trades able to use all the elements, but at weaker levels, but mechanically that's difficult to balance.

And so, I chose a different option. I chose to have them channel a different source of magic entirely. Since I'm using the Chinese elements for the magic system, I again looked to Eastern mysticism for inspiration and found qi, also known as chi. Qi is the vague flow of life energy through every living being. Because humans are in complete elemental balance, and because of how incredibly ancient their race is, they are able to utilize this innate life force.

The way I see it, the ultimate difference between a wielder of qi and a wielder of magic is that magic acts more on the outside world and is flashy. Qi acts more on the self and perhaps those you can personally touch and is subtle. An Earth wizard, for instance, might summon a suit of armor made of the hardest stone for protection. A Qi practitioner, on the other hand, would be hit by an attack and simply endure. At its base, Qi improves the self. Very powerful Qi users are able to do things that are rather Wuxia.

As a few have noticed, I lack a tradional European Medieval kingdom in my setting. Humans will fill that role in the setting, providing a base for players who want to play the normal fantasy archetypes. In fact, let's say that humans believe that Qi as a whole is an intelligent being that is both the world and controls it. This gives them a Crystal Dragon Jesus religion. Fantasy paladins are thus simply Qi magicians in armor, their faith granting them the concentration and discipline to use Qi. Likewise, powerful Qi practitioners are Saints, named for their closeness to the great Qi Spirit and their abilities are nothing short of miracles.

And yes, I realize its been a long long time since my last worldbuilding post. Perhaps I'd be more motivated to post if people actually commented. *hint hint*

Ugly Artwork: Beacon of Light!

Yeah, yeah, I know. It's been almost two weeks since my last post. Shaddup about it, willya?

Anyway, I recently made this:


He's a superhero that I play in a Mutant & Masterminds game, Hikaru Hoshi, the Beacon. He recently received a new costume and I decided to try and sketch it out. I decided to be Booster Gold inspired. Very Booster Gold inspired. In fact, he's essentially a palette swap of Booster Gold.

Worldbuilding post will be up soon-ish.

World Building #7: Hammer and Pick

Today, we'll look at the last elemental race. Yes, we've saved the best for last: THE DWARVES.

As I stated previously, I wanted the dwarves to provide the role of a powerful but distant nation, one that had influence in the main areas of the campaign world but did not have a direct stake in its politics. To this end, I looked to the Chinese for inspiration. I was about to design a monolithic, bureaucratic empire, but then I discovered this tasty little bit on TV Tropes' entry Our Dwarves are All the Same

The largely forgotten Chainmail D&D Miniatures game (The early 2000s relaunch, not the classic 60s version that inspired D&D) ended up using pretty standard D&D dwarves, but oh What Could Have Been. The original design specs called for a dwarf faction that had deposed their king, abandoned faith in their god, and become communist factory workers and miners. The Dwarves would have dressed like something out of a 30s era Soviet propaganda poster and built mecha golems.

My interest piqued, looked into it more and read up on the People's Republic of Mordengard. It's apparently a post-revolutionary republic set up after a tyrant king was overthrown and run by a Worker's Council. Every member of the society is a member of a Guild and elect a representative from their Guild to represent in the Worker's Council.

I love the idea of Communist dwarves, so let's make our Chinese dwarves Communist Chinese dwarves.

Since Mordengard has such a lovely background, I think I'll nab most of it wholesale. Thank you, Chris Pramas.

A tyrant king is a great catalyst for a revolution. For added Chinese flavor, why not give him some elements of Qin Shi Huangdi? Let's put him in his twilight years as the revolution happens, after a lifetime of stone-hearted tyranny. And, as a dwarf, a lifetime is a long time indeed. He spent his reign squashing dissenting schools of thought, setting up an oppressive bureaucracy massive book burnings, and generally being a crazy mean old bastard. Hell, let's give him a couple "great works" that caused the deaths of thousands during construction. The Great Wall is the world's longest cemetery after all

After all this, the dwarves get all upset and rebel. The majority of the revolutionaries are craftsman and miners, traditionally the backbone of dwarven society. Appropriately enough, their symbol is a hammer and pick. Their color is yellow, the color associated with Earth in Wu Xing as well as the color of the Yellow Turbanists, a peasant rebellion in historical China. In fact, let's give our dwarf revolutionaries yellow headscarfs.

The dwarves are spurred on by orators calling on an ancient tradition that is based on the Mandate of Heaven, a Chinese concept similar to the Western ideas of Divine Right. The right to rule is granted by Heaven to the ruler, but Heaven's approval relies on the ruler's virtue. Further, the mandate does not specify a single ruler or dynasty, giving justification to rebellions historically.

Marching through the dwarven empire, they kill not only the emperor but the majority of the nobility In a bit of fun karmic death, let's say the dwarven king was buried alive in his own tomb, a tomb whose construction cost the lives of many good dwarves. We can even say that the tomb was the last straw that sparked the rebellion.

Once the last of the loyalists are surrendered, dead, or fled, the leaders of the revolution make the landmark decision to not appoint a new emperor from amongst themselves. Instead, they establish a republic of the people, in which every dwarf is an equal and has a say in rulership. Like in Mordengard, the dwarves are separated into Guilds that rule over the empire through a Council.

The dwarves maintain their traditional values of order, duty, perseverance, and community despite the revolution and that is carried on into the Republic. Every dwarf is your brother or sister and it is your duty to persevere for the people. It is also the duty of every right thinking dwarf to spread the good news to others, to encourage other workers to raise up against their noble oppressors.

Geographically, I see the dwarven empire seperated by a great mountain range and perhaps a desert from the rest of the campaign world. Dwarves encountered in game, or PC dwarves, are loyalists who fled during the revolutionaries, agents of the People trying to ferment rebellion, or simply young dwarves who find the Republic stifling.

As a side note, I'm dropping the iron bears. They're a tad more over the top than I'd like. The orcs may still have some form of bear cavalry, however.

World Building #6: We loves the Orcses

Let's talk about THE METAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAL!!!!

Race.

The Metal Race.

Let's make orcs. Everyone needs a race of lovable ugly bastards, right? And they'd totally fit the whole harshness thing metal has going on. If you're on the IN IRC (i.e 3/4ths of my readership, apparently), you know that the argument has been over whether the orcs should be Vikings or Mongols. I've decided to go with Mongols, as I originally envisioned, with some Norse influences and a splash of Russia.

Metal is rigid, strong, brave, and individualistic. The metal orcs are thus organized into nomadic tribes that occasionally will settle and form kingdoms. They war with each other constantly for survival in an inhospitable enviroment. In this furnace, the weak die and the strong are forged. I see the orc lands as harsh terrain, but rich in mineral wealth. This allows the orcs a one up on the other races and gives them the opportunity to hone their metalworking.

The harsh existance also makes the orcs hardy warriors. Being like the Mongols, I suppose they are accomplished mounted archers, the more powerful metal sorcerers being able to summon whole swarms of arrows while on the back of an iron horse. The greatest of the warriors are able to tame and ride the most dangerous beast of orcland, THE IRON BEAR. They're bears, made of IRON that run around killing and eating things. Riding one is an ultimate status symbol, cementing one as a leader among orcs.

Despite being living in semi-anarchy, the orcs have a strong sense of tradition and honor, one that is as strong as steel. This sense unites them and binds them together. They might slaughter each other, but at the end of the day they are brothers and sisters. This sense of tradition has united the orcs previously during attempts by the Selkies to invade and this, combined with orcland's terrain is what keeps the Selkies from ever truly conquering them.

Speaking of the selkies, I see their relations as being... fairly good. The selkies see the orcs as these great barbaric brutes and the orcs see the selkies as decadent weaklings, but both agree that the other is better than dealing with elves. Some settlements on the border contain ample amounts of both and along these areas there is agreat deal of intermingling. While some orc raiders will attack selkie settlements and the Selkies have made periodic attempts to expand their territory into orcland, they do have peaceful relations and trade quite often. Gold and silver are metal too, after all.

In fact, metal has associations with materialism. So, the orcs have something similar to the Germanic weregild, in which every person and piece of property has a value. Those who steal or damage property must repay in accordance with this value. The same goes for murder. Value of an orc is largely based on status.

While riding an IRON BEAR is the ultimate status symbol for orcs, this is out of reach for almost all of them. Most orcs opt to wear metal armor, carry big metal weapons, wear metal jewelry. The more metal on you, the higher status. Big expensive impractical ceremonial armor is common among the upper class, although they rarely wear it outside of ceremony.

While the warring tribes and kingdoms are the norm for the orcs, this may change. I see that at the time of the campaign there is a youngish, charismatic, clever, and commanding orc leader that wants to unite the orcs into a single fighting force. If the orcs are Mongols, then this fellow may become Genghis Khan. I see him as being one of the few who has been able to tame an iron bear, the others being slightly less powerful warlords. If Orcis Khan is able to unite the orcs, they could take advantage of the Selkie civil war and take everything.

Perhaps they burn down those blood tree forests of the elves. We can only hope.

World Building #5: Pointy Eared Bastards

Today, let's talk about elves. Those wonderful woodland creatures that are so graceful and...

Alright, let me make something clear before we begin. I don't like elves. I like individual elf characters, sure, but as a race? They're bothersome. They have too much of the "we can do anything better than humans" thing going on. They're faster, smarter, and oh so superior.

Bothersome.

Still, everyone expects elves so let's have some elves.

Since we've got a Roman Empire, obviously we need some barbaric barbarians of barbaria to have them war with. Let's make elves those barbarians, with a Celtic inspiration. After all, the Celts had that animistic druid religion going on.

In fact, let's make the druids, in this setting mages who channel the power of Wood, the driving force behind their society. More than any other race, they worship their element and the holy elves of Wood are the ones pulling the strings. The larger elven settlements may have kings and secular rulers, but the druid advisers are the ones with the real power.
Their faith is a bit of animism, although extending souls mostly only to Wood and other plants. The elves are brilliant woodworkers, but also must perform elaborate rituals of purification before felling and working any tree. Since these elaborate rituals are not observed by their neighbors, that brings... conflict.

Not that there isn't enough tribal warfare among the elves themselves. When not united against the terrible tree-murdering civilizations around them, the elves fight amongst themselves.

Since the Celts had trade routes that spanned Eurasia, the elves are also good traders, able to transverse the woods easily to bring goods and taking advantage of the roads left behind by the Selkie Empire. Just be sure not to offer them a wood-based product. That'd probably be a major faux pas for an elf, since they cannot be sure if the product was made by pure elven hands or through the tree murdering ways of other races.

Since they love trees so much, why not have some elves become them? The most powerful elven druids, to the ends of their lives, opt for nigh-immortality by transforming into great trees. Able to communicate telepathically with those nearby and exercise some of their powerful magics, they become the center of communities and large settlements, a true ruling class. But, their form perhaps special substenance. To parallel the human sacrifice practiced by the Celts, let's have the druid trees require periodically the blood of one of the races. Can someone say "Little Shop of Horrors"?

So, in short, the elves of this world are blood-thirsty, tree worshiping tribalists who wouldn't feel too bad about carting off your mother to be sacrificed to a big tree. Fun fellows, aren't they?

World Building #4: Great Balls of Fire!

Today, let's look at the little guys, Fire race, the Smallfolk. Yes, I'm going with the name "Smallfolk". I couldn't decide if I wanted to go with hobbits, halflings, gnomes, gremlins, kobolds, whatever, so I decided to call them Smallfolk. Because they're folk... that are small. See?

The Smallfolk are marked by their blazing passion and creativity, manifesting itself positively in the arts, the sciences, and their general lust for life. On the other hands, the way they always run hot means that the Smallfolk get into brawls, fights, and feuds more often.

I see their civilization as being very much like Renaissance Italy, with a little classical Greece splashed in for extra spicy-hot flavor. They're separated into various city-states, or what were city-states before being integrated into the Selkie Empire. Pride in one's city still runs high, however, and ongoing feuds between various cities still smolder under the rule of an outsider. In fact, let's even say that city-based nationalism is what allowed the Selkie Empire to roll over the Smallfolk in the first place, preying on the divisions.

In addition to the political units of the cities, you also have powerful clans that are spread out amongst the cities. These are parallel to the powerful mercant noble families of Renaissance Italy, like the infamous Medicis. As with the cities, familial pride is paramount and feuds sprout between clans. Conflict between duty to city and duty to clan should be a source of drama.

Note how this is unlike the Water factions. The Water factions are more malleable, where a member of one faction can easily switch to another and many are just drifting around whoever is more powerful at the moment. Pride in one's city and one's clan is different. It is not the mercurial allegiance of water, but a passionate fire that burns throughout the lifetime of a smallfolk. To turn one's back on either once one has dedicated oneself is a big event.

Also, the conflict need not be violent. Cities and clans also compete over artists, inventors, trade, population, and everything else. Perhaps there should be an Olympics expy here, just to play up a small parallel to classical Greece.

As passionate as they are about the sciences, the Fire people should be at the forefront of technology and magical research. If I want airships in the game or suits of armor powered by the POWER OF FIERY FIGHTING SPIRIT, I should explain it away as a smallfolk advancement. Generally, they should be at a Renaissance level of technology, minus perhaps gunpowder, while the rest of the world is high Medieval-ish.

Looking at the picture, I wonder if they should have red hair. Would that be too obvious for a fire themed race?

Saw Toy Story 3

There's something magical about Pixar.

Now, some think that they've begun to lose their touch. Some found Wall-E preachy and pretentious or Up to be confusing and uninspired. Pixar, however, has never missed its mark for me.

And today was no different. You see, today I watched Toy Story 3. And it was amazing. I don't know how Pixar managed to make a trilogy where all three films were incredible, but they did. I mean, the only trilogy that I can think of that comes close is the original Star Wars trilogy, and even that is marred by the inclusion of ewoks in Return of the Jedi.

But I digress.

I will try to stave off spoiling the film because, by golly, everyone deserves to receive the full experience.

Let's start with the opening, a visualization of one of Andy's playtimes with his toys. I don't believe I've laughed as long or as hard at the beginning of a film in ages. This puts the carefree fun, creativity, and imagination of child's play in full display. It made me nostalgic not only of previous Toy Story films but of my own playtimes with my toys. The best thing I can compare it to is Axe Cop, but even Axe Cop lacks one of the key element of playing with toys: you don't get every toy ever. You only have the toys you have and you make the best story with them. And that's what they did.

The movie begins on that high note and then plunges darkly into a world of abandoned toys. While I'm usually against making films "darker and edgier", Toy Story 3's dark spots are not an attempt to be "cool" but a genuine depth. The ultimate theme of the movie is one of past relationships slowly fading and of moving on. This is something that especially pulled my heartstrings, as these same ideas are ones I grapple with as I leave high school behind and move forward into college. Perhaps Pixar knew that the same kids who grew up watching Toy Story were the ones going off to new lives today.

That's not to say that the film didn't have its light spots. It is, ultimately, a film about toys and there's still that sense of wonder as you watch the characters walk through a world of toys. And the jokes, oh dear the jokes. Pixar has an incredible sense of comedy that never verges on immature or crass and neither does it rely on the crutch of pop culture reference. Dreamworks, take note.

The ending hit me like a freight train. I won't tell reveal to you what it was, but it left me crying. Yes, crying. Tears streaked down my cheeks as Pixar once again pulled my heartstrings. It was a satisfying, fulfilling, beautiful ending to a wonderful series.

Thank you, Pixar. Thank you.

World Building #3: More on Selkies

You know how I said my next World Building post was going to expand on the other races?

I lied.

Right then, the selkies. I think I'm going to have the selkies divided, currently. It fits with how water is constantly shifting and flowing. This also leaves room for intrigue, something water seems suited for. Flexibility is lovely for schemers.

The last emperor, let's call him Emperor Infertile, died with no heirs. Thus, it was left to his relatives and his close ring of cronies to divide the empire, each forming their own faction.

The first faction I can think of is what I call the Steam faction. So named because their leader is influenced not only by traditional water philosophy, but ideas of fire as well. I haven't gotten to them yet, but I'm thinking that the fire race, the smallfolk, were a bunch of disparate city states that were eventually conquered and absorbed into the Selkie Empire and will have a culture that is a hybrid of classical Greece and renaissance Italy, with a blazing passion for the arts and the sciences. The leader I see as a niece or nephew of the former emperor who studied there and wants to revolutionize the empire with these new ideas.

Opposed diametrically are Water hardliners, as oxymoronic as that seems. Let's call them the Ice Faction, since Ice is water's solid and thus least malleable form. They want a return to traditional Water values, authority, and culture. They are possibly lead from a holy city near a frozen mountaintop by a religious figure. Alternatively, a close relative of the Emperor, a sibling perhaps, who is probably the closest in the line of succession.

There, of course, need to be an expansionist militarist faction. Let's call them the Flood Faction, for the way that they wash over their enemies. Obviously lead by some sort of military leader who sees the others as too weak to properly lead the empire.

A moderate faction is also required, one that is mostly in it for power and not ideology. The River Faction, that flows around others and takes the path of least resistance. Another relative of the emperor, perhaps, or a weeding courtier.

A faction that is dedicated to tearing the institution of the empire down, capitalizing on the current chaos, perhaps? Some of them wish to establish a true republic in the empire's place while others are true anarchists. Let's call them... Blackwater?

And a mercantile faction. Like the River Faction, more into power than idealogy, their goal is to secure victory by economic means. Let's call them the Brine Faction and hand them a coastal city.

Of these factions, I see Steam, Ice, and Flood as the most major. Blackwater is a nuisance to them all and River/Brine find themselves as cronies to others more than outright powers themselves.

The average Selkie isn't really affiliated with any of the factions and just, if you pardon the pun, go with the flow.

All of the elements should have subcultures that are dedicated to different ways of looking at the element, but flexible Water is the most schizophrenic.

Next time, I'll get to another race. Promise. Until then, I'll leave you with some basic ideas on what the other elements are like:

• The Earth race, Dwarves are distant, uncaring, unmoving, and bureaucratic. They rule a distant empire that is inspired by ancient Chinese. Expect an animated terracotta army!
  
• Harsh, powerful, and deadly, the Metal empire is a young one lead by an aging cunning, charismatic warlord who holds power with an iron fist. A Mongol/Russian feel should be felt here.
• Fiery with emotion, passion, and creativity, the smallfolk of the Fire race live in city states that are currently under the control of the Water Empire. They are inventors, philosophers, and artists with an overwhelming lust for life. A hybrid of classical Greece and Renaissance Italy.
• The elves, like the Wood they represent, are sinister and mysterious. In ancient times, the forest was a dark place, full of strange monsters that lurked in the shadows. The tribal elves are those monsters here. They will be Celtic-ish
• Humanity, varied as they are, will be everything that I want in the setting that isn't covered by a previous race. I'm already thinking of an Egyptian-ish godking theocracy that has strong ties with the Water Empire, but there will be more. Of course, many humans live under the main empires of Earth, Metal, and Water

Ugly Artwork: The Laugh

I loooooove evil laughing. It's quite therapeutic to just let loose a sinister cackle. Some people find my laugh scary however. A TF2 player by the name Blackfox is one of them. So, I made this poster:

Quite ominous, don't you think? I was inspired a bit by the Killing Joke for the "ha-ha-ha" background. I don't suppose my laugh is quite as well developed as the Joker's yet, but I am aiming for something Hamilesque with it.

Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword

I'm not a huge Zelda fan, or a gamer in general, but I do enjoy playing the games. I think Ocarina was just one of the best games ever, Wind Waker was just beautiful, and Link to the Past was amazingly addictive.

So, when I heard that Nintendo had showed a debut trailer for the next Legend of Zelda game on Wii, I just had to hop onto the YouTube and check it out.

I am... ambivalent.

On the one hand, I love the idea of giving Link a whip and some sort of magical hand-fairy-thing. I also think that, pulled off correctly, the new control set-up should be intuitive and immersive.

On the other hand... I'm not sure I like the art direction. Now, I know that's not the end-all be-all for games, but the trailer really didn't show all that much and that was what caught my eye. You see, the art seems to be a compromise between Twilight Princess-like realism and Wind Waker like cell shading. Both games looked beautiful, but they should pick one direction and stick to it rather than taking a middle ground.

The other issue I have with the art is how disjointed Link looks from the gameworld. His model is fairly realistic in proportion and detail, with only a bright color palette and cell shading as a concession to a more cartoony style. The rest of the game world, the scenery, the monsters, everything, seems to be of a far more Wind Waker-ish cartoon aesthetic. This is the opposite of a standard masking effect, where the protagonist is cartoony to allow for identification and the world around is detailed and realistic to allow for recognition, thus immersing the audience (read Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics for more on that). Doing the opposite makes Link look simply out of place.

Still, all in all, it's a new Zelda game for the Wii. I suppose I should be excited.

World Building #2: Under the Sea, Under the Sea

Since I've already decided that the races of the world are going to be tied to the five elements, let's take a closer look at each one.

Now, between the last post and this one, I've come to think that perhaps I want humans to be unaffiliated with any specific elements. Humanity as a whole is flexible, sure, but individual humans might not be.

To that end, I think I'll add a sixth race, some sort of people. or something that effect. Actually, you know what? Let's make them whale/dolphin/seal people. There aren't enough marine mammal themed races in the world. I'm not sure which marine mammal to base them off of, but I like the idea of a race that's closer to humans as a mammal than half-fish.

In fact, let's make all the races based off of humans. That's what they are anyway, right? Exaggerated versions of humans with funny ears or oddly colored skin? In most fantasy settings, humans are the young race, the newcomers while everyone else and their dog is part of an ancient civilization. Let's turn that on its head. Humanity is the oldest race and, in fact, are the mold in which all the other races are built from.

Let's say that first there were humans and then when humans came into contact with the ambient elemental magic of the world, some of them were transformed into the races there are now.

Or we could have a god do it. Or gods. Maybe some gods found humans to be insufficient as their worshippers and decided to mold them into something they liked. I'm not sure. I haven't even gotten to setting down religion yet, but perhaps the gods are individual manifestations of the various elements. Hmmm...

Either way, humans are the base and they're the most balanced. Humanity as a whole has an equal mixture of all the elements... or perhaps none of them. I'm thinking that all races have all the elements in them, but each of the races other than humans have an element that makes up the majority of their composition.

Anyway, where was I? Whalefolk? Sealfolk? Otterfolk? Marine mammalfolk or MMF let's call them for now. Of course, I'll have to match the culture to the element as well... before I was considering associating water with humans because of water's malleable nature. However, a more intelligent friend of mine brought up an interesting idea: Rome. As he put it:

"Rome. Finally, simply, ultimately. Rome. Rome flowed into the weakest parts. Cracked the stones. Where the other nations stood like stone, Rome would flow around. Rome would gladly take up ideas, so long as they worked. They flowed along the path of least resistance, in that sense. Rome was an empire built around a sea. One that they considered the center of their world. Mediterranean. Look at that name."

Really cool. Thanks, Godwinson, for the idea. Also thanks to July for bringing up selkies, the mythological seals who could shed their skin to become humans. So, let's go with that. A race of selkies who have established a coastal, and perhaps partially underwater, empire in the style of Rome. As an added bonus, a Roman theme would evoke the Greco-Roman feel Atlantis has always had.

This also makes the ocean more important, as its home to a powerful civilization. One thing that's always bothered me about fantasy maps is that they usually have much smaller oceans compared to Earth in favor of larger landmasses. I want a large sea in this world and the imperial selkies will have control over this vast territory. Of course, being marine mammals they'll naturally gravitate more to the coastline than to the open sea, but an imperious nation lording over the whole ocean tickles my fancy.

Well, that's the first race done and possibly the only original one. The other should be easy, given that they're normal fantasy races... with a twist, of course.

And yes, that's a picture of kpenguin trussed up as Namor. Don't know who Namor is? Then you're just not nerdy enough.

Ugly Artwork: Happy Flag Day!

For Flag Day, I've dressed up kpenguin (the character) as Captain America, circa WWII:



It makes me feel all fuzzy and patriotic. For those following, all two of you, I'll have a world building design diary up today, promise.

Ugly Artwork: Again with the TF2?

Alright, I will try to work on something else, but people keep requesting this stuff! Here's a sequel to The Doc and The Djinn:


Really, I'll make non-TF2 stuff... as soon as people stop asking me for it.

Graduate Penguin is Graduated

Today was my high school graduation ceremony.

There was the standard marching in with Pomp and Circumstance blared out by a band. It's mark of how much of a nerd I am that as I walked to my seat I was thinking "You know what'd be awesome? If they played the music from the end of Star Wars. You know, the fanfare that's playing when Luke and Han are receiving medals from Leia." I had a similar thought as the crowd of graduates flocked out, only thinking that the Imperial March should have been used.

But I digress.

The highlight of the ceremony for me, other than walking up and getting my diploma case (I'll have to pick up the actual diploma later. Gah) were the addresses. There were a few generic ones from the principal and a few district members, but what really interested me were the ones given by the valedictorians.

Full of meaning, vigor, and honesty, it made me wonder: what would I say if I were asked to give a speech? Those who know me know I relish public speaking. There's something absolutely spectacular in the feeling of addressing a wide audience, touching many souls at once.

Which I suppose I can do in my blog here. So, this is my reflection of high school and of leaving it.

High school itself was something I wasn't too happy with. I came into the system wanting to learning, loving to learning, and expecting to learn. I came out someone disillusioned with school as a place of learning... at least for academic subjects.I won't rant about the system here. That's something for a different time.

While I won't particularly miss the school system, I will miss the people within the system. A metaphor I thought of a while ago and that I enjoy using is one of a tabletop roleplaying game. A bad one. The rules don't make sense, the fluff is dull, and the books are full of formatting errors. However, the players and GMs around the table make playing the game worth it.

(In this extended metaphor, the players are fellow students and GMs are teachers)

Now, obviously there are GMs that are terribly dull or who railroad too much or are just bad at what they do. The great ones make up for those GMs though. There are also players that are horribly bad and that are annoying as hell, but there are players who are genuine joys to have at the table. Most players I've played with fall between the two extremes, but lean towards enjoyable to play with more often than not.

Thus, despite the game itself being rather terrible, the people I played with made playing the game enjoyable nonetheless. So, I thank them.

Two out of three valedictorians told us to go out and be awesome. The last made sure to weigh in with reality. Is greatness really achievable for everyone? I say yes. The challenges we face as we head into adulthood are great. Life ahead of us is like an old map, with the end bits all whited out and labeled with "Here be Dragons". Still, equipped with the lance of our experiences, the shield of our own abilities, and the mount of our comrades, these dragons are slayable.

The Greatest Generation was not great because of their time was a time of ease. They are great because the overcame the obstacles and adversities thrown at them. Even the most optimistic look at our future sees great obstacles ahead of us as well. Let us too be great. Adversity is the crucible for greatness.

Graduation is an occasion for joy and excitement, but I also think it is a time for mourning. It is the final nail in the coffin for who we once were just as much as it is the first step towards who we will become. Let us not forget the self we lose now anymore than we look forward to the self we gain. For some of us, the two selves will not be all that different and for others they will be completely so.

Thank you to everyone that made my high school experience great and even to those who might have made it awful. You have all, indirectly or directly, changed who I am and forged the person I will become. Special shout out to my friends, who I hung out with today after graduation. You guys reminded me today of why you're all the best friends a guy could ever hope for.

And to those of you who only know me online and want all this blathering to be over... well now it is.

UPDATE: My best friend is disappointed that I did not mention him jumping out of his seat to hug me as I walked down from getting my diploma case. So... now I have.

Ugly Artwork: More TF2 Movie Posters

The movie poster I made earlier got surprisingly positive feedback among the GitP Steam group and I, a hog for praise, decided to make a few more, again using members of the group as inspiration:



Obviously, the context is probably lost on most of you. Go ahead and admire the composition, though.

World Building #1: Matters of Theme

This will be the first part of a new project: creating a campaign setting from scratch. To the uninitiated, a campaign setting is a fictional world that serves as the setting for a role-playing game. In this instance, I will be making a setting to run my own games in. I've GM'd role-playing games before, of course, but I've mostly set them in generic worlds or in established settings.

This will be something different. A world of my own.

The first thing I'll want to decide on is a theme for the setting. By theme, I mean something that binds the setting together. A core concept, if you will.

For some settings, the setting is defined by a single conflict, a single overarching narrative. Good vs. Evil, Empire vs. Rebels, Mordor vs. Men, etc. This might be a great idea for a focused story campaign, but I'd like one where the PCs (that is player-characters) are bit more... independent. A traditional roleplaying game involves the players running around the world, doing odd adventures, without having to be wrapped up in an epic narrative that spans the entire world.

So, ditching the narrative, what other themes can we think of?

For this world, I'm inspired by Avatar. That's The Last Airbender, not the James Cameron film. Their world is themed with the four Western classical elements, but has a distinctly Eastern style. Why not turn that on its head? Take the traditional European fantasy, but theme it around the five Chinese elements: Fire, Earth, Water, Metal, and Wood.

I actually like this idea. Since a fantasy world must have magic, why not have all the magic stem from those five elements or combinations of them? A flight spell in this setting might be using Water magic to "swim" through the air or Fire magic to create jets. A teleportation spell might involve walking into a tree and coming out in another or moving instantaneously through the ground.

The more I think about the idea of a completely elemental system of magic, the more I like it.

A traditional fantasy setting also has various races and, taking inspiration from Avatar's elemental themed nations, why not tie each fantasy race to an element?

Dwarves and elves are easy, tying them to earth and wood respectively. With metal... why not the generic "barbaric" race like goblins or orcs, given metals warlike and harsh overtones. Fire is associated with passion and inspiration, so lets give it to fun-loving gnomes, hobbits, or some other sort of small folk. Water is associated with flexibility, which is the traditional role of humans, so lets match those together.

I've got a basic idea of how magic works in this world and how the races are connected to it now. If you have any ideas on how to build a world using the five elements, feel free to tell!

Donald Glover for Spider-Man!

I recently had the opportunity to watch Mystery Team. To the uninformed, it's a relatively low-budget comedy film made by Derrick Comedy, a comedy group that is known for their sketches on Youtube. You might recognize the lead, Donald Glover, from his role as Troy in Community. The film stars Glover along with the other two core members of the comedy group playing an Encyclopedia Brown-style kid detective team that has grown up into an age that it's no longer adorable as they face an adult mystery.

And it's hilarious.

Watching the movie cemented for me an idea that, until then, had only been in the back of my head: Donald Glover should get a shot at playing Spider-Man.

For those of you who think this comes out of left field, Glover currently has quite the internet following who are campaigning for him to be cast as Spidey. The actor himself has said that he wants an audition. And he should get one. Based on his performance in Mystery Team, Community, and Derrick Comedy's online sketches, Glover has the charisma, the comedic sense, and the acting chops to do it.

Comedic sense is the important one for me here. I, personally, think that anyone who plays Spider-Man should be good at being funny, a talent which Glover has in spades. I'm a big Spidey fan, you see, and I noticed something rather conspicuous missing from the Sam Raimi films: quips. Spider-Man must, must, must, must! be cracking jokes and one liners as he's punching out a bad guy. It's an integral part of what makes Spider-Man so much fun to read and watch. It also provides a key insight into Peter Parker's character, that is the change he undergoes when puts on the mask. As Peter Parker, he's timid, but as Spider-Man he's confident enough to make fun of Doc Ock's bowl cut as the villain is swinging around his deadly tentacles.

The Raimi films had that absent entirely, substituting it with MOAR DRAMA. This made Spidey out to be far more emo and depressing than he actually is. Spider-Man is about a young man who's always down on his luck and running into trouble, but maintains this optimism and basic energy about him.

Also, an actor who knows how to be funny might have made evil!Peter hilarious rather than painfully awkward in the third film. No guarantees, though.

The major issue that most seem to have with the casting of Donald Glover as Spider-Man is, of course, race. Can a black man play Peter Parker, who has always been portrayed as white?

I say yes.

There is nothing that makes Peter Parker inherently white. All Peter Parker need be in terms of background is a fairly poor, but bright, kid from Queens. This is not to say that every superhero can go through a "race-lift". I'd never suffer someone casting Thor as anything other than a big blonde Norseman and with a lot of minority characters like Luke Cage, their race is part and parcel of their character.

But if Jake Gyllenhal can play a Persian, then Donald Glover can play a kid from Queens.

I don't, however, want Donald Glover cast as Spider-Man based on breaking some sort of "race barrier". He should be cast based on his talents, as a comedian and as an actor. I don't really believe he'll be cast, as much as I'd hope he will. If all he gets is an audition, I'll be happy with that.

Ugly Artwork: The Doc and the Djinn

Now, those who know me may know I like to draw some digital art in the style of my favorite webcomic, Order of the Stick. The little penguin-looking fellow with the cloak and the staff? Drawn by me.

From time to time, I'll show off some of that art here. Here's my most recent piece, a faux movie poster:


As some of you might have guessed, the picture is inspired by Team Fortress 2. The poster is a parody of 80's buddy movies using the best Medic/Heavy team on the server I frequent. I'm a bit pleased with the explosion in the background. It looks sufficiently Michael Bay-ish.

If you want to play TF2 with me, possibly to laugh at my improbably poor aiming skills and ridiculously high ping, I most frequently play on the Chocolate Hammer server at 68.232.183.52:27015.

The Semi-Launching Post!

Welcome!

Hello there everyone! I'm Brian, also known as kpenguin (that is "kpenguin"with a lowercase "k") on "teh intarwebz". Welcome to the launch of The Musings of a Penguin ... sort of. Since I won't be trying to plug this to anyone until I get a good amount of posts in, no one should be reading this until it's obsolete. If you're reading this before then, you're a bit early.

Who are You?
Well, you see, I'm the last son of the dying planet Penguin, come to Earth when my birth father sent me here as a baby in a spaceship. I was then adopted by billionaire parents and raised by them until they were gunned down in front of me at the tender age of nine. While in the cemetery mourning my parents, I discovered an escaped convict who, upon my helping him, would later return to give me a great boost in life. As if that weren't enough, I was bitten by a radioactive penguin which...

Seriously, Who are You?
I'm an 18 year old student in that strange transition period between high school and college. I enjoy science fiction and fantasy, the accumulation of knowledge in general, tabletop roleplaying games, arguments over the trivial, food, and the musical stylings of Jonathan Coulton. Far more dull than the above fiction, isn't it? If you haven't guessed, I'm a bit of a nerd. Go ahead, ask how nerdy I am.

How Nerdy are You?
I'm so nerdy I abandoned my Senior Prom to run a game of Dungeons & Dragons. I'm so nerdy that I'm age 18 and have never been in a romantic relationship. I'm so nerdy that the real reason I don't wear contacts is because I think glasses are a far better look on me. I'm so nerdy that I not only know what the word "pedant" means, but I take it as a compliment. I'm so nerdy that I feel compelled to list how nerdy I am.

So, What's All This Then?
Well, you see, some silly classmates of mine suggested I start up a blog. Apparently I'm interesting enough that some would read it, as insane as that is. I don't have a clue as to what my focus will be. There will likely be some nerdy ramblings, world building diaries, scathing reviews, and showing off of some of my ugly drawings. You have been warned.

Are You Quite Done Yet?
Yes, yes I am.