Mention a random quirk of your world

In the fantasy world I'm working on, the "gods" are ancient highly intelligent reality warpers that moved into the world, changed stuff around, convinced locals to worship them, and now pretty much start holy wars on each other for amusement. One civilization tried to fight back by becoming gods themselves. It did not end well.

In my constructed world, there exists a place that is basically a city-sized school. Its full name is the Grand Academic City of Sicaresia, but most people simply call it Sicaresia because it's shorter. The city is basically designed for two purposes: 1.) to serve as a center of scientific and magical research and advancement; and 2.) to cater to the students and staff of the Grand Academy and the labs.

My inspiration was the Diliman branch of the University of the Philippines, a highly prestigious college in my country.

"Stealing is a crime and drugs is a crime too BUT if you steal drugs the two crimes cancel out and it’s like basically doing a good."

Mine has two forms of time-telling: An objective one (the same all year) and a subjective one (based on the position of the sun).

There's a Mirror Universe concept I've been thinking up lately— two parallel 'planes'. Both planes are monochrome— one (A) is all white with black outlines, the other (B) is all black with white outlines. Each plane can be seen from the other, albeit upside-down from their perspective. There's a Border plane in between the two, which would resemble something drawn by M.C. Escher.

Residents of one plane rarely visit the other, for practical reasons— regardless of location, gravity will pull objects towards their native plane. If a B object were to fall from A territory, then it would be a long way down.

edited 25th May '11 10:10:34 AM by Blueeyedrat

In my world, the forests suffocate the axemen, and the mountains belch out those who dig into them, and the seas refuse to be made tame. There over the north, the ice lays awake, brooding. Yet the valleys and hills are gentle and submit to the clamor of hooves and wagon wheels, and the rivers and streams, their veins, offer life to the traveler.

During the earlier parts of World War II, the Nazis were digging in Egypt looking for their lost secrets. Of course, this awoke an eldritch abomination that happened to be there: Mj'rah, Prince of the Old Ones. The Royal Department of Paranormal Affairs sent their best mages to stop it. Mj'rah allowed that portion of his body (it was a protrusion from a larger mass) to be destroyed and consciously broke his etherial essence into enough pieces to inhabit and infect every human being on the planet, the last piece (the one that contains its conscious) retreated to the void where it would gradually reform itself.

Because of this, all humans on the planet at the time and (most of) the descendants of those humans cannot use magic independently without the risk of becoming a slave to the Old Ones.

A majority of Mj'rah's body is still intact and is in something of a brain dead/comatose/whatever state. Some oil workers did accidentally drill into one of its tendrils and used its blood for fuel. The fumes that were produced from the burning of Mj'rah's blood merged to form a smog monster, but that's a tale for another time.

edited 29th May '11 3:46:11 PM by Promethax

Most of the world has midevil level technology + magic. The Dwarves and the (now extinct) Mountain Orcs have *

1960's level technology. This includes nukes and basic ICBMs. Irritating the dwarves would be a very bad idea.

edited 29th May '11 6:03:19 PM by Lessinath

"This thread has gone so far south it's surrounded by nesting penguins. " — Madrugada

The Scary Dogmatic Aliens who invade Next Sunday A.D. don't have any major space travel (beyond sub-orbital fighters and bombers). They instead hitch rides as parasites inside Eldritch Abominations, which take the form of giant grey clouds when in our atmosphere.

EDIT: After some thought, I've decided to ditch the German naming.

Also, the names we assign alien things are always Gratuitous German*

edited 30th May '11 8:52:09 AM by RTHSFF

"Meet 18th century English gentlewoman Kimiko Achmadsdottir and her brother-in-law Wladyslaw bin Vivianus." - annebeeche

My world is flat and circular(also small, diameter is only 16 thousand km) with a giant diamond shaped moon floating over the exact center. Said moon is also so large that it is seen from almost anywhere and is used to tell directions.

edited 29th May '11 7:01:52 PM by Kostya

The Coast Guard actually guards the coast. They're magic users who specialize in damage control from water-based weather/erosion, and aggressive marine species.

In Endless Conflict there are a few noteworthy quirks.

The first of which is that B Movies have made a comeback on the entertainment scene. One of them titled I Was A Space Marine has been seen by the main characters.

Another more profound quirk is astronomy related. In the book the star system at Tau Ceti*

, home of the Preyaran homeworld is extremely populated at the celestial level. Apart from being surrounded by a dense dust cloud, it has 8 planets (3 of which gas giants), and 10 dwarf planets scattered throughout the system. What makes this even quirkier? The system used to have 12 dwarf planets. One of them was observed destroyed by comet impact by Preyaran astronomers. The other was (re-)located after the Preyarans achieved spaceflight but found to be destroyed and when compared to previous astronomy observations, presumably by collision with a comet or asteroid. Of the other 10 dwarf planets, 6 of them were found via manned exploration of their system.

Somewhere, in one of my backlogged ideas for a world, there are two 'factions'. I'm not entirely sure the scale of it (two towns, a single town, two mansions, etc.), but there will definitely be some sort of Mundane Fantastic elements involved (likely magical, but I'm also open to technology and Magitek). There's an ongoing competition between the two factions— a Capture the Flag game of sorts. The game never ends, so it's played casually most of the time; each side goes about with business as usual, and occasionally send a member over to infiltrate the other side and retrieve the 'flag' (Probably an orb or something like that). There are a few rules (the 'flag' must be possible to find/obtain, don't destroy anything, etc.), but besides that, the game is anything-goes.

edited 30th May '11 8:43:23 AM by Blueeyedrat

In my post-Apocalypse-setting world, where the end of the world was actually an unleashing of a strange type of energy deep within the crust of the the earth, this energy was dubbed "magic" by many and might have been the kind of stuff Merlin and the wizards of old were talking about in the legends. Yep, the thing that most people dismissed as fairy tales.

And guess what this energy was called? Mana.

There's a branch of biological augmentation called Technobotany- the modification of plants for human benefit. Imagine a rapidly growable forest that doubles as a solar farm.

Also, there's a faction called the Quantum Alchemists, an SF version of medieval/Full Metal Alchemist alchemists. Except they use physics and quantum mechanics to (attempt) to construct elements. They're a queer bunch.

"Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person that doesn't get it."

Both Orcs and Hill Dwarves are overly found of rugby. There are amateur teams of orcs and teams of dwarves pretty much everywhere where those races have significant populations. Their rivalry on that sport is legendary: Orcish tribes have been known to propose truces in war so that their warriors could take part in the local tournaments.

It's pretty much an orc/dwarf thing: Tackling a 120 kg orc or a short, 100 kg dwarf is not something most elves or goblins (or humans, for that matter, although some do) would do for fun.

edited 14th Jun '11 12:30:33 PM by SavageHeathen

You exist because we allow it and you will end because we demand it.

Humans are precursors of Elves, Dwarfs, Orcs and Giants.

Neither of mine (that are more than passing whims) are particularly developed, but in the one guns and explosives are rare and expensive because the nobles have Psychic Powers and acted to suppress things that let commoners achieve similar combat prowess, and all the motor vehicles run on Stirling engines because either they never found oil or there isn't any to find (I'm debating setting it (Long) After the End, with the lack of available oil the only real remnant).

Shinigan (Naruto fanfic)

Centuries ago, humans fought The Fair Folk. Both races survived (mostly), but no one's entirely sure who won (or if, in fact, there was a winner). The world got ripped a new spacehole.

edited 18th Jun '11 2:52:03 PM by FarseerLolotea

Renaissance tech plus Wizards and Hobbits and Elves. Oh my!

They don't have movies but they do have opera, so stories need some changes to fit the World.

Star Trek is about a sailing ship seeking out new trade routes. Currently, the Merchants' Guild are building a better astronomical observatory. From the in-World POV, Star Trek is set 25 years in the future, when the Observatory is complete; Enterprise is a Starship because it uses the improved navigational tables.

The Railway Children: trains do not use steam power because that hasn't been invented yet, so they are powered by Perpetual Motion Machine because Second Law Of Thermodynamics hasn't been invented either.

edited 19th Jun '11 6:02:07 PM by Trotzky

Liberty! Equality! Fraternity!

It's been long enough, so I think I'll drop another tidbit from my Alternate Universe...

So much for the separation of church and state. In the late 1960's, to help boost people's will and spirit in the fight against the Metalloids (think zombie apocalypse+robot uprising...being perpetuated by what appear to be humanoid metal sculptures), the U.S. government established the United Church of America. Essentially a mashup of the United Church of Christ, United Methodist Church, Episcopalianism, and a whole bunch of other things, it's still pretty darn mainstream. In fact, my other concept of it is so broad that it's basically more like Unitarian Universalism. I haven't decided which I'd rather do, but it might wind up the latter since I'm Jewish and short on time and a lot about Christianity confuses me quite a bit.

I was mainly inspired by how great a driving force a single religion can be, what with all that's been done in the name of Christianity...and the whole ridiculous Church Militant atmosphere of Warhammer 40K.

Stay tuned for more random quirks from the Metalloid War Alternate Universe, which may eventually get its own thread.

Flora Segunda | World Made By Hand | Monster Blood Tattoo ^You should read these series.

Everyone has a Replicator.

The planet has 2 continents. No members of either continent know the other exists. This is a world where satellites exist.

Also the sun generates dark magic.

WWII

The Allies: Britain, The Reich, Scandinavia, The Byzantine Empire and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

The Entente: The Holy Russo-Slavic Empire and The Roman Leauge Italy, France and Spain.

I reject your reality and substitute my own!!!

Innocence Lost: World War One is from 1921-1926 over the rape of a princess, fought with steamtanks, airships, and floating fortresses in Europe and the Wild West between every Great Power of the age.

Knightfall: Flying Brick superheroes exist, and are at the behest of the (still-living) Precursors. The invention of FTL brought them back from thousands of years of exile, and now they play a deadly game of intrigue with the various interstellar nations. To that end, the supers pretend to be "heroes," and end up running the many nations' armies and navies, fighting each other over which race will lead them all to Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence.

Soul: The gods are an old married couple, and their argument over which race should win (elves and dwarves) is a moot point because neither race has time to fight each other—they're too busy worrying about whether they have to fight the humans or not. Also, the gods have triplets: one of them is the Grim Reaper, one of them is the judge of the dead, and one of them is an Old Testament-style Satan civilization-tester.

I am now known as Flyboy.

All of the Five Races are actually the same species. None of them admit it. (Brutes in particular tend to get the short end of the stick—they can consciously control their own emotions, and they're immune to all spells that target the soul, so people tend to draw false conclusions.)

That's Feo . . . He's a disgusting, mysoginistic, paedophilic asshat who moonlights as a shitty writer—Something Awful