We interrupt the "daily tasks" marathon for a very specific entry about a specific project. Keys & Kingdoms. I've been aware for some time of its problems: I need a world that's better, more original, and actually fulfills the mission statement of feeling like a Disney film. And how I wanted to start that was to go through some of the world-building material that already exists to see what's worth keeping. And I've struggled for a couple of days to set aside distractions and get it done, putting all the data together. And, well... clearly I'm ready, because I've just typed this paragraph, and... apparently, I'm going to put all my thoughts here on the blog instead of in a private document, I'm not sure why, it just... seemed like the thing to do. Let's take a look at what we've got.
Most of what we're poring through here is based on a simple premise: for much of K&K's lifespan, after deciding I just didn't have the brains to design my own game system, I wanted to build this universe off of the Open Game License, which legally permits people to create their own roleplaying game that uses the framework of 5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons. So I figured I'd just use those rules exactly as written. Don't wanna do that anymore, not since I realized that there's way too much D&D in this allegedly original, allegedly Disney-esque setting.
KEYS & KINGDOMS: EXPLORE COSMOS
I and a few compatriots wrote this six-episode series of educational shorts, meant to be released between the pilot episode of The Choices and the rest of the first season. In it, the characters of The Choices lecture the audience about the world they live in. They're full of excellent comedy and characterization that definitely need to be maintained, but let's take a look at the information contained within.
Episode 1: Peoples - written by Sage Mann & Dakota Umlauf
This episode talks about the ten races of intelligent people on Cosmos. The core of this subject is not about to change! It's been baked into Keys & Kingdoms from the very beginning:
Pictured: the ten races of Keys & Kingdoms, accompanied by pictures of the Disney characters who best display the inspiration of what we're going for.
Though, er, maybe we don't call them "races" anymore; Dungeons & Dragons has recently decided to retire the usage of that term, they're making it official with a new publication that comes out next month. Not sure what with. Generally, when people refer to "race" in a fantasy setting, it's understood that "species" is what's meant. But even though, as the D&D developer who proposed the change pointed out, the word "species" has been in use since the 16th century, it just seems a bit too sciencey for a fantasy setting. Another option presented, and the one they seem to be going with, is "folk", which... is incredibly lame, but I honestly can't imagine anyone coming up with something better.
Pathfinder Second Edition, which was released last year, also chose to do away with not only the word "race" but "class" as well, replacing them with "ancestry" and "archetype" respectively, both of which are... so very, very non-snappy and completely fail to evoke the gravity of the concepts they represent. It's clear that in the 2020s, you just can't call fantasy races "races" anymore, and "class" has, well, never been a good word to represent whether someone is a soldier or a barbarian, a wizard or a thief. I agree the terms should be changed, I just can't think of anything to change them to that actually sounds cool. It's quite a conundrum.
Anyway, that was kind of tangential, let's see what we've got.
Dwarves: In the dwarves section of the script, it's stated that dwarf civilization dates back about 8,000 years, that they're about three feet tall (a foot shorter than the typical fantasy-genre dwarves that Tolkien codified), that their bodies can fight off most poisons (a Dakota-penned joke suggests that this is why they drink so much mead, they need to in order to actually get buzzed, I don't see the illogic), and that they build their cities of mountain stone, their architecture some of the biggest and most marvelous in the world. The segment ends with a quip from Zaya acknowleding that the dwarves of this world are pretty much the same as the dwarves from most worlds. Again, no lies to spot.
Huh... mead. You know, most people just use "mead" as the fantasy-genre word for "beer", but in fact mead very specifically refers to an alcoholic beverage brewed from honey. Honey implies bees. Regular access to mead suggests beekeeping. I've never seen that, dwarves with a strong beekeeping culture. Hm, note that...
Elves: The short states that elven civilization dates back about 10,000 years, the oldest civilized folk of Cosmos. Their cities are built in places of great natural splendor, at harmony with nature and far away from other peoples. Sounds good so far. The short states that elves live about 750 years... that's how long 5th Edition D&D elves live. I want to come up with my own number. Maer also describes elves as stuck-up, snooty, and manipulative schemers. She can say that, 'cause she is one.
There are three different kinds of elves, Natha Lee describes them as "strains"; wood elves, high elves, and dark elves. They're visually indistinguishable, but each of the three has a different set of innate magic: the wood elves have speed and natural camouflage, the high elves have teleportation, the dark elves have keen sight in the dark, and both the high elves and dark elves have various other magical talents.
Mmm... no. Those are the 5th Edition D&D elf rules again. Well, the teleportation is 4th Edition. But still. Although, hmm, while my knee-jerk reaction was "no", I think we can actually work with this.
The two abilities of the wood elves, I didn't think of them as being overtly supernatural until, well, just now -- what if that's exactly what they are? Not just being able to run fast and good at hiding amongst the trees; what if they have genuine super-speed and chameleon skin? I'm going for that.
Then the high elves. I went with the teleportation from 4th Edition because in 5th, the high elves just don't have anything overtly special about them, just extra weapon training, skill training, and a few magic spells. None of that is inherent to them, that's just supposed to be because high elves are very well-educated. Which D&D is beginning to acknowledge should not be a so-called "racial" trait. So, yeah, keeping the teleportation, and... let's brainstorm some other inherent magical powers.
As for the dark elves, they can see in the dark... well, all elves can see in the dark, but dark elves do it twice as well. ...Need to figure out a game mechanic for that, I'm skeptical about the realism of 5th Edition's system, in which most elves can see in the dark at a distance of 60 feet, dark elves at 120 feet. I'm not sure that's how night vision works. Potentially I can come up with something new. And finally, dark elves in the game have a long tradition of being able to inherently cast spells: faerie fire that illuminates people to make them easier to see, conjuring a globe of absolute darkness to obscure vision. In the Legend of Drizzt books, presumably based on much earlier editions, dark elf aristocrats can also levitate. Think I'll throw that in. Minus the aristocrat part.
The part where you can't tell what kind of elf someone is by looking at them, that's all me. By D&D rules, high elves are pale or fair with blonde or silver hair, wood elves are of a slightly darker complexion and autumnal hair colors, and dark elves have coal-black skin and white hair. I just wanted to mix it up a bit. Limitations... to be determined later, if at all; most artists put no limitations on the skin, hair, and eye colors of elves. All the same, the three subsets of elvenkind are very clearly delineated due to the three very different sets of powers, though, I suppose an elf trained in magic could very easily fake being a different type if they so had a shifty reason to do so.
Humans: Fantasy books have a lot to say about humans. Generally, it's said, humans are flawed and corruptible, they're more likely to turn to evil than elves or dwarves are. Compared to elves and dwarves, they don't live very long. But they're also adaptable and tenacious enough to have populated the entire planet while the elves and dwarves keep to their secret kingdoms. As much is said about Cosmos's humans in this short.
But there are divergences. For one thing, in most fantasy stories, all the humans are white people. That's a creative decision I find... morally unsound. When designing characters for this and other stories, I decided some time ago that human character design comes in eight flavors: Black, white, Middle Eastern, East Asian, South Asian, Indigenous, Latinx, and Polynesian. Obviously it's more complicated than that in real life, but it'll suffice as far as superficial visual design. And obviously we can't use most of those words in-universe, because they refer to places that don't exist in our constructed worlds... but I don't see the need to make up words to refer to our alternate-world human ethnicities, because as far as fantasy-world humans are concerned, their "race" is human, anything else is just aesthetics that might tell you where someone's ancestors are from, doesn't make much of a difference. What a wacky fantastical notion.
In Cosmos, humans are said to be younger than elves and dwarves, having first come into being well after those two had already established mighty empires. Come into being how? I don't rightly know. This being a fantasy world where the gods walk among us, I don't see Cosmos as having been around long enough for biological evolution to have made much headway, I think 12,000 years is a good timeline for the history of the universe; I think things just kinda spring into being, either spawned by the gods or brought about by some other force that no one really knows or cares to ask about.
And here's an idea I had about humans which I basically abandoned when I decided to go full D&D with it: taking the things that make humans special in real life, and having them apply even here where there are other sapient beings to deal with. Gonna bring that back. So, you may ask, what's special about real-life humans?
- Most obviously: sapience. We have intelligence and creativity that most other creatures can't even begin to comprehend. Obviously not the case here. Indeed, probably inverted. Most fantasy stories depict elves and dwarves as being more advanced technologically, wise enough not to pollute the environment or waste resources, and being much culturally richer than humans. There's never any great human-made art in these worlds. Which isn't really fair. Cosmos humans should have something. Maybe they make yummy breakfast food or rockin' music, I don't know.
- We live a long time. Funny, isn't it, how that's another one that's usually inverted; how most speculative fiction depicts humans as having very short lifespans compared to other beings, even though in real life, there are very few members of the animal kingdom who can compete with our century-long lifespan. Well, I think that's another one I'm not gonna use here -- living many centuries is just so inherent in the nature of elves and dwarves, it would feel wrong to give humans a leg up there. And Dakota provided a pretty good line about how that alters their perspective: "You wanna get shit done in a decade or two, ask an elf or dwarf. You want it done now, you talk to humans." Some fantasy settings, particularly the comedic ones, extrapolate that because of this, dwarves and elves also have painfully long childhoods. And I took that route the first time I designed a fantasy setting, but for this one, nah, I think dwarves and elves are fully adult by the age of 20, just like humans, but then after that they just don't get old until much later.
- Endurance. A human can walk forever, long after any other animal has dropped dead of exhaustion. That's how we survived in ancient times, how we caught gazelles and shit. Why, this very evening I used such a tactic to catch the cat when she darted out the back door. Followed her around until she couldn't run from me anymore. Human power! So, yeah, let's work that in. Wood elves may win all the sprints, but humans kick ass at the marathons.
- Throwing. Humans can throw things very far and very accurately. Even those few other animals that actually have arms can't really throw for shit. In some fantasy settings, it's halflings who are famous for throwing, but there ain't no halflings in Cosmos, I see no reason not to give that advantageous trait to the humans. Hmm, does archery count as throwing? Should humans be better than elves at archery? I don't see why not, elves have had their time in that field.
- And the last thing that sets humans apart, from other mammals in particular... we have big dicks. Also, we have boobs all the time instead of just when they're making milk. I'm not about to give the dwarves and elves tiny monkey dicks or cutting board chests, but I wouldn't be surprised if, compared to the other two, humans are known for being comparatively well-endowed, in one sense or the other. Considering the nature of the one human cast member of The Choices, it certainly seems to fit, don't it?
The short goes on to say that dwarves, elves, and humans are the big three, that most people you meet are likely to be one of those three races. But there are more, which you're especially likely to see if you take up adventuring:
Merfolk: The short claims that merfolk have a complex culture... and doesn't elaborate, so I don't know what that means. I wrote the show, of course. I'll have to make something up. It's said that they dominate the shallow seas, but aren't very versatile elsewhere. Referring of course to the fact that they have terrible mobility on land, nearly entirely helpless. Not sure what keeps them out of deeper seas, though. There are no rules in any RPG I'm aware of about the dark, cold, and pressure of the deep sea. Maybe there should be.
Among merfolk abilities, they can communicate at a base level with any aquatic animal, and converse fluently with cetaceans. Mm, there should be plenty of animal talk in K&K! After all, no Disney film goes by without it. Even when the animals don't talk, they at least understand every word the humans say. Don't wanna go that far in this universe, raises too many questions, but plenty of animal talk in one way or another. At the bare minimum, all animal species should be capable of being tamed, following commands, and showing loyalty. In fantasy gaming, that's basically already true. But yeah, let's kick it up a notch to make them, animals, the super-competent sidekicks they are in Disney.
Finally, it's said that the beauty of merfolk is nearly hypnotic. Easy enough to say it, have to figure out how it affects game mechanics and non-gaming-related stories.
Gargoyles: To quote a recurring line from myself, the gargoyles of Keys & Kingdoms are essentially just the gargoyles from the TV show Gargoyles. I restrained myself from taking every bit of gargoyle lore from the series creator's blog and implementing it here. But everything that's actually explicit in the show will basically be a thing. Disney can't sue me for using gargoyles, right? Pretty sure gargoyles predate them but, you know, they did try to trademark the Day of the Dead once.
Hmm, the short film doesn't really say all that much. Guess I was saving it for later. It's alluded to that gargoyles hatch from eggs. Then explained that gargoyles were the dominant life form in prehistoric Cosmos -- but once other civilizations came along, gargoyles' biggest strength became their weakness. When the sun rises, gargoyles turn to stone (whether or not the sun is actually visible at the time, for the record) and then back to flesh when it sets. Advantageous in primitive times, as no predator can harm a stone statue, but a fellow humanoid, with tools? Yikes. Happened a lot then and happens a lot now, because gargoyles are viewed as an omen of evil.
Unspoken here, I do want to make a distinction between how K&K gargoyles go through their transformation. In the show, when gargoyles turn to stone at sunrise, so too do their clothes and personal effects -- the result of a "humility spell" appearing only on the aforementioned blog, an ancient piece of magic to prevent them shedding their clothes upon awakening, for when gargoyles awaken at sunset, they explode out of their stone forms, leaving behind shards of rubble. So that magic spell included clothes and belongings in the natural biological process. In K&K? Not so. In K&K, petrification of any kind only petrifies the physical body (which notably, the current rules of D&D actually go out of their way to contradict -- anything being worn or carried also turns to stone), and being de-petrified is just a smooth transition back to flesh. It's regrettably much less awesome than the many, many dynamic awakening scenes from Gargoyles, but... it's simple and clean.
As an aside, this segment of the short also alludes to the fact that magic that can raise the dead, while difficult to come by, is totally a thing. Such is the case in D&D and other games, because in a game there always has to be a chance of success. Conversely, most fantasy worlds explicitly state that there is absolutely no magic that can raise the dead because, you know, stakes. Making that call... well, for starters, this is an RPG setting, so death should be surmountable. Stories can still have plenty of stakes that way. Any DM worth his salt can still pull off a heart-wrenching death scene.
Pixies: Pixies are tricky in D&D; several editions have offered stats for playable pixies that just don't quite sit right with the players, because by the rules as written, a one-foot-tall pixie packs the same amount of physical punch -- and uses the same equipment -- as any human-scale adventurer. With three of the ten core races being tiny, I definitely want to explore how to make them useful and versatile and include lots of tiny-adventurer mechanics. Thus far, I have no inkling of how to do that.
The short explains that pixies have the power of nature: a different set of powers depending upon the season of their birth. There are spring, summer, autumn, and winter pixies, each with a different power set which I don't think I've properly defined yet. Also established is their life cycle: they're born as adults in places of natural splendor, and though they don't visibly age, they sometimes die by simply returning to the nature from which they came.
Pixies have a big secret, not spoken of in this short because I wanted to save it as a big reveal for later, but... you'll learn it later on in this blog post. Lucky you.
Fairies: Yes, pixies and fairies. Totally two different things. Fairies are derived mostly from those of early Disney films -- the Blue Fairy, the Fairy Godmother, the Three Good Fairies; even Maleficent herself was a fairy. Also a major influence was the Third Race from Gargoyles; the Third Race, also called the Children of Oberon, are essentially fairies, but what they truly are is creatures made up of pure magical energy, shapeshifters who can appear in any form and perform great miracles. The series also displays that every god and spirit in every mythology on Earth is actually a Child of Oberon.
The short explains that a little over 3,000 years ago, there was a harmonic convergence of magical energy which, among other magical stuff, started the progression of the calendar the world uses and gave birth to the first fairies, a race of immortal energy beings who can appear in any shape they desire. The majority of the world's fairies were born on that day and are now epic-level sorcerers who are virtually godlike in their power, but fairies still get born sometimes, during... events. Fairies born after the convergence are called neo-fairies (an awesome term derived from Naty mishearing me when I said "new fairies") and usually take up the adventurer lifestyle.
Other details from the short include that they leave behind a strange blotchy substance when they are killed, and that they become helpless and immobile wisps when exposed to an anti-magic field, an exceptionally rare but supremely dangerous element.
We then move on to the last three races, those you're more likely to see in urban life than adventuring life, though, by making them core playable races, I suppose that's unlikely to remain true.
Myshkas and Syrsas: These two were given the same entry in the short film, as they're rather similar to one another and somewhat symbiotic. Little guys have to stick together. Myshkas bring the technology and infrastructure, syrsas bring the arts and entertainment.
So, what are the myshkas and syrsas? Well, "myshka" is Russian for mouse, and "syrsa" Swedish for cricket. Tell me, what comes to mind when you think of wholesome and whimsical children's animation? I'd wager a big part of the image includes a tiny civilization of rodents who live on the fringes of human societies and scavenge human technology. Disney's done it a time or two, most prominently in The Great Mouse Detective and The Rescuers, and often as a side element in other films such as Dumbo and Cinderella. Non-Disney animation also delves into such settings quite a bit, such as in An American Tail and far too many more-obscure works for me to name. So that's what myshkas are, a race born of my observation of just how often this element appears in animation. Syrsas were conceived later, as an insectile counterpart, born out of desire to make Jiminy Cricket a prominent playable race as well. Mr. Bug Goes to Town, one of the first non-Disney animated features, is probably an excellent example -- can't be sure, haven't seen it yet.
Now, these characters are usually far too small to be effective companions in an RPG, usually being only slightly larger than real mice. Conversely, myshkas and syrsas are approximately one foot tall, to give them a fighting chance. Think, well... some depictions of Chip and Dale, sometimes they're actually chipmunk-sized too. And so, throughout Cosmos, myshkas and syrsas build their tiny societies on the fringes of those of bigger people, generally avoiding the big big world out there.
Briefly, I'd like to clarify two frequent misunderstandings on precisely which characters can be converted into myshkas. One: the rats of Ratatouille are not myshkas. They are rats. They do not have clothing or technology, and humans do not understand them when they speak. And two: Mickey Mouse is definitely not a myshka, shame on you for even assuming as much, clearly you didn't pay attention. Mickey is between two and three feet tall, and quite easily operates in human-scale society and combat. Clearly, Mickey is a native.
Natives: Described in the short as the oldest and most mysterious race of all. Oldest to allude to the fact that they starred in the world's earliest animated works. Most mysterious because, well, nothing about them makes any sense. Inspiration for the natives comes from many places: while primarily drawing from Mickey, Donald, Goofy, and their supporting cast, there's also strong influence from the non-human cast of the BoJack Horseman universe, and the Faunus from RWBY. Though, er, most of the specifics will have to be talked about later, 'cause they're not here in the short.
So, natives, as it says in the short, were here first, before any other sapient people. They face a great deal of prejudice in modern times; to give you an idea of what they're based on and how in-universe bigots perceive them, some common slurs used against them are "toons" and "furries". While in the big picture they're horribly marginalized, one supernatural gift they have is one of good fortune: persuasive conversations, combat exchanges, and really any situation where a minor mishap might happen, those always seem to go in the natives' favor.
Essentially, if I haven't made it clear, natives are anthropomorphic animals. The short explains that their animal traits are purely cosmetic; apart from the good luck, they don't really have anything going for them that humans don't have, with the possible exception of being better at biting than humans are. Again, precisely what a native looks like will have to wait for later on in the blog post when I go over the WorldAnvil site.
To preempt another common question, one that long predates the K&K universe: the one about why Goofy talks, stands erect, and wears clothes but Pluto doesn't. Easy: Goofy is a native, Pluto is a dog.
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And, uh... friggin' hell, I thought that this whole thing of combing through all existing K&K lore and sharing my thoughts on it would take me like an hour and leave me with a very short and cute blog post to share. I've been writing this post for two days straight and I'm like 5% of the way through all the content, and what you see above you is the result. ...Why does literally everything I do take several orders of magnitude more time than I think it will? You'd think I'd have some sense of the reality of it by now.
So, anyway, yeah, this post is done. Got through one episode of material. I'll return to this task, oh, every two days or so.
And oh my freakin' duh, this episode of Explore Cosmos is actually friggin' called "peoples", that's the word we can use instead of "races", my God, how did that escape my notice?
