Collective: the Community Created Card Game

Steam says my review can't be longer than 8000 characters, so I'm posting it here.

I: Foreword

This began as a series of rants about a card game I used to play. Then it became a sort of archival project, detached and scientific. (To what end? I’m not sure—Collective isn’t really lost media, it’s been offline for less than 3 years.)

But the more I read, watch, and write about this game, the more I remember how much I love it: the pitch, the shared worldbuilding, the clunky lego duplo UI, the sometimes-competitive-sometimes-collaborative community, the server events.

I think about Collective approx once every 3 months. Each time, I discover a new feeling I didn't realize I had about it. "No relationship ends until both people are dead."

II: Timeline

Collective was Hearthstone if Hearthstone was designed by r/customhearthstone. Players could code cards in-game, then submit those cards to be voted on. Every week, the 10 cards with the most votes would be added to the game.

The game released on Steam in March 2020 and officially ended service July 2023. The oldest publicly available versions of the game were posted on itch in 2018 as part of the closed alpha; the official Youtube channel has videos dating back to May. That's five years of live service-- nothing to sneeze at for a niche ccg.

But the writing was already on the wall in 2021. A small group of investors kept the game on life support via Patreon for 2 more years, and then it was done. 

[digression 1/many: collective relied a lot on its discord and reddit communities to make content for the game. Players designed the cards, the cosmetics, the bosses for the single player mode. When the ultimatum came-- X% daily active users growth or the game goes offline-- it was delivered at the players' feet.]

III: Me

In 2019, some version of me joined the Discord: a college student looking for excuses to slack off and doodle. He made a lot of art, wrote a lot of lore, used a lot of 😃 emojis, stoked a lot of arguments. He had a narcissistic streak and was overly critical of others. (I like to think he got better over time.)

He also didn't play the game all that much. After all, the real game of Collective, the voting game, was played on Reddit and Discord.

[digression 2: the card creator was its own website, and public voting took place on Reddit. In-game, you'd vote on a random card after every match, so you could grind dailies for more influence on the cardpool, but there were a lot of submissions.]

[digression 3: in-game votes were also hidden, as opposed to Reddit votes, which were public and carefully tracked via discord bot. Sometimes cards no one expected to get in based on Reddit voting would jump to the number 1 spot in the weekly roundup, and vice versa.]

[digression 4: in these digressions, I intentionally elide the finer details of these systems. In this process, I sacrifice some of the archival nature of this post in favor of conveying a sense of mounting dread. Know that, at the time, the finer details were very, very important to us.]

That part of Collective appealed to me: my art, my lore, my designs, on display for a captive gaming audience. (I've described the game as a honeypot for amateur artists with low self-esteem. I still crave the weekly cycle of ccg democracy; it was genuinely addictive)

The trick was finding a foothold in an increasingly competitive creative space. According to community consensus, the most reliable strategies for getting a card in the top 10 were: 1) good art; 2) referencing preexisting cards; and 3) sheer quantity of submissions.

My first submission fell into the second category, and was accepted. I was ensnared.

my first submission

IV: Art

For a brief moment, Collective card art was its own medium. The native art editor featured simple tools and free-to-use images (see here). These limitations gave rise to a house style of mspaint-style doodles and asset collages, and this goofy aesthetic inspired the cards in turn. For example, the frog and sword assets became the frog knights, an archetype that received scattered support for the full five year lifespan of the game.

Some artists learned to push the art editor to its limit. Caputommy, Orbis, Gentle-Cat, and Vaiyar all posted timelapses during this era. You can see how the limitations of Collective's layerless editor enforced an almost-painterly style, using low opacity brushes to simulate color blending and thinner brushes for texture.

another timelapse, by Grief

Following the Steam release, Premium Season Pass members were able to upload images to the card editor. No longer limited by the editor, artists returned to their preferred mediums, widening the gap between "good" and "bad" art.

Calling this an upward trend in "quality" feels reductive (maybe ignorant? cruel?), but that was the language we used. I think it speaks to a creative death drive that came and went, the urge to optimize the fun out of the system, to play the numbers game, to design demagogically. Objective artistic skill was a resource to be traded, hoarded, panhandled, bought and sold, even weaponized.

* 

The final innovation in Collective's art style came in August 2021, following the release of VQGAN. Although the devs often worried about copyright infringement, AI-generated images didn't ring any alarm bells at the time. (i literally said "VQGAN is the future my dudes" fuck you fuck you fuck youuuuuu) To those who saw Collective as having an "artist caste", AI was a way to "balance the meta".

I would like to say AI was an insidious evil that destroyed the game, but it wasn't. At worst, it ate market share that could have fed the ego of some other amateur artist. I just think it looks ugly--a corporate stain on a game I remember as indie and handmade. 

i still find it very cringe to list the "prompt author" in the artist credit

Collective was a hungry beast. The archives contain thousands of pieces composed by dozens of artists, representing tens of thousands of hours of work. The community hosted regular art jams to populate the Free Art Sheet, and participation was consistently high.

I drew >100 pieces for Collective, more than any other project I've ever undertaken. I'm a better artist for it. I'm also always looking for another beast to feed.

V: Realms

In-fiction, a card's realm is a tag specifying the setting/plane/dimension/etc from which it originates. Each realm was managed by an "admin" who could veto cards with for the sake of maintaining a unified visual/mechanical theme.

Before realms, defined archetypes were maintained by coordinated voting blocs (like the Collective Robot Group, who receive special mention in this article) or by being very vocal on Discord. Realms gave more control to solo designers, including the aforementioned → ME!!!! ←

[digression 5: i was the admin of 4 realms simultaneously; 3 of these were one-man projects.]

Realms were divided into ages (7-card sets) with a reward for completing each age. New keywords would be added to the game if at least 7 cards used them. These were the big milestones for designers: counting to 7, finishing sets, completing archetypes, canonizing lore.

[digression 6: I put hundreds of hours into collective. I have 4/7 of the Steam achievements.]

I think realms exemplify a tension inherent to Collective. The community was full of creativity, feedback, artistic growth, but it was also frustrating (seemingly by design). There were only 10 card slots per week, vs dozens of us, all pushing our personal projects. There wasn't enough oxygen in the room for us all.

We measured ourselves against each other. We fell short of our expectations. We clung to the meritocratic ideal of Collective-- if my card didn't get in, it's my fault. We indulged in magical thinking-- if my card didn't get in, it's something else's fault.

[digression 7: collective had a boogeyman, a mystery redditor who downvoted every submission as soon as it was posted. One player dubbed them "Pedro from Mexico". "I got Pedro'd" became a common refrain.]

The mature response would have been to lean on each other more; to make more art and less cards, to collaborate, to reframe success for myself in a way I had more control over. I was a teenager when I joined. A lot of us were.

 

VI: Anonymous

In July 2022, an argument breaks out over (what else) cards, submitted under the name "Anonymous". The cards are experimental, confusing, and often self-referential: one is named Artist Devouring their Work; another is a Chair from Sittia with "Target ally sits on this."

The community responds with bemusement and frustration. The story is pieced together quickly: Anonymous is a former community member who no longer wants feedback on their designs, hence the anonymity (pseudonymity?) It doesn't take long for a name to come up: someone who made "bad" cards and wouldn't hear criticism in the past.

[digression 8: it was later revealed that there were multiple anonymous users working together, hyping themselves up as Collective counterculturalists. In what would be Collective's twilight year, they had somehow metastasized an antagonist.]

Anonymous is a very minor player in the history of the game, but I can't help but fixate on them because I did exactly what they did. When I was upset with Collective, I would disengage from the community and troll them by designing bad cards, then crosspost to other subreddits to farm votes and force my way into the top 10. I was familiar with the underlying frustration and spite. I knew whose nerves they were trying to get under.

There was a zeitgeist (defined archetypes, realm admins, demagoguery, good art) that established designers took very seriously. Undermining that structure (ignoring their standards, circumventing their procedures) felt like punching up-- but was there any hierarchy in the first place? The only thing above me was the game itself: the Collective.

[digression 9: there were in fact many hierarchies (or perceived hierarchies) within the community. Off the top of my head: 1) In 2019, a design committee was elected by the devs to prepare the game's meta for steam release. 2) the investors who buoyed the game thru 2022 were also community members who had been with the game since alpha, spiritually succeeding The Council/The Committee. 3) the aforementioned artist caste, and 4) for completeness sake, the regulars in voice chat.]

[digression 10: time and hindsight has yet to excise the anger I still feel at certain server members. I've rewritten this post a dozen times, and found more love and understanding than I expected, but some of yall were ripe assholes over a fucking card game]

VII: Archive

collective.gg went down a while ago, and with it went the entire card collection. Still, if you are somehow interested in exploring what remains of this not-that-lost media, here are some links to get you started:

• The Wiki and The Reddit
• The Collective Card Archive - unsorted and unsearchable, but preserves most of the original renders
• TimeToGrind's Video Review - featuring gameplay footage at time of Steam release
• The Collective Youtube Channel - shows the game and community from the dev's side
• Collective in 2021 - a dev retrospective on the state of the game a year after Steam release
• Submitted For Your Approval - a weekly card review podcast featuring prominent community members

I will not be sharing links to the Discord.

VIII: Escape

Below is all the setting lore I wrote down for Collective (edited for neither brevity nor quality). You'll recognize bits and pieces from my various blog projects (blojects).

With this, the spell is broken.

Thuulma - An eldritch egg planet inhabited by purple steampunk elves (the Thrim).

• Thrim culture prizes novelty and disdains traditional values. They are the epitome of capitalistic hedonists; nothing is sacred, everything is a tool for progress, and the ultimate goal of life is to maximize one’s excitement. A Thrim is most worthy when they are DOING LOTS OF STUFF. Moderation and mellowness are frowned upon; a lazy Thrim might as well be dead.
  
  Thrim see themselves as brains piloting bodies, instead of as complete entities. They don’t believe in the sanctity of the body; rather, they see bodies as collections of tissues and blood i.e. resources to be exploited. The body parts they need (eyes, hands, tongue) are often augmented with prosthetics. They burn corpses for fuel, or mulch them for agriculture.
  
  Thrim brains cannot be found by dissection; the skull instead contains a serum-filled “stomach” which converts mental and emotional stimuli into energy (this is why you can actually hear Thrim think). The brain stem terminates in the nape of the neck, tapering into nothingness; it is theorized to exist in the same overlapping, parallel dimension that magic and spirits reside in.
  
  Thrim are always shocked that other races actually think with physical brains. It’s sort of like if you learned your neighbors thought with their pinky toes.
  
  Thrim have long ears, purple skin, and long tails ending in barbed points. Their tails are prehensile, and are very important to Thrim sexuality and courtship. Thrim also have very sensitive fingertips, like raccoons, and can taste and smell through their hands better than their noses. They eat with their hands. 
• An atractive Thrim has a large head and ears, delicate hands, and a strong immune system. As hedonists with no respect for their natural bodies, thrim are attracted to body modification as a symbol of wealth and health — if their alterations haven’t gotten infected in urban living conditions, it’s a sign of a good constitution. Despite the squalor of city living, thrim are deathly afraid of disease, so thin limbs and blemishes are considered unattractive. The latest fashions all incorporate metallic “enhancers” into one’s body: ear extenders, finger braces, and Magnif-Eyes(tm).
• Thuulmans find body augmentation attractive, so there’s a lot of romance novels about full cyborgs who are fully modified or bona fide sentient robots. Neither actually exist in-universe, but they’re romanticized like vampires irl. 
• Elderly Thrim are expected to innovate, gamble, love, and smoke with the gusto of teenagers, buying increasingly expensive body enhancements until they finally give out. Those who give in to sedentary lifestyles are shunned until they turn their bodies over to the Mulchers.
• They have a particular affinity for equestrian sports. Horse races are broadcast in every home and pub, and of course money is constantly changing hands over them. However, a rules technicality about a decade or two ago changed the sport forever, when the jockey Asphel rode a mechanical quadruped to first place. Since then, the horse track has seen less and less living horses entered in each race, replaced by steampunk stallions. Only the mysterious Ludevic and his steed, Mesphoriq Dreaming, regularly best the chrome-coated competition.
• Thrim hold no reverence for the dead and do not believe in spirits persisting beyond the grave. In most cities, corpses are burned. Billowing pillars of ash are permanent fixtures above the crematoriums as corpses are being constantly fed into the furnace. The ash joins the smokestacks of the great factories and escapes into the clouds, only to return as a black snowfall. In other cities, the dead are taken by Mulchers, for a small fee, who turn it into agricultural products.
  
  There are those who preserve the bodies as well, but not out of respect or sympathy. In these hidden circles, the recently deceased are preserved and scarified with eldritch runes, inviting the influence of The Unborn. These bodies have been known to jerk to life, uttering ancient madnesses or scratching alien languages into their chests. Though there are no undead on Thuulma, the Possessed sometimes stalk the lower alleyways, gibbering praise to their master. 
• There are bands, choruses, and orchestras in the employ of the theaters and churches, but there are even more independent musicians, each of whom is trying to carve out a unique genre for themselves. Most work with big, brassy instruments made up of intricate, interlocking pipes (guitars and their ilk are on the rise, but have yet to really capture the larger market). One such musician, an inventor named Velma, tours the countryside in a musical golem made of sonorous chambers connected by low temperature resonators. Her concerts sound like a stampeding bull with cymbals on its feet, but the Thrim love her act more for the novelty than the sound. 
• Thrim travel a lot, never satisfied in one place for long. Most satisfy themselves with couch-surfing; those brave enough to traverse the wastes do so in caravans of ten to twenty. The Thrim know few beasts of burden, but their beloved constructs rarely survive the journey, so they make do with bison. (Horses are expensive and fragile.)
  
  In dense urban centers, most Thrim can be considered homeless, slinking from one hole in the wall to another. For these citizens, “apartments” consist of literal open holes, 5 feet in diameter and 10 feet deep, honeycombing a natural stone or concrete wall. There are no doors, so each resident comes and goes as they please, carrying their few possessions with them.
  
  Thrim like going fast, and they love flying high. Towards this end, Thrim inventors have invented pretty much every form of transportation you could imagine short of a car (they’ll get around to it eventually). Horses, hot air balloons, bicycles, robot horses, rockets, gliders, dirigibles, gun-shoes, etc. etc. etc. 
• Thrim language (kratil) is weird. Those foreign to Thrim culture generally agree that the intention of native speakers is often to build the most bloated and uselessly intricate sentence possible. In truth, kratil appears bloated because it conveys information that non-Thrim have no words for; signifiers and metaphors representing the minutiae of emotional and physical sensations.
  
  Kratil is a language that digs itself into a hole. There are no pauses between sentences; new clauses appear as nested sidebars and parentheticals within preexisting clauses. 
• Their magic is sigil based, channeled through tattoos or dense networks of pipes. Sigils are thought to be an ancient language, but no one knows who, or what, reads them.
• Their technology is powered by carbon-based fuels, primarily derived from natural oil slicks that appear in the ocean. These originate from anti-carbonic vent wurms on the sea floor, who belch oil into the water as a byproduct of their biology. Solid fuel can also be harvested from the earth in the form of high-density crystals, but this is more taxing due to high occurrences of mining madness among delvers.
  
  Fundamentally, magic and technology are one and the same on Thuulma. Energy originates from the burning of fuel; it is directed by surrounding mechanisms. Discrepancies arise only in these mechanisms. There are two primary schools of magic:
  
  Techmaturgy: Steampunk magic. Oil and crystals are directly converted into power and directed through metal to produce magical effects. Distinctions from the real world are such:
  - Fuel is cheaper, cleaner, and more volatile.
  - Oil burns hot, crystals burn cold (thermodynamics does not apply, sufficient coldness can produce power for machines just as well as sufficient heat)
  - There are different “flavors” of fuel, derived from splices with animal DNA
  - the shape of the machine can produce more than just mechanical work (for example, turning an object magnetic when it should not be)
  
  Biomancy: Consumption of and digestion of fuel. Rigorous lifestyle conditioning and bodymods shape the output of this burning. Highly volatile, since you’re basically turning yourself into a steam engine.
  
  Applications of magic:
  - mechanical work
  - modification of physical properties (mass, magnetism, size, atomic structure)
  - modification of biological processes (migration patterns, instincts, metabolism)
  
  maybe this all non-canon, not sure yet
• Scientific agnosticism; they haven’t ruled out the possibility that a god or gods exist, but if they did, they would try to take it apart for profit. There’s fringe Titan influence, but it’s far from mainstream. Wasteland animism is more common.
• Oceans, and big ones at that. The fish are alien and strange, and always have too many tentacles. Ocean floor is covered in cyclopean ruins. Natural oil slicks are emitted intermittently, originating from anti-carbonic vent wurms. These are a valuable power source for Thrim industry, but they haven’t figured out how to raise the vent wurms in captivity. 
• OLD IDEA: Thuulma is a realm incubating a titan embryo. Its life-force powers all magic/technology on the planet.
  
  WHY IT SUCKS: It doesn’t really. My concern is that it shares too much of Duskmyr’s living-planet vibe, so at some point one of them will have to change. For the time being, I’ll just keep writing forwards.
• How to get married in Thuulma: “Come together” for three days and three nights. If you aren’t sick of each other by then, pierce yourselves in the same place with something expensive. Thrim are naturally polyamorous, so they’ll often have multiple wedding piercings. 

Ævihregg - A norse-inspired realm of endless war.

• There are 26 strongholds of diverse races and cultures, each descended from the storm goddess Valmodir, and they're always in an arms race against the other strongholds. The planet itself is also extremely dangerous, mostly thanks to the sentient lightning storms, so strongholds are built underground and do war in kilometer long tunnels and cave systems. The strongholds pretend to be allied whenever Valmodir wakes up to check on them (once per year), but once she's gone they go back to killing each other. 
• When passing through Ævihregg, be very mindful of appearances. Each stronghold’s customs and culture are extremely strict, and outsiders can easily be mistaken for spies from another stronghold. Exchange your horned helm for a dark veil as you pass from Jotunn to Besmelli territory. Remove your armor in Nankuo — the sound alerts the Deep Mastiffs. Learn the regional accents. Perfume yourself in Lornlief or the Castigators will take you into custody. Carry a lightning rod in Vungandr and a red lantern in Erikksen.
  
  And take a map. The tunnels can get confusing.
• Unconditional worship of the Valmodir, goddess of storms, who dreams in Tivardys (allegedly). All the other Gods died violently a long time ago, and are therefore either forgotten or not worth praying to. Only fringe cultists worship the Ginnungormr, which is like worshipping the train that’s going to hit you six years from now. 
• While the Valmodir sleeps and her children ravage the planet in their eternal war, the Volva keep watch over the sacred places of the world. They are the Valmodir’s first creations, the unloved enforcers of her flippant decrees, with the heads of ravens and the hearts of toads. They are found in the mountains and the deep swamps, guarding Her Storminess’ most beautiful temples and sucking the marrow from elk bones. They have acquired the power of prophecy from proximity to the Valmodir’s fevered dreamspeech, and frequently spy on the strongholds through the eyes of feathered familiars. Despite their ambitions, they remain loyal to Her Storminess out of fear of the Drapvel Prophecy, which describes the strongholds uniting to slay the Valmodir and her legions of Volva.
• The warring strongholds of Ævihregg only cease their endless arms race for two separate annual holidays. The first, Treaties Day, is a custom by which the twenty six Underlords gather to discuss peace in the Hall of the Empty Throne. This is the day when the Valmodir descends from her palace and scrutinizes the state of her children’s armistice. The streets are empty as the trade-berserkers and assassins hide their open wounds from the sky. The second holiday, known as Rasvegr, takes place immediately afterwards as the Valmodir returns to sleep. This is the day when great festivals are held, and Jotunn and Skandor alike dance in the streets with effigies of Her Storminess. The Underlords lead fantastic parades back through enemy territory, and the festivities don’t stop until each of them are back in their strongholds.
  
  Each of the twenty six strongholds also practices their own set of holidays (another reason for their sharp cultural division). For example, the Askelm observe Olms, when the Living Storm visits their stronghold and rains lightning upon them. The Askelm erect effigies of their close neighbors as targets for the storm. There is a wildly disparate time difference between each occurrence of Olms, but the Askelm still set their calendars by it. Sometimes the year is longer than anyone expected; sometimes the year is over in a single lunar cycle.  
• Beware the Crawling Bear, with its railspike teeth and fishhook claws. It devours the giants of Jotunn and picks its fangs clean with the elves of Lornlief. In the days before her slumber, the Valmodir plucked its bones from its body until it was little more than an empty skin. She bestowed the fur to Gradion Stoneknuckle, the legendary berserker-king of the age before strongholds, who wore the beast as a cloak. However, even with its strength ripped away, the Crawling Bear’s hatred persisted, and it strangled Gradion on his throne of wolf bone. Beware the Crawling Bear, which feigns lifelessness in the treasure troves of long dead underlords, only to strike down any adventurer unfortunate enough to tread on it.
• The common man of Ævihregg lives a brutal life, culminating in a glorious battle or shameful forging accident. Life in the underground provides limited access to vitamins and nutrition, so the short lived races of men and elves rarely live to the ripe old age of 50. The giants of Jotunn live much longer thanks to their bestial constitutions, and their elders may achieve 200+ years before succumbing to snowblight or assassination.
  
  The dwarves were the Valmodir’s first creations, birthed from the molten core of Ævihregg itself. It is well known that they do not age, which is why enemy strongholds consider one dwarf slain to be worth a dozen elves. The Strega are thin and gaunt, perpetually wasting away, but the Valmodir supposedly granted them immortality to preserve their prophetic tongues. 
• The people of Ævihregg are very close to the concepts of destiny and prophecy, and trust the Strega to deliver accurate depictions of the future. These are very rarely disputed, but philosophers find plenty of work investigating the minutiae of these auguries. A typical “philosopher” can therefore be thought of as more of a lawyer, questioning the Strega and picking through their ramblings for details about the future.
  
  This genre of “philosophy” is incredibly important in Ævihregg, as minor details in prophecies can spawn vastly different interpretations. It was one of these interpretive disputes that caused the schism between the strongholds, who each believe that the legendary weapon, Ormbani, will take a different form. The three strongholds bear the names of the scholars who conceived these different prophecies: Askelm of Lornlief, Underlord Jotunn, and Draug the Spiteful.
  
  The Forge Heretics are those who believe the rogue philosophy that Ormbani’s true form will be the hammer. The founder of this school of thought, known within private circles as Smidacentrism, was a dwarf by the name of Belo. He was executed by the Jotunn at 78, the age of a mere pebble, for his heretical beliefs.
  
  There exist philosophers who do not believe the Strega’s prophecies, though they are all thought to be dead (the living do not espouse similar views under the sky, where the Strega can hear them). It is a well kept secret in philosophers’ guilds that Gradion Stoneknuckle, the legendary berserker-king of the age before strongholds, slew the Strega who foretold his death for the crime of slander. Legend says he vanished from his throne a mere week later, leaving a power vacuum that toppled the Oberric Empire. 
• Magic is based in the divine. Even as she sleeps, the Valmodir answers prayers of the worthy with miracles. The Strega derive their magic from the Valmodir directly, without any oversight, in exchange for their prophetic abilities. 
• AEvihregg is always stormy. Where you are changes the kind of storm though. The forests are mostly rainy, the mountains are wreathed in blizzards, and the plains are constantly on fire from lightning strikes. The wildlife adapts to this though. For example, the ironwood trees of the Askelm have conductive bark that protects the tree from lightning like a Faraday cage. 
• A deep chasm that tears across the planet's southern pole marks the Guthaugr, or burial place of the gods. This is the resting place of deities from ancient prehistory, vanquished by unknown forces in the distant past.
  Harhasaeti is an enormous palace of stone and steel constructed at the northern pole. There, the Valmodir hibernates, sitting upright in her towering throne, gathering strength for her fateful battle with the Ginnungormr.
• Deep in the earth, the Forge Heretics build their version of the Ormsbani without the aid of any stronghold. Their workshop, Vitastokkr, lies deep beneath AEvihregg's crust, where elementals of deep magma and shadow roam. 
• Dwarves in AEvihregg have no genders, they just all happen to look like short, stocky, bearded people.
  The dwarves are made of stone and do not age. Instead, they clump heavy sediment onto their skin when they become too eroded.
  Dwarves were the first creations of the Valmodir, and some say they were forged in the planet's core millions of years ago. 
  Dwarves are most commonly found in the Jotunn stronghold, although they have been known to fight alongside the Draug. Some dwarves leave the strongholds to become Forge Heretics, worshipping the form of the hammer.
  Dwarves do not procreate. Almost all living dwarves were created at the beginning of time by the Valmodir. Exceptions to this rule are the unsightly creations of cave witches: beasts with the immortal bodies of dwarves but the souls of rats.
• One day, the last dwarf will fall, and their race's legacy will fade into nothing.
  Some dwarves are acutely aware of this and become hermits, obsessed with preserving their history eternally. Others scorn this practice and run into danger with open arms.
  There's a variety of reactions to this knowledge, but they've all been around for thousands of years and have a pretty good idea of what immortal life means to them as an individual.
• The strongholds of AEvihregg seek to champion the form of the Ormsbani, the yet-to-be-forged weapon prophesied to slay Ginnungormr, the World Devourer. However, they disagree on the nature of the Ormsbani, whether it be sword, spear, or axe. (Note: Ormsbani in the languages of AEvihregg refers to both the legendary weapon and the ideal shape of a given stronghold’s weapon e.g. the Draug would refer to a sword as ormsbani and a swordsman as an ormsbanseggr)
  
  War on AEvihregg has been primarily shaped by religious beliefs, as wars between strongholds have powerful ideological significance: an Askelm victory is considered proof that the Ormsbani takes the form of the spear, while a successful Jotunn attack demonstrates the superiority of the axe. Because of this, important campaigns must be primarily comprised of ormsbanseggr, lest the campaign be perceived as hollow and pointless.
• This leads to a number of issues concerning the inherent properties of the ormsbani, such as reach and blade shape. When the first strongholds were on the rise, the ormsbanseggr confined themselves to the simple spear, longsword, and handaxe shapes. This early period was defined by primary shield tactics, with the Askelm dominating thanks to the long range of the spear. They commanded the battlefield with phalanx formations, which was nearly impossible for the Draug and Jotunn to counter. Additionally, the Askelm had superior ranged abilities, and could hail arrows on enemy formations from their high mountain palaces. The Draug adapted to these conditions by focusing on assassination and sneak attacks, but the Jotunn suffered major losses.
  
  This dynamic largely changed during the polearm revolution, when Jotunn philosophers postulated that the “head” of the Ormsbani was the shape that defined its destiny, and the shaft length was an interchangeable property. This lead to the popularization of halberds and glaives, which closed the range gap on the battlefield. Askelm troops still held the advantage in raw distance, but the other strongholds could now press their leverage and maneuverability advantage for more devastating strikes.
• Freeform magic is nearly nonexistent on AEvihregg, and only the Hrafygi have the ability of prophecy which controls so much of life in AEvihregg. However, magic does exist on the battlefield within the weapons wielded. The Jotunn pioneered the art of forging of lightning into iron, resulting in flashy and devastating weapons which call lightning strikes down onto the battlefield, a sign of the Valmodir’s favor. The power of the stormsbani is as devastating as it is short lived, and divides typical battlefield tactics into two distinct phases: the storm front, a brief phase with a high mortality rate due to stormsbani activation; and the red hour, where the victor is determined as the remaining warriors clash. Preparation for the storm front is paramount, and baiting out the opponent’s stormsbani is the key to victory (stormsbanseggr rarely comprise more than five percent of a given campaign force due to the expense). Additionally, the destructive capacity of the stormsbani prevents either side from committing too many warriors to a given conflict: the favored army size consists of fifty to two hundred warriors.
  
  The variety of races on AEvihregg also lead to a variety of tactics and squadrons. Humans and elves are the basic unit, the former being sturdier and the latter being steadier shots. Humans typically carry the stormsbanseggr, wielding polearms, shields, and sidearms, while elves handle ranged combat with longbows and thrown blades. Giants change the tide of battle massively but eliminate any element of surprise, and are therefore trusted as shock troopers in only the rarest of cases. Dwarves are the elites, thanks to their immortal lifespans, but because they do not reproduce they are extremely expensive to lose. They typically lead campaigns as tacticians or berserkers.
• In line with the religious and symbolic purposes of warfare on AEvihregg, the berserker tradition has its roots in religious and ritual purposes. Achieved with the imbibing of potent hallucinogenics, the berserkers were channelers of the Valmodir’s spirit in a mortal form. In warfare, channeling the Valmodir herself  while wielding the ormsbani is very significant for morale and saga. Channeling the Valmodir bestows no otherworldly fortitude or strength, but the expression of her spirit and ingenuity sometimes leads to remarkably effective suicide attacks. The Berserker-King Gradion Stoneknuckle was famous for such strange tactics. At his request, his warriors buried him in the snow and left him there for three long days, only for him to ambush an enemy formation from below like a dwarven landmine.
  
  One other aspect of AEvihregg’s culture has a huge impact on warfare: prophecy. The Hrafygi are famed oracles, and all strongholds have access to their predictions. Hrafygi sometimes identify if a warrior is destined to die in combat, or the number of heads that warrior will take in their lifetime. Those marked for death by the Hrafygi are pumped full of hallucinogenics and placed on the frontlines, prepared to die a warrior’s death as a conduit for the Valmodir. When the Hrafygi predict that a battle will be a defeat, the people strap ormsbani to a flock of sheep and allow them to be slaughtered by the enemy army. Defying fate is never an option, but minimizing losses and capitalizing on favorable predictions is common enough that all great tacticians have ties to the Hrafygi. El Trystlief was a Draug warlord who learned of a great storm on the mountain overlooking the Battle of Dromul’s Hold. She used this knowledge and stood at the peak, harnessing the lightning strikes to strengthen her stormsbani only to unleash it in the longest continuous storm front of any battle on record.
• AEvihregg’s wilderness is vast and brutal, and strongholds are far enough apart that all campaigns must account for these journeys. The wurms, greatwolves, and other beasts of AEvihregg are for the most part untamable, but they can be directed with fire and noise into a group of warriors. For this reason, most warrior squads have beastmasters equipped with hooks, ropes, traps, and noisemakers to redirect or slay charging monsters. Similar specialty technicians are employed to control storm elementals and snowblights. Large pack beasts and their handlers carry the heavy rations, hallucinogenics, and lightning rods that allow the troops to stay prepared leading up to any encounter. The small size of each campaign allows for light caravans, but the harshness of the wilderness magnifies the damage from their loss, making ambush tactics crucial. (The Draug specialize in these from their tactics in the early days of stronghold war.) 
• The strongholds of AEvihregg are big on hunting. Each stronghold is relatively small when compared to a modern city, so their total impact on the region’s animal populations is actually quite negligible. Besides wild game and agriculture, they also consume quite a bit of fish.
  
  The Jotunn (horned giants) are huge, so they need to eat huge things. Typical agriculture doesn’t quite cut it for them, so they hunt giant serpents and rear entire herds of reindeer to satisfy their hunger. Most of them fill their bellies with rocks and ice, like sauropods, both to grind their food and fill their bellies through their pseudo-hibernatory periods.
  
  Weird shit grows in the Dramholt (misty woods): enormous fleshy fruits, giant squirrels, and long flourishing vines bearing millions of dewdrop-sized berries. Eating any of it will give you crazy dreams containing scraps of prophecy, which is why the Volva guard them jealously. 
• JOTUNN AVALANCHE SHAMAN
  One of the caste of mason-clerics. Invaders scaling the walls of Issgard find themselves swept away by a torrent of ice and snow. The eldest of this ancient craft were said to wake the Oxfjall Spires with their bellowing calls.
  
  DRAUGI SLAGWIELDER
  In the depths of Smidasfell and the heart of the Ormforge, the SLAGWIELDERs drag ore from the earth. The black iron twists like water into many shapes, the most terrifying of which being the SLAGDRAGON. It breathes molten metal, leaving a trail of fresh-forged swords in its burning wake.
  
  ASKELM BOLTJACK
  They ride astride a thunder elemental, gripping its tempestuous mane to drive the storm front against their foes. A BOLTJACK's destiny is entwined with their steed’s; when one dies, the other will perish before the next Olms. Aspiring riders dream of taming Wolvaldr, the Windbound Maw, Carver of Sturmskar and Breaker of Sagas.
• OLD IDEA: AEvihregg’s strongholds fight over whether the Ormsbani of prophecy is an axe, a sword, or a spear. They wage huge wars with these weapons to prove their dominance. The heretics believe the Ormsbani is a hammer.
  
  WHY IT SUCKS: This is Butter Battle Book goofiness. The conflict is unbelievable and the visuals end up distracting from the realm’s central theme of “prophecy”.
  
  NEW IDEA: AEvihregg’s strongholds each believe in their own version of the prophecy. The Jotunn believe the Ginnungormr will be broken on a mountain ridge. The Askelm believe the Ginnungormr will be pierced by a spear of lightning. The Draugi believe the Ginnungormr will be laid low by their God with a titanic sword.
• How to get married in AEvihregg: Kill something heavier than twice the weight of yourself and your partner combined. This will be the main course at the wedding feast. Giants have trouble with this one, but their weddings are few and far between. 
• LOTS of seas, inky black water that always seems to be rocked by waves. Strongholder ships are heavily armored and are designed with rotating cabins that can roll with the worst possible weather. The seas are bottomless: they bottom out into the endlessness of the void, the birthplace of Ginnungormr. They’re also infested with sea serpents, obviously. 

Locations in AEvihregg:

1. Issgard: Mountaintop home of the Jotunn (horned giants). A frigid realm of cyclopean construction, ringed in carved menhirs. In ancient times, these served as an alarm system against approaching Ormspawn, alerting warriors to the presence of a titanic foe. Now, these wards warn of Askelmi scouts and Draugi underminers. When intruders approach the fortress wall, avalanche-shamans position themselves at enormous murderholes to cast them back down the mountainside.
2. The Oxfjall Spires: The Jotunn believe this mountain range to be the fated resting place of the Ginnungormr, where the Valmodir will sever the beast’s neck against the jagged rock. As a rite of passage, each Jotunn buries a well-worn weapon in the mountainside blade-side-up, symbolically lending their strength to the Valmodir’s final blow. The mountains are holy, attended to by a sect of cleric-masons who carve massive gravestones and chant burial hymns for the Orm. 
3. Askheim: The capital of the Askelm (storm elf)’s ancestral forest kingdom. At the center of their palatial capital stands the Great Ash, an enormous tree eternally shrouded in dense, dark clouds. The Askelm “farm” these fledgling storms, cultivating them with their weather magicks into powerful breeds of elementals, a practice known as storm husbandry. They are the only people to successfully ride the lightning. 
4. Sturmskar: A deep, lightning-scarred gorge, brimming with fulgurite formations. The Askelm claim this was the sheath wherein the Valmodir laid her favorite weapon, a broadsword of pure lightning. Then, over many centuries of neglect, the sword grew restless and emerged from its sheath to wreak havoc, becoming Wolvaldr the Stormborn Beast. Home to chittering squirrels and ponderous elementals.
5. Undanborg: A vast, subterranean fortress, home to the Draug (molten dwarves). The City of Dwarves is a stone-hewn, lava-dotted maze built around the tomb of Underlord Draug, the same Draug who founded the City and conceived the dwarven interpretation of the Prophecy. Draug is only sleeping (dwarves are immortal), but any administrative decisions must go through him in the order that they were submitted. On rare occasions, he mumbles “veto” or “approved” in a moment of fitful dreaming, a cause for great celebration among Draugi lawmakers. 
6. Smidasfell: An inauspicious volcanic mountain, within which lies the Ormforge. Here the Draug forge the Ormsbani, the legendary weapon that the Valmodir will wield against Ginnungormr in their final confrontation. The blade is being forged in the central vent, and the hilt emerges from the crater. Construction around the central vent is extremely volatile, and on irregular occasions, lava demons spill forth from the Ormforge. 
7. Tivardys:The sky-bound citadel of the Valmodir. After her departure from the known world, many assumed that she came to rest here. In reality, Tivardys is the tomb of the gods who came before AEvihregg’s reformation. The valkyries live here, training to fight alongside the Valmodir in the final confrontation and defending her empty chamber from those foolish enough to approach. 
8. Dramholt: The misty woods surrounding the Valmodir’s actual resting place. An incessant, ghostly whispering in the wind signals the goddess’s proximity; it is her dream-speech seeping into the realm of the living. The Volva live here, harvesting the Valmodir’s murmurings from the deep fog to distill into prophecy and liquid magick. Animals who live in this forest grow wise drinking from the clear water of the forest, or grow strong devouring its tumescent fruit.
9. The Icefields: A barren wasteland, inhabited by the Ginnungormr’s cold-blooded offspring. Elementals and giant reptiles live here, sustained only by what strongholders believe to be the Void Serpent’s aspect of emptiness. Despite the inhospitable clime, wild elk and mammoth find their home here, making a tempting meal for hunting parties who would brave the cold, wind, and wurms. According to strongholders, the wastes continue North until the ice gives way to deep chasms, floating bergs, and eventually, the nothingness of infinite space, the un-storied realm where the Ginnungormr was born.

 

Duskmyr - A living planet whose immune system is battling a parasitic vampire aristocracy.

• Duskmyr is a living planet (and therefore a megafauna). Its enormity and longevity mean it perceives the world on a vastly different sense of scale. It’s mostly dormant, with only the baseline biological processes sustaining it through what appears to be a long hibernation. It’s not entirely clear what it’s waiting for: perhaps collision with another member of its planetoid species, for predation or reproduction.
  
  Demons are a fundamental part of Duskmyr’s biology. Each demon is analogous to a specific cell type, each one born deep in the planet’s core for a specific purpose. The vast majority of demons are homeostatic types, supporting and maintaining Duskmyr’s natural processes. The aggressive demons seen on the surface are immune types, created with the express purpose of exterminating parasites. In the case of the current realm, that’s vampires and anything that looks like them (i.e. humans).
  
  Demons come in whatever size or shape is necessary for their function, but they’re not intelligently designed. Duskmyr’s biology propagates new demons via directed evolution versions of existing lineages, which leads most of them to resemble extant fauna, flora, and humanoids. They trend towards the larger side of the spectrum, since smaller demons take forever to make the journey from the subdermis to the surface.
• Duskmyr is an inverted realm. The surface world as its inhabitants know it exists on the inner surface of a hollow planet. This is why the sky is red: it’s the hazy image of the land on the other side of the atmosphere.
  
  In the center of Duskmyr is the moon, which provides all natural light to the realm. It has no phases, but pulses crimson as each month draws to a close, drawing the tides in and marking a surge of demon spawning. The Heart of Duskmyr is said to have resided therein, before the Court of Sangwald stole it away.  
• The planet of Duskmyr is alive. It whispers in the blowing wind, it speaks in the crashing waves, and on silent nights you can hear its heart beat, deep beneath the earth. All creatures living on Duskmyr’s surface share a symbiotic relationship with the planet, drawing from its bottomless mana reserves for strength and sustenance.
  
  However, this all changed after The Stain. Hundreds of years ago, humanity robbed Duskmyr of its heart, the deep seated crystal at the planet’s core, and concealed it in Caerhaearn, the impenetrable fortress which floats above the Rhyd. In the iron wrought halls of Caerhaearn, human arcanists drank from the heart’s essence, elevating their sorcery to new heights.
  
  For this sin, Duskmyr cursed humanity. First, it warped the souls of those who drank from its heart, transforming them into bloodthirsty monsters. Thus, the first vampires were born. Then, it empowered the beasts and birds of the planet, commanding them to hunt humans to their species’ end. Thus, the first demons were born. Finally, it raised the ancestors of humanity from their graves to persecute the living. Thus, the first undead were born.
  
  And so it was that Duskmyr vowed to eradicate the parasite known as humanity, and the planet turned its defenses against its once favored children. 
• My idea was a planet that's alive, aware, and vengeful. In some way, humanity has sinned against the planet. As a result, the planet became more and more hostile, spawning demons from the core and trying to purge humans from its surface
  It played into the themes of parasitism from the original Duskmyr, but I didn't know where to include vampires
  Here's the Duskmyr lore that was on the wiki:
  Age 1 explores:
  -The physical effects of vampyrism as a disease of the blood.
  -The desperation and conflict caused by vampyrism.
  -The attitudes of vampires towards humans and vice versa.
  -The rising tensions between supporters of either side. 
• Vampires do not age, but cannot control their need to feed on living things. On Duskmyr, the planet is alive and sentient, so they are always drawing energy from Duskmyr itself. Their presence fatigues and/or drives away most animals, and yes, they would die if Duskmyr died. 
• The Khazpar hunt vampires, which lends itself to a self-righteous sense of justice. In the process of rooting out vampires, the church often places restrictions on the local peasantry and tithes them aggressively. Resistance is interpreted as heresy, which is swiftly punished. Thus, the life of a peasant in Duskmyr is one spent between the twin evils of the Sangwald and the Khazpar.
  
  not-yet-canon: there’s some sort of enlightenment movement happening in the underground of Duskmyr, a Mind-aligned faction that advocates peasants’ rights. They’re also horrible, but I’m not sure how yet
• Falkum Reach - A grand bifurcated mountain overlooking the Great Froth. Up at the peak is an old manor, within which dwells the infamous Lady Peregrine. Time seems to hold its breath in the manor, lending the emerald-alabaster decor a ghostly beauty.
  
  Cairnmoor - A great lake reflecting the red moon. The water level is much lower than it has ever been, revealing the tips of five great stone fingers reaching out of the lake’s center. The locals sail out to the fingertips in order to pray. Perhaps this explains the absence of demons in the area?
  
  St. Ghelglain’s - The largest church in Duskmyr, even before the halls of Priest-King Omsk. Ghelglain’s is a stained glass miracle of architecture; the fact that it can stand against even a light breeze is considered proof of Lady Bhea’s divine power. Named after Ghelglain the visionary, who was said to see a different Duskmyr through each of his blind eyes, and thusly led the Church to a prosperous future under Sangwald rule.
• Duskmyr conspiracies:
  The moon is an egg. When it hatches, the godchild inside will devour the realm and fly into space. This is a good thing.
  The moon is the planets own monstrous heart. When it beats fast, on nights of the blood moon, the oceans froth with demons.
  The moon is an angels eye, watching and weighing the sins of all folk for their afterlife. On cloudy nights, crime is okay, because they can’t see you.
  The moon is another planet, a doppelgänger, hanging above us. Every year they send more agents into Duskmyr to study us before the inevitable invasion.
  The moon is a portal, and if you could somehow reach it you would fall into a new universe alien to our own.
• OLD IDEA: Duskmyr is home to a second faction, the Khazpar. These northerners are Spirit-aligned theocratical communists who worship individuals based on how much “angel blood” they have in them. They eat demonflesh and grow angel abominations in the church basement.
  
  WHY IT SUCKS: The edgy communist faction wasn’t as compelling as I thought it was when I first wrote it. Most of the edgy stuff they do overlaps thematically with the other edgy Collective factions (growing horrors, eating demons, blood obsession), leaving them with a very muddled niche.
  
  NEW IDEA: The Khazpar are a religious sect in Duskmyr, independent of the court of Sangwald. They hunt vampires and worship the moon, which they believe to be an angel’s egg. They are political adversaries of the Court of Sangwald, and a few elite inquisitors are werewolves (moon-associated blessing).
• How to get married in Duskmyr: The woman carves her family insignia on a round stone and throws it into the woods. After three days, her partner goes to retrieve it. Then, at the ceremony, the couple must “open the moon” (shatter the stone) in the company of a priest.
  
  Vampires don’t do any of this; they have a feast and put it to a vote, and if the ayes have it the marriage proceeds.
• Has a LOT of seas, all of which reflect the red light of the moon. Extremely volatile, connected via thermal vents to demon spawning grounds. On nights of the Blood Moon, the seas froth and spew forth demontide. The sea floor is littered with shipwrecks, the shorelines are graveyards for naval vessels; it was all abandoned in the years following Duskmyr’s transformation. Fueurloch was one of these seas, but the hellhole got so huge all the water drained out. 
• Mock-Catholicism with the moon as God. The commoners don’t buy it, and the Sangwald only worship ironically, or as a pretense to a weird vampire orgy. Khazpar is more standard; they believe Duskmyr’s moon is an egg laid by the angel that birthed the universe, and worship that.

 

Serifel - A world where the afterlife overflows into ours as a thick spectral fog.

• The afterlife is real, it overlaps with the physical world, and it is crowded: once there was room for each spirit to assert themselves, now it's a dense spectral fog. An order of knights, the Pristine Order, mediates between the material and spirit worlds.
• “Eye for an eye, soul for a soul.” — Luceim of the Pristine Order
  
  Criminals are dealt with swiftly and harshly. The high judges of Khromir see without eyes, and thus know of all misdeeds that take place within the high city. Outside the city, Oathknights ride through the countryside, detaining lawbreakers from local sheriff stations and bringing them to the capital for punishment.
  
  The severity of punishment depends on the crime, but most sentences come with a catch; the criminal may lighten their immediate punishment by promising their spirit after death to the individual or establishment they wronged. Truly grievous crimes merit no such option, and the criminal’s spirit is forcibly conscripted immediately after execution.  
• Polytheist pantheon of ancestor spirits. In the afterlife, like-minded spirits tend to coalesce into larger, stronger spirits. Over millennia, this resulted in the establishment of the Dead Three:
  • Hum: Urspirit of mist, tradition, community, and animal hunger. Associated with all undead and spectres. People pray to them in the face of natural disasters or rogue animals/undead.
  • Ker: Urspirit of steel, contracts, justice, and civilized society. Associated with knights and the law. People pray to them in the face of social instability and war.
  • Mut: Urspirit of cold, the moon, truth, and personal gain. Associated with magic. People pray to them in the face of financial loss and emotional turmoil. 
• When you die in Serifel, your spirit (or should i say spectre) joins the Mist, a ghostly sub-realm analogous to the afterlife. The catch is that space is limited, and the borders between spirits are fuzzy at best. In addition:
  
  1. When things get too crowded, spirits merge together.
  2. Merged spirits are hierarchical; the strongest spirit controls the collective.
  3. With a tremendous effort, spirits can cross back into the real world. Spirits “expended” in this way are lost forever.
  
  All of this is well-documented and catalogued by native Serifens. Everyone works closely with the Mist and its manifestations, whether they are calling upon ancestral spirits, beating back ghouls, or beseeching the Urgeists for their blessings. However, it is the Order of the Pristine who concerns themselves with the ongoing apocalypse.
  
  See, the afterlife is already WAY too crowded, and the Mist is starting to spill into the physical world. To mitigate this problem, the knights busy themselves with a variety of activities. They lock rogue spirits in suits of armor and turn them into productive members of society. They seal criminals in anointed marble tombs, preventing them from joining the Mist. When all else fails, they cull the spirit population with holy steel, at the risk of upsetting the Urgeists.
• In a world where spirits are known and understood, the dead are treated with the utmost reverence. Bodies are burned (traumatic as they are to witness for the spirit in question) and shrines are small, yet beautifully engraved and dutifully attended to. Most families have a graveknot, a heavy cord laden with carved stones, each representing a treasured ancestor. When the shrines cannot be attended to, the graveknot is ritually turned as a substitute for proper worship. It is said that too many turns will snap the cord, ending the family’s future.
• Many small seas, crowded with shiny fish and meaty salmon. Aquaculture is hugely important to the local economy. When the Mist comes, it does so over lakes and seas on overcast days. Crossing any body of water without touching it will bring you to the spirit realm without fail. (This is a bad idea.) Ships carry geistspeakers, who dissuade rogue spirits from assaulting the vessel. 
• A long period of courtship must precede the betrothal. Each partner’s family must be present, and a spirit ancestor must be summoned as well. The family spirits merge; if they refuse, the wedding is off. The ceremony is loud and colorful and involves the whole town.  

misc.

• Vannarad conspiracies:
  King kazrik died centuries ago. What you see on the battlefield is actually:
  His great great great etc grandson, one of many dwarves who have carried the title.
  His ghost, trapped in a stone body by his arch priests and animated by Fel magicks.
  A shared hallucination from copious deepmead consumption by soldiers. The fact that everyone sees it, regardless of where the battle is, is taken as proof of this.
  Three kobolds in an old suit of armor, miming his movements. Kobolds are immortal so long as they keep eating gold, so these are the same kobolds they’ve always been.
  An automaton, crafted by a clever smith at kazriks request, so that none would hold the throne after him.
• Ocegarth conspiracies:
  Whales are not fish; they are birds.
  There are entire islands where no one is a pirate, and no one throws bombs at each other. Everyone agrees this is a lie.
  Oranges fight scurvy because scurvy is the curse of an angry goddess named Ghavakka Zul. She is allergic to oranges.
  Birds know which way land is because they are born from eggs, which are a type of stone. Thus, they are half-stone, and can hear the sound of stones crying for their kin.
  Clams talk, but only when no one is around. They are great conversationalists.
• Animastra conspiracies:
  The Famiglia Leone is run by a very cunning sheep. Her name is Friendly and she eats a lot of meat.
  A shadowy cabal of hamsters is pulling the strings behind every major corporation.
  There’s a nudist society of animals who wander thru the plains, naked and on all fours. They call themselves Grazers. It’s absolutely indecent.
  All synths come with a secret kill switch somewhere on their body that shuts down their electronic parts.
  The meat labs are a myth. In truth, the butchers never left Animastra. 
• **Victor S. Memorial Library: **The very ordinary Maizetown public library. The staff insists you do not open the red door. You will see the red door at least once during your visit; out of the corner of your eye, next to the bathroom, behind the bookshelf. Only Head Librarian Deedee has ever walked out of the red door. When she locks up for the day, she leaves through the red door. Don’t open the red door. What is the red door
  
  **Jadewater, Ohmregon:** A sleepy town with a green reservoir. Most tourists come through to catch a glimpse of the Jadewater Anomaly, a rarely-sighted shadow in the water resembling a long extinct species. Locals are cagey about its existence, but they all believe in it. Once, a reporter from The Big City claimed to have seen Father Nkomo conversing with the anomaly at river’s edge, but his camera disappeared somehow
  
  **The Big City:** The buildings are tall and grey and square and have no windows on the dark sides. The people wear dark hats and dark suits and walk faster than anyone can run. The Big City appears on no maps older than 15 years. It has a name, but no one remembers it. Those who come from The Big City have fast lips and keen eyes and money to spare. Those who move to The Big City return home distressed and penniless.
• **The Six-Horned God: **Heeren, Eygan, and Krana are three breeds of a single species. Their gods were once a single being with three mouths and six horns, but they were split into three by the calamity that covered the sky. Now they are worshipped in many forms by a fractured people. There are rebels who call themselves Wicci, the original folk of Xandar, who seek to absorb the fragment churches and unite the Six-Horned God once more.
  
  **Moonlorn: **Wide-eyed, feathered albino moth-people. They come from a land they call “moon”, but have long forgotten what it looks like outside of the tunnels. They harbor a fatal attraction to light and silver, and sip diluted crystal-nectar. Their chieftain is the hated and feared Skullsucker, a regal winged beast garbed in gold. She often takes husbands from among the Eygan as tribute, only to consume them after the wedding.
  
  **Gomens: **An enormous, obese, horned dragon entreated by the Heeren as a mediator between themselves and the divine. In reality, he is a fool and a glutton with no piety to speak of. His wings are shriveled from lack of use, and his breath causes magic and crystal power to falter. His interpreter, High Bishop Dyr, knows the truth and leverages it to his advantage.
• Heeren live in matriarchal communes. Female heeren are many times longer lived than males. The antlers of the oldest females are too cumbersome to move, so they remain sedentary in their councilroom, their horns permanently interlocked with one another.
  
  Krana believe they once bore great, sky-spanning pairs of antlers like the other vronier. Legend tells that their horns were taken by cerberic godlings as a punishment, and were subsequently planted in the ground and grew into trees.
• There is a crocodile in the belly of the mountain. His name is Krakaw, and he speaks the Vronier tongue through gritted teeth. He is a peacemaker; he hates to see the clans fight, and stops them whenever possible. He is also quite hungry all the time, and tends to stop fights by eating the fighters.
• Vronier speak a rattling language. There are clicks and scrapes unique to their strong jaws that few other races can pronounce. They also lack a first-person pronoun. 
• Yamato 
• **Aiko of Many Masks: **A reclusive and fashionable woman, hailing from the northern isle. Recently married to Shogun Hinata for political purposes. Is in fact a kitsune, a fox-like shapeshifter spirit, and a particularly mischievous one at that. Her own agenda is unclear, but she has been carefully manipulating the laws of succession in order to secure an heir for herself and her people. That being said, she is not immune to her own affection for the shogun.
• **Jianglong Sea: **The long, almost serpentine sea barrier between Liangkou and Moriny. Despite efforts of the Doragon empire to control these waters, merchants from Kran Ger and Saiviet frequently use the Jianglong to smuggle goods of all sorts between the two continents. It is said that Ragukai took the Jianglong as a lover in ancient times, and thus sired the first serpents.
• **Yaomo/Oni: **Two names for the same creature, a blue or red skinned demon with one or more horns. Oni are highly emotive, expressing rage, joy, and sorrow in reality-warping extremes. (Their firearms are powered less by gunpowder and more by sheer anger.) Crossbreeds between humans and oni are surprisingly frequent in Gorya; the prince of Yinlow is a half-breed with curved horns.
• Yamato conspiracies:
  Humans are just bugs without shells, peeled and defenseless.
  Hinata’s wife is actually a fox spirit insurgent, only kept from the kingdoms destruction by her vows.
  The doragon create demons by breeding cows with snakes. This is why they don’t drink milk: all their cattle have been conscripted for the war effort.
  Anyone who eats the Yellowcoat’s honey becomes her sleeper agent. When she has enough she will attempt a coup over the doragon.
  The river god of Yamato was consumed long ago by her brother, which is why the river runs backwards now. 
• The Seal of Elementary 
• **Agnikos: **A philosopher and founding father of Archiapello College. Famously lacking in all magical talent, but a brilliant poet and arsonist. He championed the study of magic in a formerly arcanophobic world, ultimately prevailing posthumously in the foundation of the College. His role in its founding is downplayed to new students, as he was a rebel, criminal, and plain old dickhead in all other aspects of life.
• **The Isle of Medes:** A giant earth elemental who learned to swim. Since then, countless generations of humans have lived and died on its back, nurturing a tiny agrarian society. Every 24 years, the isle crawls out of the ocean in order to migrate around the Spiroko Strait, where the realm’s twin oceans come together in a horrific torrent.
• **Oddea of Horen: **Captain of the White Vulk, the only ship to sail from one end of the Magmatic Sea to the other. A former trader, Oddea leapt at the opportunity to explore the furthest reaches of Gaerra. She is no arcanist, but her crew contains many diviners and aquamancers; when asked, she claims to have mastered the “magic of blades” in her youth. 
• Mir’Aj. It’s my favorite realm, which is why I’m going to keep this brief. No other realm compares to the worldbuilding, theme, consistency, or resonance of Mir’Aj, but my favorite part of their world building is the mystery of it. The present is painted so clearly that you’re left wondering, “What happened to this place? Where did the Lizabo go? Where did the Dunewalkers come from?” And those are the questions that lead you down into the tombs, alongside your furry companions, seeking answers in a fully immersive world.
• The Egg of Boskeyra (from Walnacht)
  
  This small, oval-shaped stone is engraved with the visage of a long-toothed owl. The engravings are rudimentary, etched by an untrained hand. When one holds the stone in their palm, a tapping can be felt from within.
  
  The Egg of Boskeyra is a famed delicacy among the old lords. The last lord to consume the egg was Druvat-El; the Black Peaks stand as a legacy of his rule. Were one to seek the Egg, they would most likely find it in his golden city-tomb, locked below the earth with his countrymen.
  
  The Egg absorbs emotion from its surroundings. Standing in its presence invites boredom, holding it inspires apathy. Dulling one’s emotions can sharpen the senses and guard the soul against Nightmares, but the Egg hungers for more than fear.
  
  The Egg is also a powerful focus for divination magic. Tea-readers of the Vaste purport that the Egg was there when the fall of the lords was predicted. Heretics believe that all the Egg’s previous users reside within it, and will be reborn when the stone finally hatches. This is a lie, but just in case it is true, kiss the Egg if you ever encounter it. Just make sure to never let it pass your lips. 

 

• The Horizon Star sits just above the most distant mountain range, a second sun beating down on your slick brow. Up ahead, you see Low Down City, the varmint capital of bandit country. You pull your 17-gallon hat over your eyes and coax your horse onward, towards danger, towards destiny.
  
  **Welcome to the realm of Howdier.**
  
  Some notes on the local culture:
  
  Everyone here has six shooters. The cowboys have six shooters. The rustlers have six shooters. The wildlife have six shooters. Some rock formations have six shooters. You should probably pick yourself up a six shooter.
  
  Cows are worth more than gold here. Everyone raises cows of some sort, and they’re the most important thing ever. People trade in cows first, money second, bullets third. Touch another man’s cow and you’ll find yourself touching cows in hell.
  
  Social status is conveyed by hat size (in gallons). If your hat is large, you’re a cowlord with a mighty herd. If your hat is small, you’re a sniveling wretch of a person, like a thief or a banker.
  
  There are dwarves, who build the biggest guns in the world (all of which are six-shooters). There are kobolds, who eat gold and shit coal. There are locust-people with four arms and handlebar mustaches. There are tiny lizabo who scamper around and rustle your steer (fuck those guys).
  
  There are dinosaurs with guns for mouths and ten-gallon hats.
  
  And that’s everything you need to know about Howdier. 
• Guns in howdier aren’t loaded w anything: they shoot because they are gun shaped. You can cobble together sticks into a revolver shape and it’ll shoot just fine
  The nerds call it “memetic convergence”. Everyone else just calls it “cowboy rules”
• **Howdier** is not an endless desert--there are swamps, mountain ranges, deep chasms, and vast forests all around--but you would never be able to tell at a glance. This is because when you're in one of these biomes ("chambers" to the natives), sightlines are limited enough to impair shooting accuracy. Most sensible folk stick to the arid plains, where they can comfortably pistol-duel at dawn. Those who explore the chambers are called Wandering Stars: considered fools by their kin, they seek the revolvers of the ancients, legendary firearms long forgotten by all but the maddest Gunwitches.
• Weird stuff weird stuff
  
  There’s a lake in Duskmyr and five stone spires in the lake. Gargoyles roost on the spires and sometimes sing to it. Supposedly they are the fingers of an ancient gargoyle.
  
  Thuulma has a bunch of odd stone structures scattered everywhere, supposedly the ruins of an ancient tram line. Sometimes they light up in sequence, and a strong wind blows; echoes of faster than sound travel, so it is said.
  
  On the slopes of the Oxfjall ridge you meet an old dwarf. She’s a warrior ghost, called a klang by the dwarves, and until she is vested in combat cannot pass on to the halls of the valkyries.
  
  There is a kobold clan who rides an iron train thru the desert without tracks. They ride thru towns, pillage everything flammable and carry on. They do this until they drive the train into Steelshod Gorge, where they build a new train and start riding it the other way
• Major Worldbuilding Truths of Maenoir:
  1) The Manor belongs to the Master.
  2) The Master is rarely seen.
  3) The Manor is staffed by maids.
  4) When the Manor is tidy, the head maid will become the Master.
  5) The Manor is infinite.
  
  Minor Worldbuilding Truths of Maenoir:
  1) The Manor’s ghosts are native to the realm, but they don’t remember ever being alive. At least one of them is shaped like a corgi.
  2) The Manor is not random. Some paintings are maps of other sectors. Some books conceal codes to yet-unopened vaults. Despite being infinite, the entire structure is semantically interconnected.
  3) The Manor has an inside and an outside. There is at least one moon, suspended above an expansive garden. On the other side of the moon, the Manor continues.
  4) Only maids are allowed in the Manor. A non-maid (i.e. someone who has not been wearing their uniform or performing their duties) will be removed, usually as soon as someone stops looking at them.
  5) The head maid is chosen by the other maids. There’s no election; it’s a matter of unconscious consensus. Some value power, others value cuteness: for this reason, courier maids also act as missionaries between disparate maid clans, convincing them of the legitimacy of their own head maid.
  
  All of Maenoir’s truths are explained to new maids by older maids. The realm has a long written and oral history. There is a room where the names of every active, departed, or deceased maid have been recorded. The room was larger before, but it was burnt down by other maids.
• Time is hard to observe without a sun, so the maids keep meticulous track of it in the Candle Room. A wax maid named Gnomon serves as the central wick, with many hundreds of redundancies to keep him on track and allow for breaks/upkeep. Every nine candlehours is a menorah, every seven menorahs is a chandelier, and every twelve chandeliers is a year.
  
  Every year, the central maid houses come together for a great feast they call Breakfast. They allow the food to sit so the Master can eat first (symbolically; he doesn't actually show up), then dig in together and trade gossip. It's a deeply respected tradition, where even Austir's representatives can attend without a skirmish breaking out.
  
  The feast lasts for a full candlehour (about two days). At the end, Vannsome, a sweets golem from Zucrose, produces the ultimate dessert: a cake decorated to symbolize the previous year's trials and tribulations. He works on it all year round, between minor chores.
• Maid Tier List
  **Tier 1:** Tasked with maintenance and tidying of well-secured rooms. Dusting, sweeping, washing clothes, and cooking falls to these maids.
  **Tier 2:** Couriers, supply runners, and scouts make up the second tier. These brave maids have to travel long distances through the Manor to keep the home base on track, and learn quickly that the best way to deal with an upholsterygeist is to run fast and far.
  **Tier 3:** In charge of quickly responding to poltergeist activity within the colony boundaries. Work on a shift system; all maids have cleaning duties, no matter how good they are at shooing ghosts! Also responsible for dusting and containing mysterious artifacts.
  **Tier 4:** Handle the rooms that have never been tidied. Arachnogeist infestations, abandoned abbatoirs, corpses of eldritch gods; these elite maids have seen it all, and get it spick and span in no time! 
• Xandar weather: Sometimes things burn in the lower caverns, and the upper chambers fill with smoke. In larger caverns, the smoke can rise into thunderheads.
  Maenoir weather: Poltergusts (heavy winds caused by high ghost activity, all the doors must be closed to prevent untidying). Also, some maids are weather elementals, and they bring their weather with them wherever they go.
  Mort Stahl weather: Drifting sunspots scorch the earth below. Meteor swarms are not uncommon, and often bring valuable metal ore.
  Unguia weather: dinosaur poop tornado
  Blackrift weather: Heavy portal humidity = random teleportation storms. Basically you get sucked into a tornado and end up on the opposite side of the realm in another identical tornado.
  Yamato weather: When something bad happens, the spirits' crying causes rain. It's normal rain, just very sad rain.
• **True Facts About Zooreal**
  1 - Zooreal is a dream realm. Anyone and everyone can visit it, as long as they are dreaming. Most stumble into Zooreal accidentally, but if you’ve been there before you can find your way back. Signs/doors will appear in your dreams; follow them and you’ll return.
  
  2 - Visitors to Zooreal are almost always children, because they are the most capable of believing in dreams. There are rare exceptions. Dreams can’t really tell the difference between children and adults and just call them “big kids”.
  
  3 - The realm is divided into Rings, each with their own theme.
      3.1 - At the center of it all is Joybeam City, within which stands the Waking Gate. It’s like if Tokyo was designed by children and circus clowns. The streets are full of friendly caterpillar-trains and cat-busses. The skyscrapers are tangled in a massive jungle gym.
      3.2 - At the edge of Zooreal, in the furthest rings, are the unformed spaces. These are where the frightening dreams are kept, born accidentally and shepherded here by the wardens, so they won’t disturb any dreamers.
          3.2.1 - Some dreams are tasked with venturing into this ring, to make sure no children are lost inside - they are called angels, or mothers, and are very good at their jobs.
      3.3 - There’s also Wonder Gardens, Candytopia, Zootropolis, Spacezone, and Winterland, to name a few. Most wholesome earthly delights are represented here.
  
  4 - To go back home, a dreamer must walk thru the Waking Gate. This is facilitated by the inhabitants of Zooreal, who guide each dreamer thru their night of fun before dropping them off at the Gate.
      4.1 - Dreams cannot pass thru the Waking Gate.
      4.2 - There are some dreams who want to leave Zooreal and enter the waking world. Some of them do, and are called Daydreams, but they are exceedingly rare; it takes an enormous amount of energy to cross over. Even they cannot pass thru the Waking Gate.
• .
  5 - Although they are sentient, there’s no such thing as a bad dream in Zooreal. Even nightmares, who are scary and must be kept away from the children, are not scary on purpose. They mean well, but struggle to understand why people run away from them.
      5.1 - The most famous nightmare is Goonka, the lonely troll. Other nightmares flock to her for her great strength, but all she wants is to care for children, so much so that she leaves the furthest rings to invite children into her cave. She is Zooreal’s Boogeyman.
  
  6 - Zooreal runs on joy. A dreamer’s laughter is a filling meal to a Zooreal dream. The more joy they inspire, the wilder and more expressive they can be. (Excess energy is stored in balloons. They’re all over the place.)
      6.1 - When there are no dreamers around, colors fade and lights shut off. Music slows to a crawl. Zooreal can exist without dreamers, but it isn’t the same; it becomes a memory of itself, sleeping, waiting for the next child to come wake up the funhouse.
      6.2 - This is why Clowntown is so rundown. Very few children go there anymore. 
• **More Characters from Zooreal**
  **Jungle Jim** - A skyscraper-sized robot made of tubes and slides. Kids climb all over him.
  **Leon IV** - A giant lion made of stone and sunlight. He watches over the Grand Library, where books can transport you into fantasy worlds. He wears glasses, and has a little fez, probably. Looks up to his dad.
  **Gweleven** - A circus performer who performs alongside ten funhouse mirror versions of herself. She can collapse into 1 body at will, and is very good at trapeze. She is made of bubbles and blue crystal.
  **Poncho** - A sleep paralysis demon with the brain of a golden retriever. Likes lying on top of people and getting belly rubs. Can fetch. Wants friends. Is terrifying.
  **Maven** - A motherly angel made of plush and feathers. Wields a mug of hot cocoa with terrifying strength. Affectionate, if overbearing.
  **Clawdius **- A decrepit animatronic clown.
  **Never** - Once, a dreamer refused to wake up, and hid in the Goonka's cave until he was forgotten. He is a grown man now, and very lucid, capable of bending Zooreal around his finger. Dreams are powerless against him; and so, wherever he appears, the children are called to banish him to the furthest rings. 

and two short stories, set in Yamato and Walnacht respectively.

IX: Gallery

click to see full size

A selection of pieces I'm proud of. About half made it into the game in one form or another. From top to bottom, left to right:

• Sogin's Squire. I leaned into cute, simple shapes because I was still drawing with a trackpad.
• Veria. Free commission for another designer. The first piece I used a drawing tablet for.
• Lunar Inquisitor. Last of the pieces made in the native art editor. Definitely approaching the limits of my abilities vis a vis color and shading.
• Lavaclad Pillager. Part of my Krita arc, before I realized I had Photoshop available thru my university. Also part of my six-pack-abs-on-everything arc.
• Big Boi. Free commission for the devs. I still really like this lineless style. When I want to really render something, I whip this out.
• Various. Photoshop + tablet ramped up my art production a lot. I would sketch thumbnails during lectures and bang out the render as soon as I got home.
• Doodle something? The only physical piece I made for Collective. Colored digitally.
• Jehoel Dragonslayer. In my twunk era. This heavy line weight style has been my default since 2021.
• Zenshiro. My late Collective era pieces are very chaotic: you can see all the sketch lines and everything. I'm pretty sure this was a time-saving thing? but I like the messy energy of it.

the last piece i made for collective (a paid commission!)
click for full size

fate-as-class (Wheel of Horses)

Prophecy is tricky in ttrpgs because we (the players) have free will and exist in linear time. A future event which cannot be avoided (in the Oedipal style) goes against the spirit of the exercise-- smth smth quantum ogre smth smth

However, if a player opts in to a miserable fate, it's fair game. A lot of fun trap design lives in this space: holes in the wall that bite your hands off, mysterious goop that turns you inside out if you drink it. Knowing your fate is a curse, and sometimes it's fun to be cursed.

Idea #1: Everyone knows that oracles are dangerous, because they're always right. If you piss one off they can tell you exactly when and how you'll die, no Save. If you flee fate, the gm has carte blanche to defy probability until what was predicted comes to pass. Only the foolish seek out oracles; only the luckless randomly encounter them.

Idea #2: For a west marches type thing: between sessions, players ask for omens when planning their adventures. ("What is the most dangerous thing in the Mines of Moomin" "Where can a big azz jewel be found") The gm uses these omens to prep the next session, and drops a little extra info about the dungeon in return. [I use this in my cath celdaenn game and it's helped tremendously, ymmv]

But there's one kind of prophecy everyone opts into by default: their class. Being a fighter defines not only what a character can do, but what they will be able to do in the future. [this extends beyond player-facing mechanics: it's common advice to add spell scrolls to dungeons if there is a wizard in the party, holy relics for the cleric, etc.]

 

* * *

  

Idea #3: Your class is your fate, a pact between you and the gm, a promise from the universe.

Everyone has a fate. (choose or roll)

1d12	You are a...	...of...	...in the house of...
1	Jack	Fire	The Father
2	Saber	Water	The Son
3	Wright	Earth	The Warrior
4	Master	Wood	The Liege Lord
5	Sage	Steel	The Scholar
6	Muse	Gold	The Hermit
7	Witch	Night	The Weaver
8	Maid	Bones	The Poet
9	Prince	Stars	The Emperor
10	Thief	Storms	The Dragon
11	Shade	Silk Rope	The Exile
12	Wheel	Horses	The Dead

Each fate consists of a constellation, a planetary aspect, and a celestial house.

• The constellation describes a mode of interaction: the thief steals.
• The aspect describes an element that is acted upon: the thief of gold steals gold.
• The house describes an instrumental person or spirit: more on this later*

A fate can be read many ways. For example, a witch is one who will transform OR be transformed. A muse of horses will inspire horses OR beauty OR mastery.

A sage of stars can read fates. If you are anyone of importance, your fate was read when you were young.

Everyone lies about their fate.

So what does your fate actually mean?

1. The archetypal Jack (also called Sailor or Rider, depending on where you're from) is a wanderer. They travel freely and easily, and help others get from one place to another.
2. The archetypal Saber is a fighter. They wield and are wielded by others.
3. The archetypal Master is a sorcerer. They command their planetary aspect, but must do so from afar.
4. The archetypal Prince (or Beast, in less forgiving climes) is a victim. They are hounded by their aspect until death.

Fate can be mundane. A particularly good lawyer is probably a Saber. A woman who always trips over her own feet might be a Prince of Night (one who is hunted by gravity).

But the mundane is just the first step:

click for full size

You advance by spending xp on powers, or by diagetically acquiring powers that belong to your class:

• Either way, advancement leads to imbalance. Imagine walking across a rope with a bucket in each hand. If someone puts a coin in one bucket, you are more likely to fall, at least until a stone is added to the other.
• All characters fumble on X-in-6, where X is one plus how many imbalanced powers they have.
• When you fumble, you may roll (X-in-6 again) to regain your balance. If you succeed, gain a balancing power for free-- it manifests spontaneously and immediately
• Your level is equal to the number of steps from the center your path travels.
• You can determine your fate at character creation or let the gm roll it secretly. Even if you don't know your fate, you can still feel when you're off-balance.

[design note: this is a lot of work for smth that might benefit from less structure. My ideal scenario is: npc turns out to be a wheel of fire → "o so that's why you're missing a leg and can't take a joke, wanna come learn how to breathe fire?" 144 player-facing hex-grids doesn't serve this goal-- smth to consider i guess]

[design note 2: what the fuck even is this post. is this the cottonmouth i've heard so much about? i'm just going to hit publish because if i think any more about homestuck my head is going to explode

 

*i lied, no more on this later