This site requires Javascript to be turned on. Please enable Javascript and reload the page.

This is just Fantasy Main Menu This is Just Fantasy Preface Intro Choose Your Fantasy What's your world? Enlarging Your World Bringing your setting to life What's Up People? Creating your races So You Want to Play With Magic? Developing and refining magic systems What Makes Us Who We Are Creating your main character All Together Now Final project-combining all the parts to make a scene Metacognition Works Cited

Dark Sun

25038

Dark Sun is a setting for Dungeons & Dragons that (like all of the settings) is also a shared-world fantasy setting where many different writers write books within the same setting. In this world there are two types of magic, preserving magic which preserved nature and defiling magic which draws upon life to power it, defiling magic has left the world a total desert wasteland with the sun turned red because the energy has been drained from it. All the races have changed drastically based on the environment, elves gone from noble forest dwellers to cruel rogues, halflings which are usually mellow and innocently sly now tribal cannibals...taking the races people know and love and flipping them on their heads is fun and surprising...but if you're going to do that have some connection to the originals, elves in D&D settings have always traditionally tended towards chaos and deceit but harmlessly in the forest without the forest they've warped, and halflings have always focused largely on their own people. It's more compelling when you aren't just taking the names of the races and having nothing at all related but make it so people can see something similar while also different.

This page has paths:

Choose your fantasy notes Garrett Winters
Contents of this path:
1. Paranormal Mystery
2. Urban sorcery
3. Iron Druid
4. October
5. Dresden Files
6. people notes
7. Dark Sun
8. appearance
9. Environment
10. culture
11. magic notes
12. Thay
13. Faerie rings

This page is referenced by:

What's Up People? 13 Creating your races image_header 2017-12-16T02:54:57-08:00
Ok, you've got the world (or worlds), now who is in it? People and cultures are fascinating, and you can do a lot with them. However, too many can possibly clutter the story, and it's very easy to make them two-dimensional tropes that meet with the main character instead of a people in their own right, and if you're on Earth require a lot of care and thought about how you're going to portray fellow humans. The races can be people like your character or they can represent a harmful/alien force (for an example of the latter, my scene has the fae in it, they are a race but function as a trial that the heroes need to face). You can draw upon mythology, the common Tolkien-esque races, or make your own (and don't feel forced to follow the tropes with myth or the common fantasy races to the letter, sometimes the most unique stories take races that we know already and flip them [first example that comes to mind is Dark Sun].
Activity: As this assignment is going to be focused on a single scene, we don't want to overpopulate it, so we're just going to focus on elaborating one race (pick either the race of the character or if you're doing urban fantasy and your character is from an actual race a different nonhuman race they might encounter or will be relevant in the scene), with the 3 steps here as a guide (link elaborates in detail, check the notes for summaries, depending on what function the race serves all these aspects might not be relevant mine is going to be different in some ways), thinking about the appearance of the characters, the environment and how it affects them, and their culture along with a name.
Example: the race living in my city are the beings from Celtic myth known as the fae, because for my book series especially this specific race I am solely relying on the lore there's...not much in the aspects the article suggests. Traditionally they are wearing ornate Shakespearian garb, are taller and thinner than humans, and have pointed ears.
The fae are masters of their environment and wielders of illusion magic (glamour) and conjuration, they don't have jobs but live as aristocrats who find amusement with human lives which they consider toys, they don't really need to eat and there's never any description of farms or whatever because food is magically conjured at their feasts (feasts which if a human eats from they will keep eating and hungering for the food of the fae forever, character in my book has this happen it's sad), their clothing is glamoured to look like it does...however, the "environment" of Ceo is essentially a trap they use on humans, as it reduces their inhibitions with its narcotic fog and thus makes us easier to play with.
For culture I'll copy/paste the 7 aspects in the article and answer that way
1. Social Organization (family units and social classes): traditionally the fae seem to mimic the human royal courts (Hence being called the Seelie or Unseelie courts), so you have the Royalty on top, the courtiers close to the throne, and commoners. Family determines class, the fae don't have the same emotional bonds that we do when it comes to family.
2. Customs and Traditions: Decadence and debauchery are the hallmarks of fae society. Their nature is too fluid for traditions or customs of the sort. In order to deal with the boredom of immortality they crave novelty and fun...and the best source for both of them is playing with humans, wreaking havoc on our lives which seems evil to us, but they consider us like toys to be played with not as actual human beings. In Ceo they lure humans into the city as its fog slowly wears away at the human's ability to resist or control themselves, playing with them until the fog wears away everything in their minds and renders them useless.
3. Religion: The fae are semi-divine beings themselves, nature spirits. They recognize the existence of the Tuatha De Danaan, the Celtic gods, not based on faith but because they actually interact sometimes, though they usually keep to themselves.
4. Language: Technically Gaelic however they have the ability to both understand and be heard in every language at once.
5. Arts and Literature: In Ceo the fae can shape their homes and the materials they use, essentially making the whole entire city a gallery of their art each one of them bringing their strange vision to life.
6. Governing Systems: Monarchy.
7. Economic Systems: Don't really have one, no need for one.