Bard of the Sword Logic

One thing I love putting in my fantasy and scifi that so many stories I read don't have is superstitions that are just wrong. Astrology type shit. Wizards being assigned an elemental type that's supposed to determine their personality just because that's how it's been done for centuries because ages ago people believed in it and these days people are like "no of course it's a silly superstition haha" but still glance knowingly at your metal type tattoo when you're being headstrong. Societies who believe that the stars determine your destiny because see, this kid was born under the star that indicated intelligence so we pushed her in school and got her special tutors so she could live up to her potential and look, she IS more academically successful than her peers born under other stars! People talking about their religion in the far future and all the side characters are like "that sounds like fucking nonsense" and they're like "no it's TRUE" and the audience is like 'no that's nonsense'. I love inventing shit for characters to just be totally wrong about.

"The Ancients were capable of wondrous things, but they often made mistakes, and 'dungeons' are the outcome of those mistakes" is a common conceit in dungeon-crawling fantasy, but the Ancients' fuckups are typically framed as products of hubris or madness. I want to see a setting where they messed up for the same reason that real-world engineering and public works projects often come to horrifying ends. The safety reports were suppressed because the architect was somebody's cousin. The plans clearly called for unobtanium rods, but a malfeasant contractor swapped them for mudanium and pocketed the difference. Somebody got sick of having to re-summon the hellgate each dawn and propped it open with a shoe.

I've joked in the past about how I want an Arthurian adaptation set in one of those bits of the Middle Ages where nobody has any working infrastructure and all the kings and lords are flat broke but they're still trying to make it work, but it occurs to me that a high fantasy version of that would also be kind of awesome. The High King in his grand palace (shitty hill fort) sending his Holy Knights (a dozen guys and a donkey) on a perilous journey (a half-day's march) to face the Dread Necromancer's undead scourge (exactly six zombies). The Necromancer's immortal death-knight champion (a skeleton in a hat) comes out to meet them astride a terrible hornèd beast (a reanimated cow because they couldn't find a dead horse).

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