Table of Contents

 

World Modifiers

The Botfly

The Erogame

...

 

Worlds Much Like Our Own

Boogey

Cognoscente

Datemate Dungeon

Eldritch

Forget

Marvel

Pallas Athene

Puella Magi Madoka Magica

-Bellum Magi

Scrap

Small Gods

Unquiet

Worm

-Heartbroken

...

 

Worlds At Another Time

Fallen London

Makai

Plants Versus Victorians

Space is an Ocean

Steerswoman

Trainwreck

Vectors

...

 

Worlds a Step to the Left

Arena

Fairyland (Type V)

Hereafter

Infinite Library

Liminal

Lucidity

Ravenloft

Rebirth

Samsara

...

 

Marvelously Strange Worlds, That Yet Contain Humanity

Amestris

Arda

Ars Doloris [guest entry]

Ascension

Atalanta

Heartless

Inanna's Ring

Naruto

-Restoration

Polychroma

Renewal

Tamriel

-Magnus

Thousand Skies

Transgression

...

 

The Farthest Reaches

...

World Modifiers - The Botfly

A rather persnickety problem faced by some worlds on the edges of the Void, the Botfly is a multiversal parasite capable of granting powerful gifts - at enormous costs to the Botfly's chosen few. Usually, it finds worlds that have already been wounded, especially if there is a disturbance in their space-time continuum, such as caused by incautious time travel. On occasion the Botfly has been known to enter into a wound created by its future self. The Botfly is capable of rewriting reality to work conceptually rather than via classical physics, in order to obtain a world more like its own.

Any world with native sapient life can be targeted by the Botfly, and it's possible that even worlds with solely immigrants can be targeted. The Botfly relies on the presence of sapients, though, drawing fuel from being observed by them.

The Botfly appears to have been the creation of a Void-being, possibly another Botfly like itself. It is the larval stage that lands in worlds. It grows by feasting on paradox caused by incautious - or, in the Botfly's case, meticulously paradoxical - time travel, usually by sapients granted such gifts by the Botfly itself. The Botfly grows into its next stage when the day it infects fully decays, and it shatters apart its host universe in reaching adulthood.

The Botfly's signature color is a bright lime green. It is known to hypnotize those who observe it via their species' primary or longest range sensory mode. It is suspected that the Botfly gains power from observation even via secondary sensory modes, but it hasn't been ascertained whether the Botfly can grant gifts or hypnotize those not observing it fully and directly.

Worlds a Step to the Left - Lucidity

This is a rather interesting world. The core dimension is an Earth, apparently wholly indistinguishable from our own - yet, in their dreams, the people of this planet walk through another land, appropriately called the Dreamlands. External magic has a rather hard time functioning on this Earth, and there is no native magic, except Dreaming and Dreamwalking. Those born in this world or who spend a significant time in it obtain the same potential for local magic.

Dreaming is the process of modifying the Dreamlands, and as such it cannot be said to be an Earthly magic - for the Dreamlands are another dimension entirely, folded around the Earth like a protective shell.

Dreamwalking is the process of slipping between layers of reality. Earth can be imagined as the zeroth level, the center of the bullseye. At each layer up, more becomes possible, and reality becomes less consistent. The first layer is the Dreamlands. The second layer, outside to or above the Dreamlands, is the Magelands. The third layer, outside to or above the Magelands, is the Idealands. The layers beyond the Idealands have neither been mapped nor named by humans.

While objects can be brought between layers, information cannot. A picture taken on one is incomprehensible on the others. Books will show different contents on different layers of reality. Hard drives will become filled with nonsense until you return to your original reality.

In the Dreamlands, sapients can take their Ideal Form with some level of effort. An Ideal Form is what you want to look like, with a nature mostly limited by your own imagination. In the Magelands, the Ideal Form is the default, and it's an effort to take your Earthly form. In the Idealands, it is as impossible to leave your Ideal Form as it is for someone on Earth to take theirs on.

Magic beyond Dreaming becomes possible in the Magelands. The natives have defined schools of magic, but in truth it seems to be heavily influenced by their own expectations and perceptions.

The Outerlands are the highest - and weirdest - levels of reality. In them, the Outer Beings wage war, knocking loose threads of unreality. These threads can become tangled around souls, even those of people currently on Earth. A tangled thread will pull you up one level of reality, and then grant powers in the form of access to higher realities of non-existence. Most of the entangled have access to magic and an individualized power greater than what magic can do while in the Dreamlands. However, not even the entangled can use magic on Earth.

Threads that do not entangle someone will instead entangle a part of a lower reality, changing its nature to be odder, often more in line with the higher reality the thread was dislodged from. Threads alter the very landscape where they land, bringing in snapshots of other realities' definition of what is possible. The scale of a thread ranges from a few dozen square feet to square miles. Gravity might work based on intent. Violence, or even the thought of it, might be impossible. Everyone might have magic - but only within the thread. Thoughts might spill from the minds of those who think them.

A warning for travelers: sometimes, visitors to Lucidity end up with a Lucidity-style soul attaching to them. Usually this is harmless, as it simply hooks you into the native magic system, but it has been known to conflict with the visitors' existing metaphysical status.

Marvelously Strange Worlds, That Yet Contain Humanity - Amestris

Amestris is merely one of many nations in this world, but it is the one most likely to attract visitors, in my experience, and as such is the primary subject of this entry. Still, I will include at least a brief word on the others.

The magic of this part of the world is known as alchemy. It is viewed as a science, and many of its practitioners would scoff at you were you to call what they or you do 'magic.' Alchemy is reputed to run on a principle of 'Equivalent Exchange,' which this author has heard most eloquently summarized as "Nothing can be gained without sacrificing something of equal value." This is literally true of the magic system, but it is also a philosophy many alchemists adhere to. Alchemy works through 'transmutation circles,' which can be large or small, but always contain runes and patterns drawn within a circle. The runes control the result of the reaction. Alchemy has three stages - identification, deconstruction, and reconstruction - and it cannot create nor destroy matter. Some matter is more difficult to change into other things. Base elements are usually not transmuted into other base elements, due to the high energy and skill requirements. Alchemy, by default, is the magic of rearranging atoms into different configurations. It enjoys primarily practical and civilian uses, though Amestris has made a push in recent years to expand alchemy's combat applications.

Amestris, and almost all of its neighbors, bans the practice of 'human transmutation,' a process this author has found little explanation for, given that medical alchemy worked upon humans is apparently not included.

Amestris has a military dictatorship for a government - the head of the military, who is promoted from within, leads the nation, and beneath him is a council of generals. The country has periods of instability, and is in frequent border conflicts with its neighbors. Still, the interior of the country is often safe for travelers.

Amestris's technology level is roughly equivalent to ours as of the dawn of the twentieth century, with some differences to allow for the presence of such a technologically inclined magic as alchemy.

Alchemy is rumored to have emerged or at least been greatly developed in a now lost desert nation, known as Xerxes, which according to myth vanished overnight. This author has seen some rather intriguing art of the disappearance, but suspects it is merely a myth, as the native magic system is incapable of large scale impacts, and while nations may decline quickly they do not disappear that fast without magical intervention...

Amestris has many neighbors, among them...

Xing is another notable nation in this world. The Xingans use alkahestry, not alchemy, which seems to operate on different principles that no one has ever quite thoroughly explained to this author. ...

Worlds At Another Time - Vectors

'Vectors' is an interesting world. The humans within this world have a galactic civilization, having locally solved problems with travel at speeds greater than that of light, and having proceeded to expand across a large chunk of the Milky Way. Their civilization is centered around an Earth, and they have yet to discover any sapient aliens within their galaxy.

The magic system of Vectors is rather interesting, and lends the world its name. Inhabitants of this world - including visitors - can sense a sort of mesh overlaying reality if they focus properly. Most native humans map this sense onto visual information, but I have also heard of those who use sound or other senses. Visually, the mesh is usually assigned to a gradation between two contrasting colors with movement in one of the three standard dimensions visible to humans.

The mesh contains four 'dimensions', each with two 'directions,' for a total of eight possible 'directions'. Each direction corresponds to a category of effect.

As summarized by a local, the eight directions (with their standard mapping and names) are:

-Left for destruction

-Right for creation

-Up for change

-Down for sameness

-Forward for movement

-Backward for stillness

-Charm for inward mind

-Strange for outward mind

Where most map charm onto a cooler or darker color, and strange onto a warmer or lighter color.

Many locals find it difficult to use more than one or two dimensions at a time. Everyone, however, theoretically can master this type of magic, so long as they can visualize with some sense or another.

Down and charm vectors are referred to as 'protective' vectors, which most people are taught to maintain constantly on themselves, making them more resistant to having magic applied to them. Vectors can be maintained on any target you can sense (or be reliably informed of the relative location of), and some masters can maintain vectors on multiple targets at once. (This is generally limited by one's ability to focus on multiple effects with enough regularity and definition to maintain a consistent vector.)

Local faster than light travel operates via this magic system. Pilots equipped with special virtual reality systems visualize movement vectors around a ship, accelerating it (at sublight speeds) or even outright teleporting it. A string of teleports means the ship effectively moves faster than light, despite itself never crossing that speed barrier.

Notably, no artificial intelligences - of which there are many, though none have equal rights to humans - are known to be able to use the native magic system.

Politically, Vectors lacks a unified galactic government. The majority of inhabited planets have a single planetary government descended from an original colonization effort. Planets who have been inhabited for more than a few hundred years are often invited to join a diplomatic body modeled after the pre-space United Nations, called the League of Planetary Governments. However, many corporations have as strong as or stronger holds on day to day life as many formal governments, and corporate unions are a major political force - especially since the majority of planets were initially colonized as part of a private endeavor...

Worlds Much Like Our Own - Unquiet

Unquiet is an Earth. At the time I visited it was the 1990s, and history had followed the standard masquerade trajectory.

Unquiet's exceptional traits, like all masquerades, lie in its unique magic. Unlike most worlds, Unquiet has but a single classification of magic: necromancy. Within that, of course, are many disciplines, but all magic within this world ties back to Death.

I capitalize Death quite intentionally.

In my investigations, I found that this world used to have an entire host of gods, each one responsible for one conceptual domain. Time directed the flow of events. Rain controlled the weather. Ocean mastered the currents.

But, one by one, the gods left the world, setting down their burdens. With them left their magic.

Death alone remained, taking on every other god's domain through rather creative applications of a full mastery of everything related to Death.

It's unclear what happens if Death leaves or is killed. Perhaps the world will become entirely normal, a physics-based world with no magic. Perhaps the world will simply dissolve, incapable of sustaining itself. Perhaps a new class of gods will be born.

Necromancers are few and far between, here, and most are naturally inclined towards secrecy. There is a divide among the necromancy community, centered around whether they work for, worship, or follow the precepts of Death, or whether they defy the same. Death forbids certain necromantic rituals, for reasons unclear, and will send Her servants after the more stubborn of these necromancers. However, this author has not noted Death to react similarly to corresponding rituals from other magic systems - a native Lich will be hunted and destroyed utterly, while a visiting Lich will be utterly ignored unless they make a nuisance of themselves.

Beyond necromancers, the world contains restless spirits, the echoes of things destroyed. The most notable manifestation of this is in human ghosts...

Worlds Much Like Our Own - Cognoscente

Cognoscente is, from the Earth's perspective, yet another masquerade, this of the 'magical girl' type. Cognoscente, however, is a bit strange. There are two factions in the universe, 'Magical Girls' and 'Monsters', each led by a powerful deity usually referred to as an 'aesthetic force.' There exist an apparently limited number of artifacts, linked to either faction. Artifacts, when used, will transform their wielder, granting them some level of powers. Each artifact is linked to a specific shape and power set. Magical Girl Artifacts transform anyone who uses them into an idealized version of the local females, often wearing distinctly feminine clothes, with a focus on beautiful aesthetics. Monster Artifacts will transform anyone who uses them into something generally considered horrifying, with a focus on eerie and disturbing aesthetics. 

All artifacts can be used by anyone of any gender or sapient species.

On Earth, the main focus of my trip, Magical Girl Artifacts usually had rather elaborate and flowery names attached to them, and wielders would adopt a feminine 'working name' to use while transformed. A Magical Girl's name is usually her current artifact's name then her working name. This artifact name is usually in the language of the region the artifact mostly circulates in. Artifacts that move between cultures tend to pick up new names. I believe most such names fall into a pattern of [Aesthetic Adjective(s)] [Aesthetic Object] [Magical Being]. The magical being field is obligatory, and magical beings named are usually through always coded feminine in the relevant language. The aesthetic object field is usually present, and I have encountered many objects used here - flowers, gemstones, insects, felines, birds, celestial objects, and feminine or non-scary mythical beings. The aesthetic adjective field is rarer, being more optional (though there's always some modifier to the 'Magical Being'). Adjectives are often a color - usually ornate - or the name of an actual aesthetic. Some magical girls I met who had fairly representative names were Gothic Star Necromancer Olivia, Pretty Sparrow Wizardess Anita, and Golden Moth Witch Melanie. 

Monster Artifacts, on the other hand, tended to be highly descriptive, and the tradition of using a 'working name' was less common. Sunscale Dragon, Winged Eyeball, and Wavering Shadow were some of the Monsters I met.

Earth and other shared masquerade planets are used as testing grounds for wielders by an interstellar consortium. Magical Girls and Monsters who excel in this testing ground - who show little remorse fighting each other, who show skill with a variety of artifacts, who are judged to have beneficial personalities, who grow too powerful for their planet - are recruited to fight onto a galactic stage. The existence of the interstellar consortium isn't usually revealed to planet-bound wielders.

Marvelously Strange Worlds, That Yet Contain Humanity - Heartless

Heartless is a rather interesting world. It is, like many strange worlds, a non-Earth. There are two sapient species in this world: humans and fairies.

Notably, humans are born with hearts, and fairies are born without hearts. This seems to extend both physically and metaphorically. Lacking a heart, or, in the local parlance, being 'Heartless' (as opposed to 'Heartful'), leaves those without hearts unable to form attachments and emotions drawn from attachment. A Heartless might still feel joy, but given two sources of joy will not generally have a preference between them. The Heartless do not generally feel grief, hatred, or love.

'Fairy' is a distinct category from 'Heartless,' as 'human' is a distinct category from 'Heartful.' Fairies can gain hearts, and humans can lose them. 

There are actually visual indicators of heartness, which this author found rather fascinating. Someone Heartless exists in grey scale - their skin, their hair, and even their clothes are utterly drained of color. Someone born Heartful exists in the color scales you and I are familiar with, though if someone Heartless becomes Heartful they will have quite unusual coloring. For one, the color saturation of the newly Heartful appears to vary with the size or capacity of their metaphorical heart - how strongly they feel attachments, with the largest hearts tied to the most intense saturation. Fairies (as opposed to humans who lost and then gained a heart) also sometimes have unusual or non-human coloration - this author has seen a few Heartful fairies with skin and hair tones drawn from all over the rainbow.

The magic system of this world originates entirely in hearts. The Heartful can use magic natively, casting it from their own intensity of caring. Heartful magic is rather astonishingly free-form compared to many other magic systems this author has encountered. The Heartless must craft artifacts from the shards of hearts. Each Heartless artifact has a specific function. The Heartful cannot wield Heartless artifacts - to do so will break their heart.

Being Heartful has quite a bit risk - that of heart break, called the Harrowing by locals. If the original owner of a stolen heart dies, if a Heartful suffers a major grief, or if a Heartful tries to wield a Heartless artifact, their heart might shatter in their chest. This is almost always deadly. When it isn't, the person will come out of it either Heartless or Heartful. If Heartful, they often will lose some aspect of their magic. A common loss for the Harrowed Heartful is the ability to use magic on yourself.

Fairies, due to being mostly Heartless and to the consistent utility of their artifacts, have beaten the local humans to city-building, pushing humans onto marginal land and forming a military supremacy kept out of the world's margins by disinterest and the occasional powerful Heartful. Fairies recently were united under a single Queen, her eternal majesty Autumn Evening Bell, making them a far greater danger to their human neighbors than they had been previously...

Worlds Much Like Our Own - Eldritch

This world is an alternate Earth, though my investigations have revealed much of it is different from our own world 'under the hood' so to speak. A significant portion of physics seems to run on entities beyond human comprehension, which can nevertheless die and leave conceptual holes in the world. The only evidence I could find of that ever happening was that they appear to be missing an afterlife, despite their magic system sometimes referencing an afterlife that should exist.

At the present time, the Earth here could be considered in the 'post apocalyptic' category. Some years ago, a dying entity appeared in the sky over the world. The path under its flight as it fell apart is a scoured wasteland filled with mutated monsters. Those slightly farther out quickly developed obvious magical abilities of the 'superpower' type. As time went on, people's powers grew stronger, and more people gained powers - and, slowly, the most powerful of the 'supers' started turning into monsters themselves.

Another interesting quirk of this world is the presence of daemons. I have spoken on the existence of daemons as a variation on magical physics before; daemons here operate much like the norm, except a daemon will have their own superpower, separate from but related to their human's. Powers seem to have a thematic core to them, which both the human's and daemon's powers draw from.

The upper echelon of power in this world is truly impressive, though not entirely out of scope for other worlds I have described with superpowers...

Worlds Much Like Our Own - Roaring Twenties

This world is a bit odd, as worlds go. It is, in many ways, an alternate Earth, with a largely parallel history, and the same geography. However, it contains a plethora of sapient species - the set often found in some Dungeons and Dragons, Type Five worlds, in fact, with the same magical mechanics as those worlds.

Culturally, Roaring Twenties resembles Earth during the 1920s (hence the name), despite the presence of dragons, elves, halflings, dwarves, orcs, and tabaxi, and despite 'wizard' being a viable life path. Unlike most Dungeons and Dragons worlds, Roaring Twenties is not particularly replete with dungeons full of treasure (in fact, the Gold Rush of our world exists in a form here, but instead seems to refer to the last great push to clear out the great treasure dungeons).

There is presently an attempt by an apocalyptic cult to resurrect some ancient dragon goddess, rousing dragons into conflict with the peoples around them, and causing quite a few problems...

Marvelously Strange Worlds, That Yet Contain Humanity - Ars Doloris

Guest entry, by my delightful colleague Decima

This is one of the more fascinatingly different worlds I have encountered in my journeys. It was either made or at the very least shaped by a contingent of gods who left another world after some schism. The difference between this and many other god-founded schism worlds, though, is that every single god who participated in the making of this world was a god of some art or another. They clearly had very strong opinions about what the world should look like. It's gorgeous beyond measure, for one. The majority of activity is concentrated on a single spherical planet which circles (in an actual perfect circle, not a natural orbit) an enormous paper lantern that takes the place of most worlds' suns. Several other spheres circle either the sun lantern or the central world, all of them works of art, many of them smaller moon lanterns. Most of the gods seem to have their own sphere that they have designed to their liking, with the 'earth' being a joint effort, primarily between gods who seek to beautify nature.

The world originally lacked non-divine sapient life. Apparently, the majority of the Arts felt mortals have insufficiently consistent aesthetic tastes, and did not wish for the necessary byproducts of civilization to mar their artwork. Some of them made automatons to add to the area's aesthetic, but those lacked actual intelligence. One Art objected, though, and created humans, giving many automatons sapience in the same move.

This Art was the Art of Suffering, whose art inherently requires sapients around to appreciate their own pain. The Art of Suffering also believes in subjective art, rather than the tenants of objective art held by most other gods. Suffering seeks to maximize the amount of subjectively beautiful and soul exalting suffering. The people of this world consider Suffering their first and primary protector, given that many of the other Arts have historically been hostile to them. (As far as I can tell, Suffering also instantiated only people who would be considered masochists, sadists, or both in our Earth, with far more extremes than most humans we are familiar with.) Some Arts have warmed up to humanity, and humanity has created new art forms with their attendant gods (the most notable of which is the Art of Transhumanism), but many Arts are still hostile to the local mortals.

Human cities are also disproportionately located in pocket dimensions anchored at a very small number of points to the main world - making it easier to compromise with the Arts of any given area to get them to tolerate a city. This has interesting effects on the economy...

Worlds At Another Time - Firefly

I found this world fascinating, though I'll admit it was not entirely charming. At least several centuries before the present day, Earth was abandoned - supposedly, the history books here have the trace of propaganda on them - and great generation ships set out for the stars. They found wormholes, which brought them to a massive network of planets and star systems which humanity settled and began to terraform. Unfortunately, the way back to Earth has since been lost... 

The star systems are dominated by one power, the Alliance, and split into five large "clusters". I must recommend caution to any travelers, because there's frequent uprisings - often brutally suppressed - and the Alliance in secret employs powerful psychics...

To this writer, the most disturbing element is the humanoid monsters that plague the skies, called Reavers...