Wishing Fantasies

[Tarsier]

Might as well add my entry, being basically lazy I'm just pasting the description I used in the RPG game that it was home too

The Land of the Crystal Sun


Centuries ago, The most powerful wizards of the land of Danane created the Crystal Towers as a portal to other worlds. From the towers, explorers travel to other worlds and realities. Eventually, they found Paradox. A realm in which the universal constants were always changing. When a portal is open, the Crystal Towers exist in both worlds simultaneously. So the towers were in the realm of Paradox, when it's laws changed.

The interaction between the changing universe and the towers was disastrous. The power of the Crystal Towers was magnified and released uncontrolled; sending Danane's World into an empty pocket dimension. Without a sun, the world began to freeze. The wizards managed to control the massively increased power of the Crystal Towers and used most of it to create the Crystal Sun. An artificial star that orbits the planet now.

With the Crystal Sun orbiting; the planet was spared, but fear prevents the wizards of the towers from using the Crystal Towers to search for new worlds. Now, they will only open portals to worlds they know are safe.

[Svenson]

sending Danane's World into an empty pocket dimension.

So that's where that stuff on my bank account came from ...
empty pocket dimension indeed ^_^


Is everyone here a SF/F writer?

[Ryunaker]

Not me--I don't have enough imagination.

[Tarsier]

Not me--I don't have enough imagination.

pfftt, like you need lots of imagination. you can make to with logic and random chance most of the time.

lets try an experiment. pick a word at random from the dictionary. enter it into a search engine and see what comes back

I got incomparable, for the word and from the results I liked

Complete Folk of the Wood Policies
... In consideration that Folk of the Wood offers incomparable policies, such as a 100%
trade-up policy and a Lifetime Warranty on every new instrument purchased ...
http://www.folkofthewood.com/page443.htm - 50k - Cached - Similar pages

OK it's probably a furniture store or something. but the Folk of the Wood seemed promising to work with.

next would be to decide who the folk of the wood are for that I'd go to my real life and see what i like that deals with wood. Would it be faeries in the trees (for the Fantasy fans), aliens that grow living space ships (for the Sci Fans )or as I would pick from a hobby of my own, wood workers. of course would works seem kinda tame for the basis of a world. so what if they were a guild that made magic wands and staves (or perhaps the makes of seige engines). which brings use to policies from the original search. what would the policies for such a guild be. what do they encourage what do they discourage. what would a typical member be like. where would you find them? why would you want too? answering these questions with reason as much as imagination can lead to an nice element to add to any world. what other question should be asked?

so how much imagination did you need? poke finger in dictionary, enter result in search engine. want play with the results. or tell me more about the Folk of the Wood in your world. You'll probably be surprised by how much imagination you actually have. (BTW not joking, I'd like to see what else comes up if folks try this. So please humor the starnge old guy )

[Jika]

Danane sounds like a pretty interesting place Tarsier! I like the way the towers appear in both worlds, very logical for universal travel. Of course, maybe not the safest.


The way my gate works is to link up with any existing gateways that already belong to that world, although, it might have some trouble with things like the crystal towers. In any world that doesn't have it's own gateway, a temporary portal is created for entry and exit.

That random search thing sounds interesting.

[Svenson]

The randon search thing reminds me of the way one of my teachers used to think up titles for essays. That was long before the internet - really, mid seventies (oeps, just showed my age *blush*) so no context search really.
He used to pick up a dictionary, open it randomly, pick a word, close the book and repeat that. Then he made up, on the spot, a sentence with both words in it. Anbd we, poor uns, had to write a two or four page story with that title.
And, you know, I was almost the only one who actually liked it. Yep, weird me ^_^.

[Jaeren]

I do something similar to the random search when I'm trying to brainstorm. The only real difference is that since I'm more of a visual learner, I tend to work with pictures or mental images instead of words. I try to get a pretty good mental image of what I want the end result to look like and then start thinking of other things I've seen that are similar, and then from that batch of images I think of things that are similar to them and kinda start working my outwards.

Once I have several pictures to work from, I start trying to see what various combination would look like which ofcourse leads to more ideas and the whole things kinda starts to snowball.

[Jika]

Random searches are a good way of getting new ideas, but sometimes I like to put a lot of meaning into my names.

For instance, I've just recently named the dragon I use for my avatar. His name now is Methyl, named after the flammable liquid methyl alcohol or methanol. I like to add that bit of meaning to names sometimes. (of course, sometimes I'm completely random...)

[Svenson]

...sending Danane's World into an empty pocket dimension. ...

wow,.
in the last errant-story (http://www.errantstory.com/d/20030115.html) Meji also uses a pocket-dimention. (and it looks might handy at that)

It may be just a coincidence but ...
... yea, we all know that coincidence doesn't really exisits.

[Drathorin]

Yep Yep =D

[Jika]

There are many types of coincidences, ranging from the mildly quirky to the down right questionable.


Hey, while I'm here, can anyone help me give a good name to the rain-drenched forest I described earlier? It needs a really nice sounding name, but I can't think of anything...

[Drathorin]

Hmmm. . .how about Raiest? Rain as in rain , and est from forest?

[Tarsier]

Hmmm. . .how about Raiest? Rain as in rain , and est from forest?

Other then

silva pluvialis
or
silva imbrium

Both of which seem to translate from Latin as Forest of Rain

You could try the same thing for other languages, and see if anything seems good to you

Oh and I think the next peron to post on this thread will make it the first hundred post thread in the forum. You should be proud Drath

[Drathorin]

What? O.o; First 100 post thread? *Ahem* Well I'd like to thank Kevin for his wacky hijinks, Mari for the comic in the first place and being there. All of you forum people for just being who you are and liking things like this. Though I might not be around very long as mom and dad are deciding to cancel the internet. I wish you all luck and good reading of TWOC.

[Jika]

Well, because of the forum bug, post no. 100 was back when Tarsier told us about Danane, so yours was no 113. ^_^

Those are some nifty sounding names. I was thinking about using Klima Forest for the name (klima is latin for climate, I think...), but those names I might use instead/in addition.

Here's a character I need named, all I can think of is his surname is Winter:

The wind was howling outside the frost covered windows, battering the damp stricken walls and stone foundations of the manor, as an old man sat at a desk in the middle of an almost bare room. He paused and put down his quill and looked up with a slight annoyance.
"Fredricks? Fredricks, get in here!" hailed the man, cold and brisk as the sleet and snow outside.
"Yes sire?" asked a middle-aged man as he entered, his shoes echoing on the hard wooden floor.
"Don't call me that." he replied.
"Yes Mr Winter." Said the butler, slightly hesitant at the silence. "What do you need requested?" He tried hard not to walk quietly away. The man continued writing.
"Get me the key Fredricks." said the man without looking up.
"The key, Mr Winter?" he asked, not knowing what his master might be saying.
"To the keep!" he shouted, making the butler jump.
"The keep?" asked the butler, astonished.
"Yes, what do you not understand? Get it now!" shouted the man again. The butler knew when his master wanting him to do instead of ask, after all, the last house servant who didn't was sent away. He turned abrubtly and left in a hurry.
The man behind the desk, after finishing his writing, slowly got out of the chair. He picked up his black coat that hung over the chair and walked for the door, not even glancing at the unused hat on a frost-covered rack. He stoped in the hall to inspect a desk, frowning at the lack of cleaning in the manor. Of course, it is rare to see him not glaring at something. His butler closed the front door as the man swung his coat over his shoulders, a small rusted key already in his pocket. As snow started to fall on his white-streaked hair, he stopped in front of a wall frozen with ice. He pulled out the key and turned it in the lock, and without hesitation pushed at the door, and stepped inside the darkness. And, for the first time in decades, he smiled. It was a dark and cold smile, darker than the keep's unlit darkess and colder than the worst blizzard. His name is Winter...

What do you think? All he needs is a first name, something short and sweet.

[Elevenbane]

How about Tom? Short for Thomas.

[Jika]

I was thinking about Thomas before... I don't know, maybe I need more to choose from.

[Svenson]

What about Chillion. Sounds a bit elvish~uncommon.
And shortened it becomes a ... Chill Winter

[Tarsier]

What about Edlas, Ed for short. but when the full name is pronounced should sound a bit like "endless winter"

[Jika]

The name doesn't have to have much of a meaning (^_^ yes, I know, I said I like hidden meanings, but not this time). All he needs is a really good sounding name, probably just one sylable. It needs to be something that adds to his imposing/unnerving presence. So far I'd have to go with Tom Winter.


Hey, has anyone here every tried an application called The Brain? It's an app that organises its data like the way the human brain does. Each bit of data, called a 'thought', can be linked to one or more other 'thoughts' by three different ways (or 'gateways'). They can be linked as a parent (displayed above the current thought), a child (displayed below), or as a jump (off to the side). It's a really cool way of storing your ideas! I'm using it for the data about my fantasy world. You can get a 30-day trial download at http://www.thebrain.com/. Try it!