Constructing Cosmos: Part 7, WorldAnvil (1/2)

Okay, in this entry, we're going through the WorldAnvil wiki I made about the world of Cosmos. Then I'm gonna scrap that thing, it bugs the hell out of me. Gonna switch to Campfire! Campfire was my first choice, but at the time they didn't provide any ability to collaborate. They do that now! So, a Campfire venue to fill in all the known lore for the benefit of myself and my fellow Cosmos creators.

So, what the WorldAnvil ended up with, was just a few categories:

• Characters of The Choices
• Countries
• Creatures
• Legendary Characters
• Organizations
• Races
• Religions
• Spells
• Stories

Okay, I guess let's just tackle those in that order. Alphabetical.

CHARACTERS OF THE CHOICES

All noteworthy characters appearing in (my loose outlines of) the first season of Keys & Kingdoms: The Choices. I don't think I'll be telling you that information, sounds like that would be spoilers, I'll just let you know if I find anything interesting.

Looks like what I had here was a pretty good system of writing character profiles. WorldAnvil provided a character-profile-makin' thing where I listed their species, age, and height. In the actual article for each character, I had the following sections:

• Background: What I know about where each character comes from and where they can be found as soon as they first appear in the story.
• Abilities: In this section, I started by listing their character class, and what sort of tactics and skills they use in combat -- derived from 1st-level 5E character sheets I made for each character. I didn't want to give other writers of the series access to these character sheets, merely give them an idea of what the characters were capable of, so I translated their stats into mere descriptive text of what they're good and bad at. The special abilities of their species were also included here.
• Spellcasting: I included this sub-section for every character of a spellcasting class, a list of the D&D spells they were capable of casting.
• Personality: This section included every character's D&D alignment and some details about why they are of that alignment and how they express it. Followed by some noteworthy personality traits to keep the writing of their dialogue distinctive.
• Appearance: Details about what the character looks like and how they dress, and how their appearance affects the way they are perceived in social situations.
• Writer Data: Various significant reminders. Two things were listed for every character: their sexual orientation plus their personal beliefs and attitudes regarding romance and sex; then, their nationality and how much they identify with it. Where relevant, I also included a detail that I've always had trouble remembering when writing non-human characters: how their sleep differs from that of humans. So this section included reminders that elf characters don't sleep (which may or may not remain true of K&K elves) and that gargoyle characters can't be awake in scenes set during the day.

So, rather than reproducing all of that character data here, I'll just write it down and, as I said, let you know if there's anything of particular interest to be found in these character profiles. This seems like a good time to do another thing!

This here's a little thing I made earlier today, displaying the five phases thus far of designing the characters of The Choices. So now that I've gathered all of that data, I intend to look at all of those pictures and decide precisely what the characters will look like in Phase Six, which will presumably be the final, final stage, the precise character models we will use. Hmm... you know, I was thinking maybe we don't go to final redesigns until after we make the pilot, but no, I'd actually rather the pilot had the final designs, the pilot is very much the beginning of the story, I don't want all the character designs to change midway. Anyway, as for that planning of Phase Six, I'm gonna do that immediately after I catalogue all this WorldAnvil stuff.

Nope, I'm back, I was wrong, I had to decide precisely what the characters really look like before proceeding. Okay, where were we? All right, I read all the character articles... didn't find anything worth talking about here, but made a plan to convert all that data to Campfire.

COUNTRIES

Entries on Cosmos's 18 countries. Very, very short articles, because when assembling the WorldAnvil wiki, I knew nothing about any of the countries, all the stuff in Part 6 was made up sometime after I made the most recent additions to the wiki.

So, each country had only the following information:

• The basic geographical location of the country.
• What part of the real world I intended to use as inspiration for the country.
• What very general form of government I expected it might have -- I restricted myself to choosing between "empire", "kingdom", and "republic".
• The demonym for the country. That, if you didn't know, means what you call people and things from that country. Like how people and things from Peru are called Peruvian. Where's the V come from? I dunno. So, found that worth mentioning.

The articles for Akhmis, Athundoft, and Magnae also linked to the articles about the three pantheons, as those countries are where the gods live. Kind of. Technically the gods live in another dimension, but you get there via those three countries. Y'know.

So, I'm gonna write down all those demonyms, that's just about the only thing I need to remember at this point. Every now and then, when writing the first season of The Choices and the time came that I absolutely had to identify a location more specific than a country, well, I did so. Here's what I've got.

• Eirdale: A small town in Sheafell, where most of the first season of The Choices takes place. It's a small town. It's coastal. It has a university. And that's all I know, even though I wrote an entire season of television set there. You see how much I suck?
• Caeminster: A larger, more politically significant city in Sheafell. One of the Choices' first missions is to escort a prisoner there, but they fail at the task and the city is never visited.
• Stitwood: A tiny village in Sheafell. Stacky is from there, and... again, that's all I know, it's visited purely for character development, the village itself has no character whatsoever.
• Arakka: A northern coastal town in Akhmis, heavily involved in the international spice trade. A place cooked up for... some sort of caper or another early in the season, something about checking the records of shipments from there.

And that's it, that's all I know about individual towns in the world of Cosmos. Meep.

CREATURES

Any time I had reason for a creature outside of the ten core races to appear, I gave them an article; here's everything I figured would appear in the first season of The Choices. Each creature article started with its creature type, then had four sections: History, Appearance, Abilities, and Life Cycle.

Fire Elemental: Such a creature is summoned at a climactic moment of the first season. Most of this elemental stuff is straight out of D&D lore -- maybe we can mix it up a little!

• Creature Type: Elemental.
• History: Elementals are as old as the universe, being semi-living embodiments of the elements of creation.
• Appearance: Nine feet tall. A pillar of swirly red flames which might sprout arms or a face at its own discretion.
• Abilities: Everything it touches ignites. Non-living, so immune to things that would afflict living things (poison, disease, suffocation, etc.); and non-physical, so its fiery body can pass through any opening. A mild weakness against water, gotta figure out how to make that game mechanic work. And immune to non-magical attacks.
• Life Cycle: Elemental spirits are eternal. However, for the most part, they are mindless and bodiless, just natural features of the Inner Planes. Wait, did I still have the Inner Planes in the K&K cosmology? Anyway, elemental spirits only take shape into an actual creature when summoned by magic.

Giant Leech: I thought a swarm of giant leeches would make for a fun adversary for a wilderness-themed subplot at the season's midpoint. I knew there were giant leeches in Pathfinder, so I looked up their stats, and also did a bit of research on real leeches.

• Creature Type: Beast.
• History: Leeches have existed since the dawn of time. Giant leeches in particular usually only appear in places untouched by civilization. They favor temperate freshwater environments.
• Appearance: Biologically speaking, leeches are annelids: segmented worms, just like earthworms. The giant leech variety in particular is about five feet long, and has a toothy circular mouth and a long tongue. I don't think real leeches have teeth or tongues, but, I dunno, the giant ones always do. How do I know that? In what media have I ever seen giant leeches...?
• Abilities: Fast swimming. A powerful bite, with which they latch onto a victim and drain its blood. As far as weaknesses: they are blind, slow-moving on land, and... damaged by salt. God bless Pathfinder, they think of freakin' everything.
• Life Cycle: Let's see, I put down that they're hermaphroditic but reproduce sexually and lay clutches of eggs outside of water. I mean, I assume I wrote that down because I studied and learned it was true of real leeches, I dunno. And the average giant leech specimen lives... 80 years? Yikes, that's a lot. Maybe better make that the maximum instead?

Gnoll: This classic D&D creature has, well, a brief cameo in the pilot episode, we might see more later.

• Creature Type: Humanoid. Fun fact, you'll recall my earlier mentions that D&D isn't using the word "race" anymore, and along with that, they're also phasing out the notion that any humanoid can have an inherently evil culture -- since after all, humanoids have free will, and saying that a free-willed creature is always evil is, for lack of a better word, pretty racist. And gnolls in particular have always been super evil, so some settings have reclassified them as fiends. Some, not all, so I'm assuming in settings where they're still humanoids, there are good gnolls now. I briefly considered giving them the fiend classification myself just now, but, then I remembered Rik Canis, the lead singer of a rock band from several of my written works, whom I intend to appear in not only Cosmos but also every high-fantasy story I ever write, because his band travels the multiverse... and he's a gnoll, and, well, it'd be presumptive to say "not evil", but he's definitely not so blindly destructive as the typical gnoll.
• History: In D&D, (or at least 5E, I don't know how far back this story goes), gnolls started out as hyenas, who ate the kills of the demon lord Demogorgon. These hyenas turned into humanoid hyenas just as evil as Demogorgon himself, and their descendants are gnolls. So you can see why either the fiend or humanoid classification would work! Now, early in the development of K&K, I posed the question to Naty of whether I'd be able to include D&D's humanoid peoples that are essentially anthropomorphic animals, such as gnolls, bullywugs, and lizardfolk, in a world where my homebrew natives exist. I figured for starters a gnoll looks a lot more monstrous than a hyena native, and Naty suggested that maybe such peoples are descended from natives who were corrupted. And so that's the story I cooked up for gnolls! Centuries ago, a native village whose inhabitants were of canine and hyena appearances was suffering a famine. In desperation, they summoned a demon who hunted for them, and everyone who ate of the demon's kills became the first gnolls, way more demonic and ferocious than the natives they were before. Modern gnolls live in nomadic hunter-gatherer tribes and get most of their resources from slaughtering civilized people.
• Appearance: Gnolls stand about seven feet tall. They have the legs and tail of a wolf, but a humanoid torso, and the face of a mangy, rabid wolf or hyena. They have a shaggy pelt with black spots and patterns, a black mane, and pupil-less eyes that glow intensely. That's all D&D stuff except for the wolf part and the eyes -- see, Christalss gnolls were canine instead of hyena-like D&D gnolls, I figure K&K gnolls can be both due to the connection with natives, and had glowy eyes because, well, I like glowy eyes. I'm on the fence as to whether or not they can turn the glowiness off for stealth reasons...
• Abilities: Gnolls have supernatural strength, a vicious bite, perfect vision in darkness, and are fast runners.
• Life Cycle: Gnolls reproduce like, well, most mammals, I suppose, and grow up fast -- being fully grown at the age of 6 and living to be about 30.

Goblin: A very common opponent in just about every high-fantasy story you've ever seen, these little guys have made an appearance or two in the first season.

• Creature Type: Humanoid.
• History: Goblins have existed for about as long as dwarves, but have never formed stable civilization, always having to subsist as raiders and bandits. Some say that goblins were created specifically to serve as easy combat experience for young warriors. Goblins thoroughly resent the gods for this theory.
• Appearance: K&K goblins are a bit over two feet tall -- quite a bit shorter than D&D goblins, who are a bit under three and a half feet. Having shrunk down dwarves and having a number of diminutive hero-style characters, I figured some iconic threats ought to be smaller as well. You know, expand the little guys' worlds a bit. They're a bit ape-like, having long arms and short legs in comparison to humans, but fully bipedal. Their skin is acid-green or yellow, and they have vibrant catlike eyes, large pointy ears, and sharp teeth.
• Abilities: Nimble, speedy, and with perfect vision in the dark. Hm, gotta make a sliding scale of, like, different levels of darkvision. And figure out how to implement that rule in the RPG.
• Life Cycle: Says here goblins are fully grown at 8 years old and live to be about 60. Yeah, that's usually a thing; while dwarves and elves live for a very long time, goblins and orcs tend to have shorter lives than humans and grow up faster. Which I guess makes sense, most living things in real life reach their adult size way faster than humans do, but when you're dealing with other kinds of people, it does come across a bit weird. I gotta think about this.

Shrieker: The classic giant mushroom guardian thingies of D&D. They're seen prominently in the pilot episode.

• Creature Type: Plant.
• History: They come from the underground. Ooh, I haven't thought about that. All D&D settings have an Underdark, a cavern system just as large as the world itself, where dark elves, aberrations, and other nasty-nasties live. Until recently, I always found the term "Underdark" a bit cheesy, I've always used "underground" in my campaigns, but "Underdark" has recently grown on me, probz gonna start using it, but not in K&K. Hm, I think Christalss might have had a better term for it. I don't remember, but I guess I'll find out. Anyway, shriekers are cultivated by various underground dwellers and placed on the outskirts of settlements to discourage trespassers.
• Appearance: A shrieker is a mushroom, about five feet tall, with an off-white stalk and reddish-brown cap. The storyboards drawn by Casey gave shriekers a very alien appearance -- I was just picturing really huge toadstools, but what Casey did is loads better, excited for you to see it.
• Abilities: While shriekers are immobile and have no means of actively protecting themselves, they do have, well, the defense they're named for. At the slightest sign of motion within 30 feet of their position, they start screaming, continuously, until the motion is gone and for several seconds afterward. In D&D, light also causes this reaction, but I dunno, I wouldn't mind the use of shriekers above the ground where there's sunlight too. Maybe they react to sudden light, so a sunrise doesn't get on their radar.
• Life Cycle: I put down "TBD", because, I don't know how mushrooms reproduce and I didn't want to look it up. I'm into animals, not fungi. So, we'll figure that out.

Skeleton: Skeletons, one of the two lowest forms of undead, make an appearance in an early episode, commanded by a young up-and-coming necromancer.

• Creature Type: Undead.
• History: The dark magic that animates skeletons is of unknown origin, but -- hey, you know what? Making a call right now: D&D includes the mention, often, of how certain undead or unnatural creatures come about via some sort of magic ritual, but said rituals can't be found anywhere in the rules, so we don't know exactly how they work or what kind of magic-user you have to be to achieve them. I think I'm always gonna specify such things in the rules. I mean, in D&D's case, your character can get some skeletons and zombies via an Animate Dead spell, so, you know, bad example, just something for me to keep in mind. This section also states that skeletons will attempt to kill every living creature they see unless specifically ordered to refrain from doing so by their master.
• Appearance: Most often, a human skeleton, but the magic works on any dead thing with bones. In general, a skeleton is a bleach-white skeletal version of the creature it was in life.
• Abilities: Skeletons have intelligence and common sense that zombies lack; where a zombie will claw at a door in vain forever, a skeleton will go for the doorknob. They understand speech but cannot speak themselves. They are vulnerable to blunt weapons but resistant to bladed weapons. Stat-wise, I guess that, as in D&D, they start off with the stat block of whatever thing they were in life but with a "skeleton" template that modifies stuff. We'll figure that out.
• Life Cycle: Animated by necromancy, and generally they endure eternally or until destroyed.

Wood Sentinel: An invention of mine, a very simple construct. One appears in the pilot.

• Creature Type: Construct.
• History: Wood sentinels date back about 2,000 years. The first was created by an inexperiened apprentice wizard for the purpose of fetching water from a well -- yup, going full Sorcerer's Apprentice with these guys, hey, I guess some Disney content made its way into the story after all. In modern times, they're generally used as butlers or waiters. Sometimes guards, but that's considered a high-risk proposition.
• Appearance: Well, they're made of wood. Often, they're made from brooms, in reference to the original model, or chairs, or simply a human-shaped wood carving slightly smaller than an adult human.
• Abilities: Being constructs, they never get tired or hungry. They follow the task they are given, which can be at a level of enough complexity that you can trust your wood sentinel to, say, wait tables for a full shift without your supervision. Now, the brooms from The Sorcerer's Apprentice had a rather terrifying level of regenerative power, yeah? Perhaps this is because troll blood is a component in the creation of a wood sentinel. They can heal themselves up unless you burn 'em up. Now, I wrote down that any piece broken off a wood sentinel eventually grows into an entirely new sentinel that continues the original copy's objective, but... my God, that's terrifying. That would be an incredibly overwhelming thing to fight, I intended them to be, like, easy constructs. Maybe they don't do that, maybe every wood sentinel just has a "heart" or something and only the part with the heart can grow back.
• Life Cycle: Being magical constructs, they can endure forever, never ceasing at their assigned job.

Zombie: The other kind of simple undead. Encountered in this story, as they often are, accompanied by skeletons.

• Creature Type: Undead.
• History: Zombies arise from dark magic as old as time itself. Usually it's cast deliberately on a corpse, but sometimes the dark magic can simply saturate a place until zombies start occurring naturally from the corpses in the area.
• Appearance: Any living thing can become a zombie. Hm, should we specify which creature types are living and which aren't...? Anyway, zombies decay like any other corpse, so you can tell they're dead within a few days of them being so; all decay lingers forever, as do all wounds, so a zombie, well, it looks more zombie-like the longer it exists.
• Abilities: Zombies are completely mindless, with no sense of self, comprehension of battle tactics, or common sense. If they have a master, they follow the master's telepathic commands, but that's it. They are not infectious, so if a friend gets bitten, don't shoot them in the head. Heh, that's a D&D joke I like a whole lot, maybe it's a common misconception in the K&K universe?
• Life Cycle: Raised from the dead by necromancy. If not given any commands, it simply stands on one place until it completely decays. Hmm... I have two notes for my past self here... one, zombies should probably also attack every living thing they detect, like skeletons do, otherwise a zombie without a master would be completely non-threatening and we don't want that. But the difference is that masterless skeletons wander around performing instinctive behaviors from their life, so they might be able to find living things, whilst zombies, yeah, they just stay in one place until living things turn up. Two, if zombies decay, does that mean they eventually become skeletons, which are smarter and stronger? Well, I think no. The skeletons of living things are held together by ligaments and stuff; skeletons in schools and museums have to be held together with wires and screws, which I guess means undead skeletons are held together by the magic that animates them. So if a zombie decays enough to be skeletonized, it falls apart and ceases to be a zombie -- zombies have a shelf life, weeks to years depending on climate according to the Wikipedia article on skeletonization (didn't realize at the beginning of this sentence that that's actually a word!). Then you can recast your necromancy on the bones and convert your zombie into a skeleton.

LEGENDARY CHARACTERS

This category, reserved for characters who might appear in any story set on Cosmos rather than contained to one story in particular... though, of course, no character needs to be contained to one story, it's a shared universe after all.

The only legendary character I listed was Merlin. Merlin's story is that he was born in the fifth century, some 2,600 years before the present day of most Cosmos stories. He was a very powerful archmage, and some mysterious connection to fey magic gave him the ability to travel freely through time; he's been present for many important historical events, though just as a witness.

Merlin is an elderly man... who wears dark glasses, and has a number of cute catchphrases... and makes one small cameo appearance in every story set on Cosmos. That's right, the K&K version of Merlin is nothing but a shout-out to the late Stan Lee. And TV seasons count as stories, so he appears in Season 1 of The Choices, spotting Stacky walking in the streets of Stitwood and remarking, "Hey, I remember her."

There are other legendary characters planned. I figure as long as I had the Greek, Norse, and Egyptian gods, I might as well incorporate other figures of real-world legend. Such as Santa Claus, a former archbishop who now runs a factory of some sort, manned by elves. High-fantasy elves, not Keebler elves. I don't remember if I figured out what that factory does. As well as Jesus Christ, a demigod unaffiliated with any of the three pantheons, who never picked up a huge following but is just, like, the absolute coolest guy.

ORGANIZATIONS

The only organization listed on the site was the Choices themselves, the main characters of, well, The Choices. Though the party aren't called the Choices in-universe, that's just a script placeholder so we know who we're talking about. See, way back when I was first coming up with Keys & Kingdoms, I asked ten people from my life what kind of character they'd want to play in a game of Keys & Kingdoms; and eventually, I decided to make those ten characters the stars of a story, and to call that story The Choices, purely because I had recorded the choices everyone had made in a Word document entitled "the choices".

Anyway... ooh! I didn't think the article on the adventuring party would include anything of value, but it does! It includes a list of every possible relationship that might exist between the seven members of the group. Where I knew the nature of such a relationship, I described it. Cool, that's gonna be valuable, Campfire has a tool for mapping relationships.

And, okay, this is running pretty long, I anticipated that it might, so, WorldAnvil episode being split in two! Be with you in a minute with the next one.