Thought I'd talk 'bout magic an' fantasy an' whatnot. Now (cue Europe-y techno music) ve go!
OK so I lied.
- Speaking of MLP:FIM, the dragons puzzled me in that. They eat gems, but they plainly have the adaptations of predators: claws, predatory therapod teeth, spines, etc. But, no, actually, I think it makes sense. Basically their "predatory" adaptations are either for digging for gems, or for frightening other dragons away from their territory. The phrase "claim-jumping" indicates, I think, the territoriality that minerals can inspire.
Also, D&D dragons often subsist on gems. - I don't know if I've mentioned it, but some time I'm gonna do a fantasy setting that, rather than being based on Europe, is based on a combination of "equivalent" European and Asian nations. E.g. England=Japan, Korea=France—I know I've mentioned the similarities (Hideyoshi's Korean campaign is like the Hundred Years' War, for instance), but it wasn't in the context of fantasy.
But one thing I thought would be cool is that the warrior aristocracy of that island nation could be replaced with a mage aristocracy (I like those). And they wear two wands, one longer than the other, through their belts. And I guess the ladies of that class wear one really short wand, and carry a staff, like how samurai women wore daggers and wielded naginata. - In the fantasy story I'm actually doing, the only magical beasties I've had have been elves, trolls, dwarves, goblins, dragons, and unicorns, albeit in a highly unusual form (they used to be the gods of the humans' religion). I've had others, such as a minotaur, but those were all fundamentally human in origin, the products of deranged magical experiments (the civilization that formed around the fairy-worshiping religion pretty much let you do whatever you liked to slaves, much like the Classical pagan civilization).
For the next book I've thought of a couple others. More interesting experiments—mainly weapon-people, sorta like in Soul Eater—and also, another type of fairy. All mine before have been elementalists, but what about fairies who use animals for their power? Basically, barghests (which are were-dog goblins, as I trust you knew). - Not actually fantasy but it involves cavalry and ancient epic so I'll allow it, I realized, I don't need my felinoids' raiding to be into others' hunting territory (rather than for cattle like the raids that are so important in Indo-European cultures). I can just have them raiding for steeds—they ride these big Cape Hunting Dog type critters, and horse-thieving would play a similar role to cattle-raids.
Back to fantasy, I have a D&D setting where the elves ride dire wolves, the dwarves ride mountain sheep, and the goblinoids ride boars. That last, of course, is inspired by Twilight Princess (still my favorite Zelda). Actually I think the first one is sorta TwiPri-y, too, though Midna ain't an elf. Not till the end, anyway. - Was I the only one who thought the wolf-riders in Warcraft: Orcs and Humans were way cooler than the stupid ogres in Warcraft II? I'm glad they brought 'em back for III.
Also, before anyone asks: no, there's no relation between my wolf-riding elves and ElfQuest. How shall I prove it? How about, "ElfQuest invalidates the First Amendment and makes a damn good case for censorship, book-burning, and probably eugenics"?
Is that still too subtle? I really don't like that series, is what I'm getting at. - Speaking of Warcraft III, I think a big portion of how I envisioned my fantasy story's elves was influenced by the Night Elves, who are frankly one of the coolest takes on elves I ever saw—basically wild elves crossed with drow, only huge.
But I need to re-do my elves' color scheme, since I created them when their blood was still red. Now their blood is yellow, or rather gold-colored—it's ichor, as I have mentioned. In the real sense of the word, not "ill-considered synonym for blood", and LeGuin can shove her "infallible touchstone" up her wizened ass.
I guess one of my two elf-races is gonna be green now. Back when they still had red blood they were purple, like night elves (blue pigment + red blood=purple skin, just like you learned from finger-painting). - Not-fantasy I allow through on a technicality, again, my felinoids' steeds, being pack hunters rather than grazers, are a bit slower to establish territories, so horse-nomadism doesn't work. Considering what horse-nomads tend to be like, that's a fortunate thing for their history.
Tolkiens' Wargs are actually werewolves, so it makes sense they work with Orcs (who are in many ways based on some of the nastier horse-nomads, like Turks and Mongols). But other people's orc wolf-steeds are usually just (big) wolves, and so it makes no sense for their orcs to be able to do nomadism. Then again, they're only ripping off that version of orcs from Tolkien, since everywhere else they're just a type of ogre (didja know "huerco" is some Spanish dialects' equivalent of "ogrillo"?). - It occurs to me there is a way to have half-orcs that isn't yucky, and it's actually the one with the oldest pedigree. You get your half-orcs the same way Saruman did: magical experiments. "Some mage was meddling in the gods' domain" is the standard D&D answer for wackiness like owlbears, why not this hybrid, too? Evil wizards get up to a lot of mischief in most settings, and they're among the few people who have a use for orcs.
'Course, again, orcs actually are to ogres what goblins are to hobgoblins, and the stats of the "half-orc" can also go for a hobgoblin-human hybrid. This solution—AWizardDidIt, actually justified—also lets you have half-ogres and similar ill-advised, if not outright anatomically impossible, crossbreeds. - It suddenly occurs to me that my fairies' basing their factions on their differing interpretations of Existence, is quite appropriate. Why? Well, the collective Old Norse term for elves, dwarves, trolls, etc., was vaettir, or "beings"—cognate with "wight". It shares roots with "was" and "were", and, I do believe, with "be".
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