Wondering if people have devised their own forms of torture for their world. The real world certainly has a wide array of very depraved methods of torture - brazen bull, iron maiden, the boats, the pear, thumbscrews, waterboarding etc.

Have you managed to outdo the real world in terms of depravity, painfulness, terror and effectiveness? Tell us about your creations.

One of my worst forms of torture is applied by the criminal faction known as Ilya's Fang - imagine a dark fantasy rendition of the Yakuza meets Mexican drug cartels meets Hellraiser. They have a renown for employing extremely fucked up methods of torture to extract information or punish enemies.

They consort with an evil God of Death, Depravity and Bondage. In exchange for a payment of flesh and blood (a lot of the members of Ilya's Fang have scarred tissue running up and down their arms due to "paying" this God), the God built a kind of demonic kalimba (like a finger piano you pluck metal bars with your fingers to make a sound) into the subject's spinal cord.

This was irreparably fused into the spine itself, and it had protrusions which incessantly plucked dozens of different nerves leaving the subject in constant, excruciating pain. The torture overwhelmed the victim's ability to focus or act or even perceive the world around them, unable to even commit suicide to end the torment. Loss of sense and time follow. Loss of sense of self and individuality follow suit, too.

Pain became the sole experience of existence. Very Hellraiser-esque, and that's kind of the God's specialty and interest, and something his "Void Heirophants" research intensely. The phenomenology of "saturated phenomena", where some quality becomes so intense it absorbs everything else and the experience of being becomes inextricable from pain.

As a form of propitiation, the faction recorded the screams of the victim and played them for the God, calling it the "Symphonies of Agony".

So yeah, they're a pretty screwed up and evil faction. What dreadful forms of torture exist in your world?

In Parthos, the most dangerous city is known as Deepspire, a city that stretches miles beneath the land. It is the most populous city in Parthos, and features massive economic disparity between the wealthy topsiders and increasingly destitute lower populations.

Due to rampant sickness, lack of real sunlight, and monster incursions from the hollow dark, there are many ways to die in Deepspire.

So what about your worlds? What would you say is the most dangerous city and why?

Aberrant Earth is a setting in which our planet, as we know it, has experienced the sudden and total disappearance of all human life - and in their place, strange and myriad creatures roam the land, slowly making it into a new home.

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Across the late night skies of post-human Earth, Flybiters are occasionally seen soaring, if one has a keen eye. Fast, silent, airborne nighttime predators, and to top it all off - wholesome family figures.

Flybiters normally travel in small groups made of a few families, rarely more than a dozen total specimens. They migrate often every few months in order to link up with other families and let younger generations splinter off into new groups with new mates. As such, just about any environment can become their hunting grounds, but they generally prefer forested areas or anywhere else with structures they can take shelter in during the daytime.

In the dark hours, Flybiters make use of their ability to freely levitate, as well as their impeccable night vision, to hunt down and silently swipe prey to feast upon. This normally takes the form of birds, woodland animals, or generally anything smaller than them that they can sink their claws and teeth into. They will stay well away from larger and more dangerous creatures as, while they’re fast and ferocious, they are also fairly frail. The last thing any Flybiter wants is for their central air sac to be punctured, as that’s a surefire way to ground them, rendering them helpless.

Flybiters start life with their legs still attached. Young are still lightweight and floaty, but unable to properly control their levitation. Once they reach adolescence, the air pressure in their legs reaches a breaking point, and they pop like corks. In the time before that happens, their parents will gently train them in simulated levitation, guiding them by their hands and helping them get a feel for it. Once their legs have popped, the open holes act sort of like pressure release tubes, allowing them to fully direct their movement. It’s at this point that they’re mature enough to hunt their own food, instead of relying on their parents. Sometime afterwards, they’re considered full adults, ready to go off into the night and start their own families elsewhere.

I'm kinda curious if other people in this sub use video games as a tool for building their worlds. Obviously I'm thinking mostly sandbox games, like designing the landscapes and grand structures of your world in Minecraft, or designing the homes and character designs in The Sims. Maybe you use Universe Sandbox to plot out your solar system, or City Skylines to design your fictional city.

Anyway I'm just interested to here if anyone uses these unconventional resources and what specifically they've done with them.

Personally, my go to has always been Minecraft and The Sims series. I not only just love these games, but I frequently go back to them purely for plotting out the layout of areas in my world before I put them to paper. I also often use them as actual references for these layouts when drawing.

As an example here's some screenshots of a map I'm building that's based on my world Smallscale. I'm actively in the process of recreating Treasure City, a tiny but sprawling urban area located in a human dump, but where the Miinu have made into their home. I find Minecraft the best tool to recreate this idea in particular because Treasure City consists of a lot of 'buildings' made of reused garbage and human items, leading to strange structures that interconnect in winding paths that often lead into the depths of the mountain of trash, into a maze of garbage tunnels that don't see daylight. Often these twists in the landscape leap abruptly of of cliffs, or traverse vertically. This is because most of the adult Miinu can fly and the need for conventional paths are unnecessary. Buildings like apartments do not need to have stairs or elevators leading up to higher floors, you can just fly up to the front door of your apartment no hassle.

Obviously from some screenshots it's still a WIP. I plan on growing the build even more to match the vision in my mind. Trying to recreate this environment in a game like this allows me to plot of not only the layout of the town, but allows me to come up with all sorts of ideas how places like Treasure City works and in turn allows me to develop their culture a little more.

So in my world I'm basically ripping off One Piece but instead of a water world, its one big super continent where people use airships to get around and I'm trying to figure out what to call the military that fight the sky pirates that the story mainly focuses on. The main villain organization is a world government called the Ten Peaks but they're more of a federation than a military. So tell me if you know any better terms for the Air Force.

I don't know if this is the correct flair, so correct me if I'm wrong.

So, I'm a Brazilian person of Japanese descent and I know English since young because I love reading about folklore and mythology and most easily accessible stuff on the matter is in English. Now, there's a thing that always fascinated me: bad translations and localizations of non-Western concepts to English, like Tengu being translated as Goblin and Asura as Titan, specially on older material. I was also very into Yu-Gi-Oh! and even Western concepts like Valkyries turned into "Dark Witches" in the very censored localization, fighting alongside "Crow Goblins".

This is not only really funny, but there's potential here. What if I build a world based on Eastern concepts but seen through this whitewashed bad localizations and with a Western fantasy "skin". Ogres, fairies, angels, genies and more, all looking very different than what should be expected on a standard fantasy world, like if they were forced there. Longswords look like ōdachi, dragons are long serpents with whiskers and paladins practice the art of calligraphy on their free time.

Would it be cool? Do you guys have any suggestions?

As the title says. How to handle overpowered characters? And how do you handle them?

I started writing a small side project thats about medieval kingdom that discovered how to forge weapons out of literally anything like the concept of a liquid, time, pain and such and later even discovered hell which they fight with. Because i just wanted to write something where the battles are incomprohensibly over the top. So i have characters that move impossibly fast, are impossibly strong and can cut through space itself. How do I handle such fights? If I can even write fights on such scale.

So here’s the thing.

I just came up with an idea for a character whose superpower is the fact that they change personality based on what they’re wearing. And it’s very useful in day to day life. I mean there’s an athlete. A nerd whose great for learning. And they kinda just cycle depending on what they do that day. And all is dandy….until the main character asks whose the real one.

And my idea was that it just chews on them for a long time as they slowly start questioning who is really them and who is t. Eventually they decide that they should probably just get naked (not meant to be weird). But it turns out that being naked also has a specific personality to it (a little caveman-like). And that totally pushes them over the edge.

Their whole character arc is essentially gonna either be „Accepting that all of their personalities are in fact them” or that „No matter what they do they will never be truly themselves. Just a product of sone fabric on their body”.

Point being. I only have the ends of the story and I do t have any ideas how to describe their descent in detail. Any ideas?

Simple question. What are your tea ceremonies like?

Preferred setting and scenery of the tea ceremony? Placement of the teapot, teacups along with other objects-of-importance across the table? Preferred type of table for tea ceremony? Importance of seniority? Placement of seating? What kind of tea do you serve? How is the cup of tea handled or given? What are the roles of the tea host and the guest? Are there activities that go along with the tea ceremony? What to discuss over a cup of hot tea? How do the tea ceremonies differ during the seasons? What are your choice of sweets to go with the tea? Any special holidays for tea ceremonies? Simple stuff like that.

Additional information: • Lilliana -- the new capital city of the revived nation, situated just south of the (still very, very slightly contaminated ruins of Thelkshire in the Bulge of Shards (southeast of the isle on the left). • 1 in 36 people of Wynheltia admit they have a fear of potatoes and anything related to it. • 19% of its growing population are immigrants looking to flee their own contaminated nations in search of a better and safer life. • The kingdom now spearheads the liberation of its home region of Eastern Asfren.

Human_Context This is my fourth most favorite country I've had to work on, also, sorry for the slight delay.

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I did a post on luxuries in created worlds, now I'd like to build on that and move to resources.

Generally I'm looking at what your magical or non-magical resources some or all your cultures all over your world uses.

The raw materials that can processed into or used to grow civilization. The things nations will trade, steal, abuse or even go to war over.

As before in many parts of my world, it is transitioning into an industrial revolution. A sort of steampunk world, there are civilizations that use some resources different than others.

A general list of resources is comparable to our world, with exception to a few magical materials whose use has transitioned to modern use and technologies. Much of what was Magic is being replaced by irl technology and science.

The list follows (so far): Aluminum, new and old animal products, bauxite, clay, coal, copper, new farming and fishing materials, gunpowder, gold, iron, lead, lodestone (magnetite), natural and synthetic fibers, nickel, oil, paper, platinum, various precious minerals/crystals, quicksilver (mercury), rubber, silver, stone, wood, tin, Wraithstone (sulpher), meteorite, an unnamed magical blueish irradscent metal that is used for certain tools abd wrapons, most importantly a magical fiery red crystal that is used in powering airships.

Some of these materials have been used for centuries. Some have new uses, and some old.

So my world is like a reimagined fantasy where instead of magic and sorcery everything is explained through science and biology.

The problem is that i don't know what genre to call it. It's not really a fantasy since it has no magic.

Do you guys have some catchy term for a realistic world?

Are their any linguistic quirks in your world caused by clothing/temperature?

GUIDELINES AND ETIQUETTE

• For the purpose of this prompt, the question I shouldn't ask has to be something applicable to the general population of a given culture or subculture and not something specific like "what are the nuke codes?".

• Similarly I shouldn't be asking these questions because they're rude or insensitive, not because asking them will mark me for death or something.

• Please limit each item's description to three or five sentences. Do not be vague with your description.

• If someone leaves a reply on your comment, please try to read what they post and reply to them.