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Post by The Evil Biscuit on Nov 1, 2010 19:47:33 GMT -5
What territory we talkin here
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Post by Tout-Perd on Nov 1, 2010 21:47:43 GMT -5
Personally I was thinking something more like spores designed to destroy the lungs of any non-Ortigian in the area, but hey, whatevs. Maybe I'll come up with a more gruesome, unsettling idea. The moreso they make you not want to be around them, the better.
Though to be fair, my two main characters in Aleta will be the introduced guy, and a rather approachable Ortigian Bard. So maybe they aren't ALL evil.
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Post by ch00beh on Nov 2, 2010 5:33:39 GMT -5
My new issue with the Zenin is that I feel like we've come up with so many fantastical creatures that are not based on pre-existing myths that anything based on "dragon" will feel really silly in comparison. There's this whole "thing" with Aleta where at least I've been trying to move away from Standard Fantasy Setting. I mean dragons are cool, yeah, but kind of overdone probably.
But I like the general idea of an intelligent super predator, even though basically everything is trying to kill humans in this world. I was going to say "but then again, most of those other creatures aren't just eating humans for the sake of eating" but then I remembered Grinleks, but then again, they aren't particularly picky on what they eat. i guess what differentiates the Zenin is that they try to blend in and kind of take the hunt to a form of art.
Ohhh I like that idea, too. Hunting as art. Run with that.
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Post by {WW}BetaBloodWolf7 on Nov 2, 2010 19:14:04 GMT -5
Another problem is that we already have a group of uber magical shape-shifters; the Dranids. I'm not sure if I've really publicly spoken about them here before, but I have talked to Choobs about them before. They're being imported from something else I started a long time ago. They aren't predators, but they do still occupy a slot here.
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Prime
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Post by Prime on Nov 3, 2010 0:13:55 GMT -5
These are more suppost to be natural shape shifters than magical shape shifters. The fact that they don't use magic is a major part of it, because since they can't use magic, its that much more effective against them. As a whole, if humans were to find a way to discover them, they could wipe them out.
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Post by ch00beh on Nov 3, 2010 3:29:58 GMT -5
I forgot about the Dranids. Send me a PM about them again?
Or are they the shark/dolphin/squid shape shifters that I was going off about?
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Post by Ninety on Nov 3, 2010 13:41:43 GMT -5
I agree with both choobs and blood. We've seen things like this all over the place. Hell, we have like 8 dragon shapeshifters in RP already.
It's also one of the things biscuit and I were tossing around a couple months ago when we were coming up with shitty monsters to put in Aleta. It was mostly things like werewolves and vampires and dragons and mixtures of those things.
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Post by {WW}BetaBloodWolf7 on Nov 3, 2010 14:08:00 GMT -5
These are more suppost to be natural shape shifters than magical shape shifters. The fact that they don't use magic is a major part of it, because since they can't use magic, its that much more effective against them. As a whole, if humans were to find a way to discover them, they could wipe them out. When I said that they were uber magical shape-shifters, I didn't mean they used magic to do it. Shape-shifting is natural for them (in fact, they have to shape-shift in order to reproduce) We already have enough shape-shifters as is anyway. We have at least three groups; the Dranids, Kviderans (some), and the people of the Reaching Isles. And to further explain on what Choobs and Ninety have said, we've worked to produce some pretty fantastic creatures, such as the Ortigians (a plant people) the Telaen (a giant turtle race with some changes to make them different from standard turtles) the spore trees and their protectors (animals that live under the growth that the spores create) the Kviderans, Collidans, the spider-like predators of the fire side of Aleta... and that's just the tip of the iceberg. With no offense meant to Alexstrasza, Nosferatu or Lon Chaney Jr., Dragons, vampires and werewolves have no place here.
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Post by The Evil Biscuit on Nov 3, 2010 19:33:43 GMT -5
Somebody trying to take credit for my sweet dragon idea? I'LL CUT A BITCH
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Prime
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Post by Prime on Nov 4, 2010 6:04:28 GMT -5
Look, in my mind they aren't really dragon's. I just used the term as in 'sort of dragon's' when i was talking to Joe about them. They are a type of shape shifter, yes. They are intelligent, multiformed, and view the hunt of sentient creatures as an art form. Hell, they even respect their prey over thinking them mindless cattle. I have a storyline in mind that I think would be really awesome. And quite honestly, this was more inspired by that huge black double forelimbed mother from Avatar.
Thing was scary, same idea here.
Not big huge magic using and village terrifying like dragons, smaller and more compact, a hunters form that picks out individuals. Sleek black skin, with touches of colour, not scales. Rows of fangs and teeth, a size relatively double that of a human when in its natural form. I don't want to expose my idea because I think its fun and a little twisted.
If you really want to veto this, my character will likely be completely unique, mayhaps one of a kind instead of an established species. And probably not very like this. Fun none the less I hope.
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Post by Ninety on Nov 4, 2010 11:22:33 GMT -5
So by "based on the dragons from Avatar" you mean exactly the same as the dragons from Avatar, albeit they're also werewolves.
I just don't see what these add to Aleta. We already have shapeshifters. We already have the jgélðrn that seek out humans above all other prey. The only thing about these things I like is that they can fly, which we haven't really explored yet. Take out the dragon shapeshifting and make them some sort of bird or something and I'd be a lot more interested in this idea.
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Post by ch00beh on Nov 4, 2010 11:23:23 GMT -5
birds are super cool
we should make bird-telaen
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Post by ch00beh on Nov 4, 2010 17:33:18 GMT -5
re-examining the side view pictures i render of Aleta, I feel like my scale is super off in terms of Sky's Reach's height to the topside's width.
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Post by Ninety on Nov 4, 2010 18:09:29 GMT -5
so how about that FNG
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Post by Prime on Nov 4, 2010 18:49:05 GMT -5
There was no dragon in avatar, just a really really large predatory animal. Unless you're thinking The Last Airbender, which I never watched because it never interested me.
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Post by The Evil Biscuit on Nov 4, 2010 19:09:05 GMT -5
So it's like these dudes ooooooooooh had sex with these cats aaaahhhhhhhh and had a baby, which I interpret as o.o; I mean, the obvious Predator attributes aside, I don't really have an issue with that. It'll need historical support, though, especially if he's the last of his kind - an extinction like that won't be a localized event; it'll have to be written into the world history. So if you've got the deets of your race thought out and you have a good way to work it into the canon, I say go for it. You'll need to get with choobs and the rest of us that already wrote up races and histories to tie things in so we can rewrite as needed.
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Post by Ninety on Nov 4, 2010 19:24:00 GMT -5
I interpreted as he took this, mixed in some of this, added a touch of this, then took out Jake Sully, made it a shapeshifter, and called it a day.
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Post by ch00beh on Nov 5, 2010 2:56:39 GMT -5
Our Dragons are DifferentReally, I feel like any mythological creature has so much baggage that if you could even remotely describe it as such, you'll be bringing up a whole bunch of thoughts that you didn't originally intend. This sentence from the article is a great way to test if your creature is so much like a dragon that at least half the people will associate it as such. "This trope deals with big (maybe) strong (possibly) scaly (sometimes) flying (perhaps) fire-breathing (at times) lizard (usually) monsters (traditionally)" Apply the addiction standards (3/6 are answered "yes") and bam, it is a dragon. So the Zenin are big (yes) strong (yes) scaly (no) flying (i think?) fire-breathing (no) lizard (lizard-like) monsters (yes). That barely passes in either directions due to vagueness, which is why we've got people on both sides of the fence, but my other personal rule is if you're stuck arguing "NO IT'S NOT LIKE THIS BECAUSE __________" then you've lost the battle because you're arguing details rather than overall concepts. You have to boil it down to a pitch sentence, and that single sentence will determine if anyone even listens to you. For example, Telaen are "Giant turtles that carry cities on their back" and the Shields are "The league of public Batmans." So right now, the pitch sentence people are thinking of for Zenin are "Dragons that take human form to hunt humans." People are interested in the second part, but they're also turned off by the first part. Does that over-simplify things? Yes. Does that matter? No. Concepts are the heart of an idea, not the details. The details are just flavor. I like to ramble about nothing. Seriously though: Dragon-Telaen.
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Post by The Evil Biscuit on Nov 5, 2010 13:07:02 GMT -5
Let's just avoid that discussion altogether and make jetpack telaens instead
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Post by Prime on Nov 6, 2010 0:28:41 GMT -5
Only mentioned the dragon thing at all because Ninetys comment made me laugh. They are large, yes, shapeshifting animals that evolved with the specific purpose of hunting, killing, and eating humans. A balancing mechanism that helps to prevent overpopulation, because soccer moms have nearly managed to eradicate idiocy.
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Post by ch00beh on Nov 6, 2010 10:53:53 GMT -5
jetpack telaen sound like the best idea.
pchooo
ps. idk how soccer moms eradicate idiocy. but anyway, we lack a major bird, as 90 said, so can the zenin have feathers? Or maybe like vestigial feathers? Like maybe their human-form head hair is actually a matte of feathers, so when they're shapeshifted, they always keep a hood up or something?
The more I think of birds of prey, the more i like them. I'm sure there are some insects that also do the whole trickster thing, but insects seem to be getting lots of love as a basin for a bunch of creatures already (grinlek, telaen, golaudrin, rail tracers)
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Post by ch00beh on Nov 8, 2010 9:19:15 GMT -5
Okay, so Prime and I had a little discussion about the Zenin over MSN. Here is the gist of the version we came up with:
The Zenin are a race of predatory shapeshifters that are on par with human intelligence and creativity. Their preferred meal are humans, and they hunt by taking human form to stalk their prey, and they generally feed once or twice a month. They are solitary creatures, and their overall numbers are low. On a base, instinctual level, they cannot shapeshift in front of anything or anyone that can retell the tale, because they try to keep their identities hidden. Their human form is fixed; if they are ever identified, they cannot change their features around to elude detection.
In their original form, they resemble skeletal wolves with thick, smooth skin. They are between half and 3/4 as tall as an elephant. They have six legs; the first set have opposable thumbs and dexterity approaching a primate's, the second set are only able to grasp, and the hind legs are just legs. They have wings, which wouldn't be able to lift them if not for the hydrogen sacs in their bodies. These sacs fill with hydrogen as part of some metabolic process, so the Zenin can be combusted fairly easily if pierced with something on fire (magic and hot arrows come to mind). A row of spikes go down their spines and along their long tails that counterbalance their weight in flight. Their teeth are silly amounts of sharp.
To shapeshift into a human, they condense all their mass into the form, though the hydrogen keeps them from falling through every floor ever. Because of this denseness, their skin is more resilient to piercing, though by no means impervious. Due to the magic that allows them to do shifting, spells they try to cast themselves in any form are destabilized and do not work. One way to tell if a person is actually a Zenin is to make physical contact on them and perform a spell. If it works, they are a person, if not, the spell fizzles out.
The creatures are long lived and breed a handful of times. Eggs are left in the Isayoshindika desert, and they hatch when various geological factors are met that signal an increased human population. Upon hatching, the young have an instinctive migratory pattern to secret areas in the Aequian mountain ranges where the oldest Zenin teach the surviving young the art of the hunt.
Mature zenin tend to gravitate towards populated cities where they can better get lost in the crowds and feed on a regular basis. A large city with a population of 4,000,000 will have between 10 and 30 Zenin hunting in it. The Zenin may meet each other, but they prefer to stay alone and will probably only arrange "hunting grounds" with the other.
A fight between a tower golem and full-beast zenin would be a close match. Someone will be getting wrecked, though.
Okay I lied this wasn't really a gist.
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Post by Prime on Nov 8, 2010 12:07:35 GMT -5
Additionally I feel I NEED to point out that if your character knows that Zenin can be detected by touching them and casting magic, then congradulations, you character is an extremely powerful high level mage who actually managed to survive the encounter. Any Zenin realizing himself thus detected would then stab said mage. And then kill everyone/thing else in the room. Choobeh and I have been sort of discussing incorporating Tyr into the overall world of Aleta. There are a few ways of doing this, though my preferred method nessisitates that I pose it to all of you as well. Basically what I'd like to do, is take the three continents that make up Tyr, and turn them into a disk. Sort of like jupiters rings. The central portion between topmass and bottom mass would still exist with the asteroids as a part of it. The ocean that surrounded it would be constantly trying to throw itself into space, with gravity counteracting it, so there'd be a sort of vortexy funnel that'd retain the center asteroidial region. Tyr would basically become the Coremass of the overall world. Allowing all of us that were actually IN Tyr to keep our nifty characters. You could also make the argument that Magite and the Corallian Ether Crystals are basically one and the same, which ties the magical systems of Aleta and Tyr together, though Tyr hasn't discovered how to use magic without focuses. They have to use ancient ether tech as a focus. Just though I'd throw it out there, since Tyr doesn't have much chance otherwise. There's little point in arguing it with Lee anymore, he just tells me to post it in general rp, even though there was interest before and could easily be again. *shrug* It is his call though. Feel free to express your thoughts or go look up old Tyr info, I know its still kicking around. I'd also direct you to my short story about Sero in the fic section, which I may continue if Tyr does come into this.
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Post by Kuroboom on Nov 8, 2010 13:59:01 GMT -5
I only read the last 2 pages, but from what I understand, there was a lot of BAAAAW'ing over "Ohnoes, we can't have more than 3 shapeshifters!" which I equate to "Ohnoes, we can't cave more than 3 species of flightless birds!"
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Post by Beelzebibble on Nov 8, 2010 14:01:12 GMT -5
But why do you need more than one race of shapeshifters?
Think about it.
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Post by ch00beh on Nov 8, 2010 14:04:53 GMT -5
/thread
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