As part of my notion of building all my monsters and playable races at the same time, making them feel part of a creative whole, I’m establishing ways to categorize or group them…

COSMOLOGY
Where the monsters be at.  I don’t want the spread or ambition of some big-ass multiverse.  One world will do.  Center of the universe, it is.  It’s got its own heaven and hell et cetera, and this is the breakdown.

GAYA
The physical world where every ridiculous thing comes together, where most adventures would take place.  Situationally any and all monsters can be found there.  Some, like humans and sheep, are native to the plane, with the Gayan type.  This realm is associated with Body magic, as it is the place where incarnation happens – where flesh is truly flesh, not some spiritual illusion of the same.  Also associated with Drama magic, as the stage where the greatest stories play out.

THE ABYSS
Around every plane of existence, seeping into them, breaking them gradually down to nothing, is the big realm of Death and the dead.  Fools that imagine they’ll live forever in the afterlife don’t know.  The afterlife’s days are numbered.  No small amount of undead dwell there, but creatures born of the plane are called Abyssal.  The realm is of course associated with Death magic.

THE SKEINS
Everything is bound together by threads of meaning, of relationship.  For example, all humans would be bound by a “human” thread.  This is the basis of Binding magic.  The metaphysical manifestation of this is a spiritual web that, like the Abyss, connects to everything.  Unlike the Abyss, one with the right magic can travel on the Skeins directly.  The few strange creatures native to this interstitial space are called Ideal.

THE DEEP WILDS
In the wild places of Gaya, go far enough and the map may lose you.  The Deep Wilds are where wild creatures like sileni, satyrs, and faerie folk come from.  The realm is a spiritual reflection of nature, but taken to great extremes.  Some creatures of the Deep Wilds have been incarnated on Gaya or even been born on Gaya, to where they lose some connection to their ancestral home, but are still considered to be of the Wild (or Wild and Faerie) types.  This realm is associated with Wild Magic.

THE ELEMENTAL REALMS
Pretty stock biz.  Fire, Earth, Air, Water.  Realms of ’em, easier to reach from the Deep Wilds than from Gaya itself.  Associated with Great Magic, Alchemy, and creatures of the Elemental or individual element types.

HEAVEN
Associated with Holy magic, Heaven is where order and obedience reign supreme, where harmony creates something resembling eternal bliss.  Sometimes that may be genuinely beneficent, but beings from this realm, whether god or angel, can be as evil as anything.  Tread carefully, and take the actions of their followers on Gaya over the words in their hymns.  Most easily accessed by dying while sworn to serve a deity there, or from the Singing Realm.  Creatures of Heaven are called Celestial.

THE SINGING REALM
The Singing Realm is a strange place somewhere between Heaven and Gaya, stairway to the gods in the form of an endless city of ever ascending ziggurats and temples.  Souls of the dead who didn’t quite get to Heaven are found here, playing out a lesser paradise until they get so bored the Abyss takes them, or they change into something new, ascend to Heaven or incarnate again on Gaya.  Other creatures live here as well, and like those in Heaven, they are considered Celestial.  Many communities of dwarves and giants have dwelt there so long as to not remember their own origins, and those that dwell on Gaya descended from these.

THE SILVER VOID
Associated with Mind magic, the Silver Void is a place of seemingly endless mental energy.  It plays out there like an unending amusical tone, like psychic tinnitus.  This is soul energy devoid of the Law of Heaven or Chaos of Hell, just alien and buzzing.  Creatures that live in the Silver Void include the greys, flying in their silver discs, some few gods and their servants, and myriad spiritual reflections of the ways that thinking beings exist.  Those that are born here are considered to be the Astral type.

THE SILENT REALM
As the Singing Realm is to Heaven, the Silent Realm is to the Silver Void.  It’s a desolate reflection of Gaya, turned in on itself in endless mazes where souls play out their struggles over and over, until they disintegrate, ascend, or reincarnate on Gaya below.  Some natives of this realm include oneiroi, who play the roles of “supporting cast” in the psychodramas of lost souls.  Like those in the Silver Void above, they are considered to be Astral.

HELL
Associated with Hexing magic, Hell is a twisted reflection of Gaya steeped in chaos and torment.  There is also a kind of vitality there, tho it doesn’t hold a candle to that of the Deep Wilds.  It’s the vitality of freedom, of accepting the pain and difficulty of existence, of living it to the utmost before willing oneself the rest of the way out the door, into the Abyss (or going unwillingly of course).  Some creatures of Hell are surprisingly kind, more are as capriciously cruel as the reputation would suggest.  The type is Demonic.

THE SCREAMING REALM
In a sense this realm is worse than Hell itself.  As the Singing Realm is to Heaven, as the Silent Realm is to the Silver Void, so the Screaming Realm is to Hell.  This is the purgatory where those who died in great strife or iniquity must face their personal demons until they either escape to a gentler place (most often the Silent Realm), reincarnate, disintegrate under the weight of their suffering, or fall fully into Hell proper.  There are other things to be found here besides a labyrinth of personal hells, including great cities of lamias and ogres.  The lamias and ogres of Gaya descended from these.  Like other creatures from here, they are considered Demonic.

RANKS
Categorizing creatures by their relative power and station in the world.

ANIMALS
Self-willed organisms whose limited cognitive abilities prevent from engaging in civilization. Can’t learn more than a very limited vocabulary, unable to learn a character class, although they can advance in levels and abilities.  You don’t wanna meet that 16th level Mosquito.  Your blood will be sucked.

RACES
The species that can engage in technological society on roughly equal footing, typically bipedal with stereoscopic vision and opposable thumbs, tho not necessarily.

HOSTS
A species or group of species that are united by a theme or hierarchy, like faerie folk, giants, devils, or angels.

LEGIONS
A species or group of species that more directly serve a higher power or purpose, typically more powerful than Hosts.

LEGENDS
Demigods and monsters, these are unique creatures whose status transcends the mundane.  Some are elevated from common creatures, others came into their current incarnation by other means.

GODS
Unique creatures like Legends but much more powerful, sometimes alone, more often part of a pantheon of related beings.

OVERGODS
Gods that have become so powerful they are often presumed to be foundational to the cosmos in some way, which is not true.  Some have pantheons in their service or arrayed against them as enemies, others hold themselves above those interactions.

TYPES
Lifting this concept from D&D, tho anyone could have come up with it and probably did.  Categories of creature.

Gayan – Native to Gaya, or naturalized there.

Divinity – In game terms, these are creatures that can do things that transcend game rules.  The weakest are magic animals, who usually have one abnormal reality-breaking power, like performing a great labors in moments, but only when nobody is watching, or telling absurd lies that can somehow fool anyone.  The most common are nymphs and demigods, who can on rare occasion perform heroic feats that defy reason.  Intermediate are legions, and the most powerful are gods themselves.  Divinities can come from any realm in the spirit worlds or from Gaya.

Spirit – All creatures not of Gaya.  Some creatures whose ancestry is not Gayan, but who have descended from generations of Gayan residents, can replace this type with the Gayan type.

Spirit Realm Types – Abyssal, Astral, Celestial, Demonic, Elemental, Fire, Water, Air, Earth, and Wild.

Animal Types – Animal is a type (for animals not of the races), and all animals, including those who are members of the intelligent races, have animal types.  These aren’t necessarily natural clades, can be polyphyletic or just make no sense beyond folk sense.  Amphibian, Bird, Bug, Dragon, Fish, Jelly, Mammal, Mollusc, Reptile, and Worm are the broadest types, and there are dozens that are slightly more narrow.  Some notable types include Ape, Serpent, Rodent, Swine, Dog, Cat, Cattle, Frog, Spider, Fly, Raptor, and Fowl.  There are creatures with less grand places in the imagination of intelligent races, which therefore lack a narrower type, like raccoons, skunks, and kinkajous.  Creatures that blend features of more than one animal type have both animal types.  Simply being a biped with opposable digits isn’t considered a type here, as that is quite varied.  The average person doesn’t recognize the kinship of humans and monkeys, and the most monkey-like races imagine themselves the true heirs to the title, so no over-arching term unites them.

Plant – Not all ancestrally photosynthetic organisms are sessile in Gaya, but those that get around are uncommon enough they are lumped by animal types into one perhaps overly inclusive type.  This type even includes non-photosynthetic fungus, because the beliefs of the masses are what form conceptual threads.

Race Types – Elf, Dwarf, Human, Gnome, Ogre, Lamia, Koneira, Crowten, Nymph, Centaur, etc etc…

Host Types – Faerie, Lycanthrope, Giant, Vice Elemental … I don’t have as many ideas for these as I’d prefer.  Maybe Furry?  For all the obligatory animal people.  Maybe Undead should be here.

Legion Types – Seelie Court, Unseelie Court, Angel, Devil, Oneiroi, etc.

Animated – Normally inanimate matter, made life.  Rudewood golems don’t count because the carved wood in them is still alive in some respect, and so they have the Plant type.

Types I’m Not Using from D&D – No Alignments.  I’m not even a partisan on that hoary debate, and kinda like D&D’s alignment system, for that game.  Feels more interesting to not have it in this one, personally.  I don’t see myself making Aberrations or Oozes, or not enough to where there’d be need of a type.  Mind flayers and beholders are the most iconic of those and they’re not included in the open game license, plus I’m just not that into them, or most other things that would be classified this way.

Physical Properties – Amorphous, Immortal, Intangible, Flying, Aquatic, Undifferentiated (lacking weak spots such as organs), etc.

Magical Properties – Enchanted, Cursed, Blessed, Transformed, etc.

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How do I use this guff?  Probably in a different post.  Before I move on tho, I wanna contemplate that notion I had of trying to make it all feel like it hangs together, like it’s unified conceptually.  I want to include a huge amount of playable races because players like to have that selection.  Ditto classes, later in my process.  But what kind of world has that many intelligent species hobnobbing?  A physically large one?  Henry Darger had a sci-fi setting with a world massively larger than Earth in geographical size and population, but subject to an encyclopedic variety of horrible weather phenomena that could kill millions at a time.  Kinda fun to see what people come up with when unfettered from expectations of physical feasibility.  I don’t feel that liberated at the moment.

Just deciding in advance I’m gonna go X far and no farther, that’ll help keep it from feeling like a whack-ass pile of random.  Be nice to have a bit more drilled down…  I should decide on animals and such as well.

I like the idea of racial diversity not being all orientalist or awkward.  Had an idea this world has a mega-continent like Pangaea, so everyone is together, but there’s a massive sea in the middle that somehow isn’t pulling a messinian salinity crisis on us.  Peoples from one area grade into each other culturally and physically, with people to the south having dark skin and curly hair, people to the west going pink for lack of melanin, people to the north olive skinned with eyes that get more epicanthic fold and hair that gets generally straighter to the east.  This applies to elves, dwarves, humans, etc, so we aren’t saddled with excuses for being racist about what they’re allowed to look like.  Locations can vary – a random enclave of unusual-looking people here or there – and with world travel possible, anybody of any color could reasonably show up anywhere.

The IRL disadvantages of the global south are too depressing.  Gotta wakanda this shit out at least a bit.  There are high- and low- tech places all over, the low-tech compensating with more powerful magic or other advantages.  There should still be injustice enough to motivate heroism, but I think, for me, the pattern of it should be less obviously tied to specific races and cultures being globally dominant or oppressed.  Thematically we could have technologically advanced kingdoms trying to oppress their neighbors or fight each other for territory, and getting beaten back by heroes.  But the techno-kingdoms could be run by black people oppressing black people, the barbarians could be white people being oppressed by white people.

This world structure carries implications for flora and fauna as well.  Aquatic life in the big sea could be long separated from out in the big ocean, and very very different.  With few barriers to overland travel, there wouldn’t be as many isolated ecological regions with suites of unusual animals.  Like no Australias or Madagascars.  Sorry kangaroos.  Unless I want everywhere to have kangaroos.  The continents pushing and pulling apart and pushing back together again can result in clades of animals coming together that would not have evolved together, without the entirety of one area’s unique beasts wiped out, necessarily.  South America was raided in a way that caused lots of cool interesting beasts to draw the big ace, but they still have lots of distinctive characters, like caviomorph rodents, maned wolves, weird marsupials, cool monkeys…

I don’t want to dream up the paleobiogeography of this motherfuckin’ globe.  I’m not quite that species of nerd.  Close, but not all the way there.  So I’ll just pick the animals I wanna see.  Let’s see…

Next post!

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