#worldbuilding notes

Palace

luxurious residence for high nobility

symbolical display of wealth and governance

often not or barely fortified

PART 1

-> PART 2

[This is a collection of my Pandoria headcanons and homebrew worlbuilding. There is a lot of text, so prepare yourself.]

For my passion project the Epicon Mythos (see Epicon Mythos' pinned post or description for more info), I've made some ideas for the deities. I've got some I think I could try to share. These are all work-in-progress and I'm always happy to hear all suggestions, critique, inspiration, and questions! The main types of deities I have planned are:

Gods who originated as humans but through the mastery of the divine became far more powerful than most humans. Many monarchies were initially established by them, but among them were both just and evil, and their descendants became scattered across the World after the last of their civilizations (the Kingdom of Eden) collapsed in the 41st century BC.

Gods who are born from dying stars and live in societies amongst other star-born gods in nebulae before they die and form new stars, planets, and godly societies. Their hearts and minds form stars, but their flesh and bones form planets, moons, and asteroids. When they die, there is a special kind of energy emitted by these gods that effects the way things exist on an almost unpredictable manner. It is often conjectured that these gods use this special energy to influence their creations after they die.

Gods who exist eternally as unfeeling forces of nature which are omnipresent across the entirety of a World Tree, but have no verified backstory and could never be completely understood by humanity.

Gods whose cultures embody entire moralities. These different nations battle for millennia to preserve their own ethics. They are psychic in nature and thus can't affect humans in the same way other gods might be able to, but they do often send out avatars or incarnations to humanity as agents of their own values.

Note: Not to be confused with @looped-140-and-counting / Soren_793's wonderful Selkie AU oneshot series 'The Northern Islanders are Selkies' which was hugely inspiring for this if potentially VERY different in vibe (we got very into talking about cloaks! XD)

Basic premise/summary:

In an alternate version of the precanon adventure, the party lead by Mirabelle to stop the King freezing Vaugarde in time, recruit Siffrin as per usual.

Thing is, Siffrin is a Selkie.

A very skittish selkie without a cloak of their own, who openly wears the cloak of another, and due to Reasons is under the impression that the party know all both of those things and the Implications about them, and for whatever reason have decided to welcome him into their group anyway.

Which er, he's completely wrong about as the party know absolutely nothing.

Mira and Isa like most Vaugardian humans think 'shifters' are just fairytales, Odile knows shapeshifters are real but is only really familiar with how foxes like her father work, and Bonnie is actually able to sense some pretty major things but is a preteen dealing with a lot and hasn't even joined the party yet, so this pretty major misunderstanding is sustained for quite a while...

Cue the AUs' main focus being on the resulting party dynamic shifts as more and more canon divergence due to Sif's 'selkie stuff' (both cute and serious) comes into play, the party slowly realising something is up, and all of it hitting an eruption point right around the time of the 4th Orb/the loss of Siffrin's eye...

Some key world building notes: (Note: very summarised from my docs. I have like 20k+ words on this stuff XD)

The Island - Probably the most drastically different thing from canon here, the Island was not forgotten or erased here. Rather it is hidden away and permanently shrouded in Wish Craft generated fog from 'those without cloaks'. Side note: Sif is still unable to return home and continues to have some very plot critical memory problems but those are due to unrelated issues, which means yay I get to have Sif talk 'home culture' with the others in this =D Also idk why the King is freezing Vaugarde still. I've got a few ideas I'm not sure about and he's not in focus enough for it to even matter really, but random suggestions -especially those with possible selkie motivations- would be very much appreciated.

Selkie powers in my setting - Went into something of a deep dive regarding selkie folklore for this and did you know they have an absolute ton of seer/oracle based stuff going on?

From selkie being summoned by their human lovers shedding seven tears into the ocean, to a selkie man telling a former lover that he and their child will die at the hands by her genuinely good and loving future husband, to a selkie woman forseeing her fisherman husband about to die out in a storm just in time for her to swim over there and rescue him, etc.

So... Yeah. This AU has a lot of plot relevant sensory/seer stuff going on as well as the standard seal shapeshifter stuff (Islander selkie traditionally believe it to be the Universe talking with them, in the same way Wish Craft is talking to the Universe), and going off all the stuff I read decided it'd be most fitting if the general rule for how it all works is: - Selkie always passively have a bit of it going on (aka Sif's canon 'you sense someone nearby' stuff) which like most things can be enhanced with Craft use a bit. - Near perfect understanding of all 'connected' bodies of water (aka they know EXACTLY where the tasty fish are/will be and can probably get a general sense of location for most people on a boat) - Potentially get strong 'visions of the future' and/or instincts on what they need to do to avert an outcome when it comes to loved ones being in danger/distress.

They also maybe get to pull very fast, high power Wish Craft 'curses'/miracles' at idk, the cost of something major like their cloak or lives (mostly based off of the The Legend of Kópakonan where the whole island of Kalsoy was cursed with death by a selkie in retaliation for her husband and children being murdered) but not super attached to this idea past it being in 'seal shifter' stories in-setting.

Other non humans in setting and regional differences in shifters - Pretty much only selkie and selkie issues are in focus here, but just as a general thing, all non humans in setting are shapeshifters and originated from human ancestors who went crazy with the the Body Craft and/or used Wish Craft in some way.

Ka Bue in particular has a ton of them since yokai, with their origins being various sects/clans back in the warring eras going so nuts with trying to weaponize Body Craft (super soldiers, enhanced life spans, infiltration, exploiting attraction to furries, etc), that after some particularly high profile incidents (for an idea plz see: Kiyohime, Tamamo no Mae, Kachi-kachi Yama) and 'Body Craft misuse leading to shut down of the brain/vital organs' being the most common cause of death for 10+ years once peace time was established, eventually Ka Bue's authorities set their foot down and banned Body Craft altogether.

Currently the shifter population in Ka Bue is around 30% of the population, shifters are required to have ID regarding their forms (or potential forms if they're merely 'half'), and it's considered distasteful for a shifter to be in non human form outside of private settings/necessity and even ruder to ask a shifter about their non human forms if they haven't brought the topic up yet first (kinda like seeing/asking about someone's underwear or something XD).

In contrast the Vaugarde, Mwudu and Porteria region is extremely shifter sparce, with most of its original shifter population being the result of various Universe worshipping peoples (mostly small groups, like greek mystery cults) deciding to use a big Wish Craft ritual as some sort of religious rite and becoming shifters as a side effect of their primary Wish (usually stuff like 'we wish for us and our descendants to be one with You and the sea/air' or 'may we Change with the phases of the holy moon' etc) which granted them some pretty neat skills but also tended to come with some 'potentially nasty' drawbacks attached (see: selkie and swan maidens with their cloaks, werewolves Changing in both body and mind etc) Which er, lead to some issues born of lack of knowledge about this stuff, later some very nasty anti shifter sentiment in the region, and then around... IDK 200 to 300 years ago or so ended up exploding into violence and other very nasty things, with most shifters able to do so fleeing the region, and those that couldn't either enduring horrible conditions until they could escape/died or went deep into hiding, with the Island's Country being founded by the two later groups who used Wish Craft to hide their new home, erase awareness of their existence from their enemies (a short term, fully intentionally 'forgetting' blast centered specifically around shifters), and developed a LOT of culture and traditions regarding when, who and what can be told to 'outsiders' about themselves, Wish Craft, etc in order to keep their people safe.

There are shifters living in present in Vaugarde of course (anti shifter sentiment died back a LOT after most people stopped thinking they were real, and most modern day Change Believers are more likely to view these 'totally fictional/allegorical' beings as children/messengers of the Change God rather than 'evil demons who stole power by tearing apart the Change God's cloak for themselves and thus have to be hunted down and made to repent' propaganda take that was everywhere back then) but numbers actually living outside the Island as opposed to merely visiting remain low, since either the shifters know their history and stick firmly to their 'stay secret' traditions or quickly pick up on how oddly unknown shifters are around these parts and decide to err on the side of caution... Also 'trust worthy' humans who do learn about them (usually northern coastal folk, gee wonder why) tend to help cover them up so... Yeah =D

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And... Yeah!

This is hella long as is, so will stop here and ramble about the actual 'how this all affects our beloved Sif and Co plot and culture wise' stuff that is the actual meat of the AU in another post later, but hope this made for an interesting/idea provoking read, know that I have no issue with anyone using any of this for their own works (just please, don't use the 'Selkies under starlight' same story name unless it's actually a fanfic/fanart of my 'hopefully soon has a chapter/one shot up' fic/Ao3 series of the same name so people don't get confused), and I would love to chatter with you about any thoughts/questions you might have so...

Wishing you a good day =D

there might be more of these? idk

PORTALS

The Reverse Duality Au is set in an altered version of Minecraft! This means that most of Minecraft's rules apply, however, there are a few major differences. One of these is how portals to other dimensions work - or rather, how they don't.

Let me explain:

Interdimensional travel does not exist in Reverse Duality!

Or rather, while the people of this world have memory of it being possible in the past, once a

~certain someone~

showed up, all portals, aside from ones to pocket dimensions, seemed to stop working.

Why?

Did they ever even work in the first place?

Secret :)

let's just say that, at least in this world, you can't have a matryoshka doll of dimensions

What does this mean for a world based on both Minecraft itself and The Steve Saga, both of which are pretty well known for having travel to other dimensions be possible?

Let's start with the Minecraft aspect.

Without access to the nether and the end, the inhabitants of this world are cut off from several useful materials, including:

the means to make potions

netherite

the means to make end crystals

several useful building materials (some of which are more blast-resistant than easy-to-obtain materials of the overworld)

elytras

the means to make beacons

However! Due to the... nature of this world, there will be other ways to access these two dimensions once the need for some of these materials becomes clear. Specifically, by incorporating them into the overworld!

The nether is the easier of the two to access; at some point while mining, someone discovers that the bedrock at the bottom of the overworld is riddled with small holes, some just wide enough for a large person to fit through. When tunneling through the stone covering said holes, they discovered netherrack, and that they had tunneled directly into the nether.

The end, however, is a bit harder to reach, at least without suffocating. It ended up in orbit around the planet, somehow staying within earth's shadow at all times. Its islands are extremely difficult to see unless they happen to pass in front of a star and block out its light.

While the journey there is extremely difficult without teleportation or the technological advancements necessary for space flight, it's more possible to survive once you actually step foot on the islands, as the large amounts of chorus plants and fewer animal life forms allow for the islands to maintain their own thin atmosphere. It has not yet been discovered how the chorus plants are able to create oxygen or energy without contact with sunlight, but some theorize that they are able to feed off of some of the radiating energy of the teleporting creatures that live there. If this is true, it could also explain the properties of the fruit the plants bear.

proposed food chain:

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Now, what about the Steve Saga, the series that Reverse Duality is an AU of?

The Steve Saga seems to contain three main flavors of dimension in its world: full-scale dimensions (sometimes called realms) (examples: the steve realm, the spirit realm, the spiritless realm, that one dimension with the purple grass, the nightmare dimension), mirroring dimensions (dimensions that match another dimension and can interact with or view the activity of the dimension they're based on)(examples: where the overseer was trapped, the reverse dimension), and pocket dimensions (dimensions either small in scale or contained within another dimension)(examples: the great library, the end crystal/ore steves dimension, that one pocket that Elemental used to "train" Sabre and Rainbow, the black hole). The in-between and the time dimension are outliers to this, but most closely fit in the pocket dimension category.

All godly vessels, including Baltazar, only have a singular purpose in their life: To live.

Since they exist as extensions of the gods themselves, they serve to provide their individual recipients with as many experiences as possible, good and bad, so that they can provide both personal and contextual information to them. This is due to the fact that gods are not living beings, they're purely abstract and unfeeling personifications of concepts made by collective belief in those things, and while they exist because of mortals' needs... they don't naturally know what mortals actually need out of them. To them, it's near impossible to decipher *exactly* what is necessary to make mortal life possible, they just know that they need it. Vessels facilitate the communication between mortal and immortal beings through going down to the mortal plane themselves and understanding exactly what it means to exist and be alive, which in turn allows for their god to learn components they would otherwise be too oblivious about to help with.