Activity

Hi everyone!

@joy-caroline @rusted knight @Brian Stansell (or @O’brian-of-the-surface-world) @laugh-as-one-fey @anyone-else

I have a WIP world that I’m creating, and i was wondering if i have too many details (prepare for long rant on a made up world lol):

My guiding principles are that people(humans) are born with different gifts (called bestowals) depending on what astronomical phenomena or constellations they are born under. As a result, the timing of births is planned and controlled so thoroughly that royalty is able to have almost exclusively ‘bestowed’ children.

My second guiding principle is that when humans die, they turn into stone instead of decomposing. This isn’t a natural part of the world, but rather a spell cast on humanity by (*surprise!*) the villain, so i’m unsure if that is necessarily a guiding principle.

Both of these go along with my theme/guiding question of the nature of destiny and how much free choice we have when so much is out of our control.

I decided that the god-figure in this world would be a pantheon of 12 different gods, organized into three groups based on water, land, and sky with the most powerful god in each section forming the nucleus of the pantheon (or four groups of three w/o one god being the most powerful over all the rest and including fire maybe? idk.) with constellations/phenomena representing each one and the various categories of bestowals they give based on the traits of each element.

My worries come in once I start adding in other fantasy races. my first race is humans, which is the o.g. race descended from one of three brothers. They are humans, merfolk, and nagas (like a mermaid but has a snake tail).

Each race is descended from the first three families that formed after the first man and woman (no clue what they’re names are) gave birth to two sets of triplets, one all boys, one all girls, and one of both sexes having wings, a snake tail, or a mermaid tail.

• Humans
  • They once had wings and became the most powerful of all the races, being so close to the constellations they were able to receive a wide variety of gifts and used their power to dominate the world. they got too proud and all of them became so corrupt their wings were taken from them, and they looked like normal humans, making them the weakest of the races. Like a great flood situation.
  • Their leader, Eldin, along with his brother, lead most of the humans away and they sequestered themselves on an island far from the other races.
• Mermaids
  • Their form can change depending on the seasons and moon cycles, getting legs again at certain times.
  • Their bestowals aren’t as varied as the humans are, but they are extremely powerful, their hair is a living part of their bodies that actually causes intense pain to them when it’s cut, and it can grow to massive lengths when they sing, the bestowals revolving around that, and their powers always have to pull from something. like if they sing, their songs are based on the desires of the listener’s heart, and if they haven’t been sung a song already, they drain the life of the listener.
  • The humans know about them and distrust them, as mermaids sometimes have a seemingly purposeless desire to kill humans. (it’s because their people are hunted and captured to use in dark magic, which I’ll explain soon)
• Nagas
  • I wanted to kinda turn the trope of snakes symbolizing evil on its head by having the Nagas be wise healers, but powerful and frightening warriors.
  • they live in a jungle around a massive network of caves. they have a largely oral tradition of sharing information, but when something is taken by and large as good advice, a good story, or a true historical event, they carve it onto the wall of the caves, mining deeper into the mountain with human laborers (they pay them handsomely) as more information is accumulated. their histories are the most accurate you can find as they are constantly maintaining even the oldest of carvings.
  • they are gifted in medicine as well. largely because they are venomous, and sometimes accidents happen, as well as living for about a thousand years and learning a lot on how to care for the world better over that long lifetime. They developed antivenoms and cures for many diseases. (one of my protagonists actually seeks them out for this purpose).
  • Their bestowals are mostly types of venom, and what kind of knowledge their best suited for, like a doctor versus a hunter.

Also, I really want to add Centaurs that would be nomadic and while welcoming, not value human life so much and keep them as slaves to do their bidding and tasks a centaur isn’t the best cut out for. But I feel like it’d be way too much, even though i really want to include them and have them send ‘defective’ humans to the Nagas, and hence divide the gods into four groups, but i don’t know if that’s the best idea.

The villain uses dark magic by creating spells using parts of the different races and humans with bestowals, controlling things in the background to accumulate more power and preserve his life.

My main concern is that these fantasy races diverge a little too far from my guiding principle and bloat the world. I don’t want this to be the case, but I really didn’t want there to just be humans alone either.

Anyway, thank you for reading my rant on my world in progress, please let me know if this is too much. Thank you again!