Original Fantasy Setting

[-Drifter-]

I'm too tired to come up with a decent filler paragraph, so let's skip straight to the topic, shall we? Come up with an idea for your own original fantasy setting!

I may post mine here later when I'm feeling less lazy.

 

[Jarek Mace]

I can't comment on the originality of it, but I have been working on a novel. The world is fairly generic but the actions of every organism on the planet are subtly and partially determined by a small group of mages. There is no 'true' free will so to say, your overall direction is guided via social conditioning and magical tampering caused by the mages; it's not a bad thing though, everybody knows of it and the mages do not use people for malevolent purposes; there hasn't been a murder since the mages took control, and everybody knows of the mages existence and nobody ushers a complaint. However, there are signs that the power and control of the mages exert is starting to wane and murders plus various other atrocities begin to happen.
Essentially the world is a big ol' spin on the black and white FREE WILL = GOOD CONTROL = BAD and adds shades of grey instead.

 

[Emperor Nat]

Eh... I do write fantasy stuff, in fact I'm finishing up my short book now, but the world itself is largely derivative of other things. I suppose the only part of it which I really haven't seen elsewhere is that magic still has to obey the laws of physics - aka, you can't just make fire come out of no-where, what you're actually doing is splitting the water molecules in the air (into H and O2) and then causing them to react again.

The guy above me's thing sounds cool though.

 

[PrinceOfShapeir]

I can't comment on the originality of it, but I have been working on a novel. The world is fairly generic but the actions of every organism on the planet are subtly and partially determined by a small group of mages. There is no 'true' free will so to say, your overall direction is guided via social conditioning and magical tampering caused by the mages; it's not a bad thing though, everybody knows of it and the mages do not use people for malevolent purposes; there hasn't been a murder since the mages took control, and everybody knows of the mages existence and nobody ushers a complaint. However, there are signs that the power and control of the mages exert is starting to wane and murders plus various other atrocities begin to happen.
Essentially the world is a big ol' spin on the black and white FREE WILL = GOOD CONTROL = BAD and adds shades of grey instead.

Doesn't sound like much of a spin. It sounds like just as much of an oppressive, soul-crushing dystopia as the world of 1984, just executed with a little bit more long-term thinking.

I've been working on a story, here and there off and on for a while regarding a world that is essentially my attempt to hybridize Wuxia and Western Fantasy. The general gist of it is that dozens of ancient and/or mythological cultures that in our world were separated by thousands of miles and centuries of time existed simultaneously on the same continent, from Arthurian England and fifteenth century Italian city-states to Japan under the Edo Shogunate, Three Kingdoms China. Most of the continent is unified under the banner of the Roman Empire save for Carthage, Troy, Viking Scandinavia, and Venice.

A world where legendary historical and mythological figures exist side by side - Alexander the Great plots against Cao Cao and Charlemagne, while Mordred rules over England with an iron fist after the deposing and defeat of King Arthur, waging a war of conquest against neighboring nations with the tacit approval of Rome, opposed by Joan of Arc, Charlemagne, William Wallace, and Cúchulainn.

Despite the Roman conquest of the land they pay little attention to internal strife as long as it does not disrupt Roman affairs and the taxes get paid, with massive levies of men, money, and materiel being used to secure the Imperial borders despite as far as anyone knows there being nothing out there. Then again, from beyond the borders of the continent is where the Romans came from, their terror of what they had seen out there driving them with the fury to conquer nearly the entire continent before they were stopped by the Carthaginians and their allies.

Magic in this world is potent but rather inflexible. The most common use for it is through the Priesthood of Mercury, who operate as the only truly effective form of long-term communications, the rituals that create them permanently linking two minds together. There's a vast Temple in the city of New Rome where all the second half of the pairs is housed, in effect being a phone switchboard.

The unification of the wisdom and knowledge of so many cultures has brought about a technological golden age. Railroad networks connect many of the greatest cities to Rome, while mankind has begun their first nascent steps towards flight, with zeppelins already extant albeit little used save for military transport to isolated regions. Fusions of science and magic have yielded promising but as yet unsuccessful efforts in the realm of heavier than air flight. Firearms are in their infancy, with the matchlock periodically used and the flintlock having been recently invented.

Tl;dr - A Samurai, a Roman Legionnaire, a Knight of the Round Table, one of Charlemagne's Paladins, a Spartan Hoplite, and a Mongol Horse Archer riding a train to Damascus to aid the Sultan in fighting an Efreet terrorizing the city.

 

[-Drifter-]

It's less hard fantasy and more science-fantasy, but here's the story idea that gave me my profile name:

Spoiler

Trilligan's Gap is a series of caverns burrowed into the world's crust, to house and otherwise facilitate an entire populace of workers whose primary duty is to operate and maintain massive geothermal generators buried beneath the warren-city. The generators power The Gap, and the mysterious Topside - a civilization of technology advanced to Clarkeian levels: so far that it is "indistinguishable from magic".

The only access from Topside to The Gap is a single, massive chasm called 'The Breach,' which houses a series of elevators that connect the two, and the intermittent levels of the city that has grown along the sides of The Breach, called Cliffwall. The elevators ferry folks between Cliffwall and the Gap, occasionally, though no one has, in living memory, seen the elevator ascend all the way to Topside.

For some who live in the Gap, Topside is a wasteland - whatever is up there, the people have long since moved on or died out, leaving an empty world drawing tremendous power to be wasted on ghosts. For others, it is a myth, a land of unlimited wealth and bounty, where even the lowliest of drudges will be bathed in fortune and luxury. Still more see in Topside a tyranny, holding those in the Gap beneath a despotic bootheel in order to keep the power flowing.

Trilligan runs the Gap - it is his, body and soul. He keeps the workers in line and the generators running with inhuman efficiency. Some say he is a Topsider, using their vast technological superiority to keep the Gap in his iron grip. Others think he is one of the Elden - an immortal race that predates humanity, wise beyond understanding and possessed of eldritch powers. But all agree, he is not to be trifled with.

There's more, of course. I have lots of characters planned, and several scenes in my head. I just need to tie them together with some meaningful plot, and I think I'll have a proper novel in the works by the end of the year.

Unless you all tell me it sucks, in which case I'll probably trash it all and start again. That's what I usually end up doing.

Just wanted to say, that sounds pretty damn cool. I look forward to reading that story if it does get written.

 

[SckizoBoy]

Tl;dr - A Samurai, a Roman Legionnaire, a Knight of the Round Table, one of Charlemagne's Paladins, a Spartan Hoplite, and a Mongol Horse Archer riding a train to Damascus to aid the Sultan in fighting an Efreet terrorizing the city.

Man, that's going to be a massive sword/spear waving competition...(!)

I've kind of fallen off the map regarding fantasy. Just haven't thought much about it. CHomping through a historical story atm...

But, a sci-fi one is a multiple planet universe clobbering each other to death a la a couple of historical conflicts... still needs work, mainly in technological translation. 'Ll get back to ya on that.

 

[Gatx]

-snip-

Kind of reminds me of the "Drifters" manga in that they all exist together in an alternate world though the reason why is totally different.

 

[Me55enger]

I personally believe that One in Two people with access to the internet is "in the process" of writing a novel.

An original fantasy setting?

Hmm...

One where sex is even remotely within the realm of possibility.

 

[Texas Joker 52]

Alrighty, here's mine, and its actually the basic premise of my own little story that I'm trying to kick off:

Magic exists. In the modern world today, Magic and Sorcery still run rampant in a sort of underground throughout the globe, centered in both North America and Northern Europe. However, Sorcery isn't quite what its made out to be in books: Necromancy is merely a tool of the trade, not necessarily something evil or malevolent.

Every Sorcerer or Sorceress worth their salt and capable of tremendous feats have a familiar, called a Darkling, which is a willing human soul bound eternally to the body of an animal. In exchange for their human body, they gain magical knowledge, potentially eternal life, and insight into the magical world, separated from the mundane by a very thin veil. The Sorcerer that the Darkling is bound to is also potentially immortal, and their powers are greatly amplified with a Darkling familiar.

Sorcery has had its origins in ancient, Medieval Europe, where the first Sorcerers dabbled in the art and discovered what eventually became the basics. From then on, the most powerful and responsible of those formed the Court of Exile, a council wherein they monitor magical happenings, as well as act as Judge, Jury and Executioner to those that cross lines that weren't meant to be crossed, or break both magical and mundane laws with their power.

It was soon after its induction that one of the Court of Exiles members formed an abomination of a Darkling: Heathen. From then on, the tortured Heathen sought to destroy everything, and in the process, itself. It doesn't care for life in general, and would love for nothing more than to watch the world burn to a cinder, while it perishes itself in the flames.

That's not the full thing, of course, since it doesn't actually get into the plot of the story, but I'd prefer to keep that to myself.

 

[Starik20X6]

"The Timecrunch" is how I lovingly refer to my fantasy setting. The essential premise is thus: aspects from all of world history co-exist in a single time period. You've got steam trains, pirates, medieval castles, hot-air balloons and dinosaurs all existing at the same time.

 

[VeneratedWulfen93]

I came up with something for my gestating novel. At the time I was pleased with myself because I had made the Elves bastards but then Kingdoms of Amalur came out with the Tuatha and I scrumpled the paper up with a forced smile on my face.

In a broken land, after 75 years of warfare, the humans of the land have finally overcome the Elves who declared war from their forests. The elves homes were burned, dashed and left in ruin and everyone of the elves was put to the sword but each elf could best 50 armed men at once and so the numbers of human dead was great also.

To start the war the elves had cojured a spell out of jealously. The human god dwelt in the heavans, watching his children from another realm with untold power and under the him the humans had prospered in unity. The elven gods walked amongst them, The Patriarchs of nature and could manipulate nature but were still bound by it. All of the great Elven Patriarchs then pooled their power and shattered the human god, destroying his mind and essence. This left the Patriarchs spent however and they retreated into the earth to slumber. The husk of the God's body fell into this realm, a great black mass created of an otherworldly substance, Obsidian. The husk fell onto the plains of men and a great energy seeped out from it that was both disasterous and beneficial. The luckier of those effected died instantly, their bodies torn asunder by the sheer power of the cosmic shell. Some were forever twisted, taken out of the mortal world and placed in a half life as they dwelt in this world and the God's shattered realm. These wraiths became malevolent beings who haunted the dark corners of the world, using their strange powers to raise the dead and pervert nature. Lastly some were gifted with magic, an ability new to humans and the first Warlocks fumbled with their new powers.

The Warlocks possessed the power of Wraiths to subvert and alter nature yet were not stuck in a spirit form. The best of the Warlocks saw this oppurtunity and tried to install himself in power but sparked a civil war amongst the human cities that raged for 5 years. All the while the elves laughed and on the 6th year they marched.

Humans were ill equipped to fight elves, creatures of sheer natural power and savagery. An elf was strong as a bear, swift as hawk and they were darkened by cruelty. Humans were a perverse abomination to nature and the fact that their god continued to bless them even after his destruction angered the ageless elves.

Cities were swallowed by the earth, no man could enter the trees and plagues and disease felled as many men as the thorned spears of the elves did. In the end it was the Warlocks who tipped the balance, that and the attack forcing humanity to band together to pursue the elves once their momentum had been broken. For all the elves magic and skill there was simply not enought of them and they were gradually forced back, humans advancing over mountains of their dead and even mighty warlocks were no match for the handful of elven Bards.

But the humans won, the elves died and Obsidian remains where it was. Even after the war the forests are a dangerous place, filled with slumbering elven guardians and ghostly ancient protecters who exact the vengeance of their creators on tresspassers. Now Obsidian is a blackened citadel that no-one dears draw near. People speak of the creatures that dwell within, neither wraith nor warlock. Something else. The peasants speak out of earshot of the four noble families of how their families are touch by it, how each one had members who returned from the war differant. Something dark is coming, darker than shadow. Not the absence of light but the complete destruction of it...swallowed whole by Obsidian.

 

[Lunar Templar]

i usually just change what races are around.

i've actually yet to use a single elf or dwarf (cause they suck mostly)

i did actually take the Arrancar from Bleach and use them as a base for a race of the same name (cause I'm terrible at coming up with names) in a story though

 

[Soviet Heavy]

Sailing Planet. People built gigantic anchors into their earth to hold massive solar powered sails that pull their planet across the galaxy, using the sails reflective properties to simulate night and day, while the planet rotates within the gigantic network of anchors and pulleys used to move the sails.

Night and Day are random, depending on what light they can catch as they pass by stars.

 

[Manji187]

It's less hard fantasy and more science-fantasy, but here's the story idea that gave me my profile name:

Trilligan's Gap is a series of caverns burrowed into the world's crust, to house and otherwise facilitate an entire populace of workers whose primary duty is to operate and maintain massive geothermal generators buried beneath the warren-city. The generators power The Gap, and the mysterious Topside - a civilization of technology advanced to Clarkeian levels: so far that it is "indistinguishable from magic".

The only access from Topside to The Gap is a single, massive chasm called 'The Breach,' which houses a series of elevators that connect the two, and the intermittent levels of the city that has grown along the sides of The Breach, called Cliffwall. The elevators ferry folks between Cliffwall and the Gap, occasionally, though no one has, in living memory, seen the elevator ascend all the way to Topside.

For some who live in the Gap, Topside is a wasteland - whatever is up there, the people have long since moved on or died out, leaving an empty world drawing tremendous power to be wasted on ghosts. For others, it is a myth, a land of unlimited wealth and bounty, where even the lowliest of drudges will be bathed in fortune and luxury. Still more see in Topside a tyranny, holding those in the Gap beneath a despotic bootheel in order to keep the power flowing.

Trilligan runs the Gap - it is his, body and soul. He keeps the workers in line and the generators running with inhuman efficiency. Some say he is a Topsider, using their vast technological superiority to keep the Gap in his iron grip. Others think he is one of the Elden - an immortal race that predates humanity, wise beyond understanding and possessed of eldritch powers. But all agree, he is not to be trifled with.

There's more, of course. I have lots of characters planned, and several scenes in my head. I just need to tie them together with some meaningful plot, and I think I'll have a proper novel in the works by the end of the year.

Unless you all tell me it sucks, in which case I'll probably trash it all and start again. That's what I usually end up doing.

On the contrary, it is rather interesting. A double mystery; what is Topside really (wasteland, utopia, something else entirely?) and who is Trilligan really?

What I am curious about is Trilligan's methods of keeping everyone in line and his motivation for doing so. What does he get out of being "king of the slaves"?

No matter how powerful he is, fact is that he needs the people more than they need him, so when all the workforce starts to rebel en masse and eventually they will (for instance because they have come to consider even death to be a welcome release from their pitiful existence), how will Trilligan manage the situation and get everyone working again (and not plotting the next uprising)?

Also, who is the main character/ protagonist? Some youth who wants to escape the drudgery of work and see Topside for himself?

 

[Thaluikhain]

Don't have it about white elves and dwarf set in a NotWesternEuropean landscape.

Make your elves and dwarfs dark skinned and set it in NotSouthAmerican landscape, and everyone will be amazed at your creativity, or hate you for not trying to be Tolkien.

Alternatively, make it a sci-fi story, with a low tech level. Way back when, Conan the Barbarian used to be fairly Lovecraft-esque, they were correspondents and all, but then everyone decided trying to be Tolkien was the way to write any fantasy story ever.

 

[MelasZepheos_v1legacy]

I personally believe that One in Two people with access to the internet is "in the process" of writing a novel.

An original fantasy setting?

Hmm...

One where sex is even remotely within the realm of possibility.

And what percentage of those have finished and are awaiting publication?

As for original fantasy settings, I don't really think there are any totaly new ones, just recombinations of old ideas.

Like I wrote a story that combined four types of genre into one.

It was a western, in that it had gunslingers and lawmen and outlaws all tramping around small border towns robbing banks and etc.

It was a wasteland/post-apocalyptic/dystopia in that the land was a snowy wasteland not really suitable for human habitation. One of the books focused on a character getting thrown out into the wasteland and trying to survive against people who'd gone feral and the terrible conditions.

It was steampunk, in that underneath the dystopia was a lot of can-do human spirit, and the advent of new technology that was steampunk had brought hope that the land could be restored and the snows recede.

And it was a fantasy, in that magic existed, as did magical creatures. The main plot throughout the series focused on a gunslinger who got caught up in the affairs of a teenage girl who was the focal point of a new type of magic. So before it had been split into different varieties (black magic for attacking, white magic for healing, blue magic for environmental and red magic for anything else) and mages could only have one sort of magic, but the girl was being manipulated to be able to use all the magics at once, only it was backfiring.

I thought it was pretty original, but really it's just recombinant writing. Nothing wrong with it, but it's not completely creative.

 

[HardkorSB]

I have this setting, in which angels and devils are aliens.
They come to Earth to harvest souls from people (which in this universe is more like your life energy). The angels use the souls as fuel, while the devils use them as food.
There's also a race of gods (or at least, they were the inspiration for Jahweh, Allah and such) and they are kind of a mix between Q from Star Trek and Cthulhu.
The possibilities for expanding this universe are endless since you have so many legends, stories, religions, mythology in the world.

 

[Ragsnstitches]

I have a couple of worlds I'm developing, of which I only have rough narratives to work into a story.

1. The first one has been gestating for a long time and keeps changing (characters, concepts, context, themes... I'm never satisfied with how they all match up and it keeps me from going beyond the conceptual stages). It could take a few pages for me to encompass all the ideas I have for this potential narrative and even then it will likely come across as disjointed or nonsensical.

Spoiler: This is a little long winded

The world is a near future setting, but not our world. I draw a lot of designs from a modern setting and characters follow contemporary trends (fashion, gadgetry, media etc.). For the most part it also functions like our world, with the vast majority of people living mundane daily routines. The wider world is entering an age of political turbulence, particularly over the consumption of resources, though its background noise over the humdrum of daily life.

Spoiler: The quirk of this world...

The quirk of this world is that the world itself isn't just an object, a mass of earth and water floating in a vacuum. It possess a level of sentience, which I have not decided on (primal or intelligent), that makes it somewhat aware of the events transpiring in the world. It reacts to the affects of human activity, though its either so gradual or so indirect in its actions that the people of the world are, mostly, unaware of it. The reactions aren't brewing storms or earthquakes or other natural disasters, rather something ethereal or transcendent.

The stories I try to work into this world follows a particular type of manifestation of one of these reactions. A subgenus (correct me if its the wrong term please) of human, that is almost indistinguishable from regular humans. This subgenus also comes in 2 forms (separate from Male and Female distinctions):

*The first are called Harbingers or "breeders" and are, for all intents and purposes, normal people with normal ambitions and are generally unaware of their significance. They can be Male or Female. They are relatively rare, though numbers are sketchy due to how hard they are to detect. There are a few tells that I haven't refined yet, but I like the idea of making it a subtle physical difference in the iris of the eye. Haven't decided what it is yet.

*The second group are called Omen and this is where things get strange. When this second group hits the age of puberty (prior to this, they are identical to the first group) they undergo significant physical changes which are mostly random but are influenced by factors such as environment and psychological states of the individuals. The results of these changes are either subtle but potent mutations that make the individual particularly dangerous, or complete transformations into something monstrous. This group is very rare and the latter change is even rarer, making knowledge of their existence scarce. They can be male or female up to puberty, at which point they become asexual... usually carrying over superficial similarities to their pre-pubescent selves (except the monstrous transformations).

These 2 groups are not a new phenomenon, they have existed for a long time, swelling and decreasing in numbers depending on the state of the world. The 2nd groups transformations have sparked many of the myths and legends of the various civilisations and cultures that have been affected by them.

The groups are symbiotic in terms of how they relate to each other. The 1st group exists as a result of a harmless mutation during the pregnancy cycle of a normal human couple. As mentioned already, for all intents and purposes they are human themselves, even capable of having children with other humans. The "magic" happens when 2 of these groups create a progeny. This new child has a high probability (not a guarantee) of becoming one of the 2nd group, otherwise it's just another one of 1st group.

The 2nd group, when they have transformed, become "attached" to specific individuals of the first group. It's a bond that essentially makes these mutants guardians or "slaves" to the first group. Because the 2nd group is infertile (as a result of becoming asexual), this happen primarily to secure future generations of the 1st and 2nd groups... though there is a little more to it then that.

I have also plans for a 3rd group (or generation if you will) that has never occurred before. Something powerful enough to completely change the fate of humanity. This idea is pretty recent and still just an idea, nothing conceptually sound yet to talk on it.

Finally, we have the (current) lead protagonist. A young women who is actually an accidental mutation of the 1st group (underwent the mutation during early pregnancy to make her part of the 1st group, but went through another mutation that altered the initial mutation). She is currently the most consistent thing in my narrative thus far, but I don't want to go into any detail on her. Though I will say she ends up forming an "attachment" with an Omen who is also unique in that it is undergoing an incredibly slow transformation (and is over 80 years old).

One of the things I want to try is "ending the world" (apocalypse) during the story, not as a conclusion to it or the basis for it, but something that happens that forces the characters established up to that point to adjust to or die trying. It won't be the basis of the story so it can be discarded easily, but I would like to try my hand at a before, during and after of a world ending event, rather then telling it from one specifc stand point. Of course this means my story is going to be long...

This story likely won't see the light of day until I'm confident I can handle it (and decided what medium to work it into), but I still think about it pretty frequently and have done so for years.

I have to go out now, so I might get back to talk about my other stories later... though probably not, this thread might have moved on too far by then.