Forest of Ceylis

No, seriously. We should have a list of what products they create, what foods they grow, if we have any artisans, and if so, what do they make? To me it is rather important as a plot creation mechanic if we know what we have and don't have. Structural wise and products wise. I don't imagine we have everything or make everything.

Here is what I propose: We hold a discussion here about what Ceylis has and does not have, as well as topics that are important to you. It's important we do this as a group because if say one person decided everything and forgot instruments, we wouldn't have a lute crafter. I believe it is also important to decide on NPCs of note, something like Jorani the shopkeeper or something. This way we have a more structured continuity.

Hopefully, if this topic goes over well we can have another topic put up and pinned as reference for future RP. It's also important to note that buildings in Ceylis currently need to fit in with the lore of Ceylis (Example: No giant metal towers) and even so, adding anything in that won't fall into that might make the villagers slightly weary.

So, in short, the topics I propose for discussion are:

Crops, What is being grown? What's the situation on them? Are we good on food? Do we have a good variety? How big are the farmlands?
Buildings/Structures, What do we have? Do we have a water reservoir? Do we have a bell tower? What defenses do we have? What's in place if x goes wrong?
Products, What's being crafted and in how much of a quantity? Do we have someone (or several) who manage this? Are there guilds? Artisans? Do we trade with other towns? If we do, do we depend on the trade for any objects in particular?
NPCs, Less of what, but Who. Who is all in Ceylis (And not 'played' by anyone)? Is Ceylis filled with only Player Characters? How big of a place is Ceylis? How populated?
Positions, Kind of in the same category as NPCs, but more hierarchy based. Who is the leader? (Cey, I think.) If we have guilds, who are the leaders? Do we have Diplomats? Do we have a mayor? (Different from leader, less nation oriented and more personal.) What positions are there, and which are filled, and by whom?

Hopefully this is good to get us started. Fuzzy logic and abstraction of these can be good at times, but for longer term RPs in a specific place, I think we should treat Ceylis more like a character and give it some more depth. I am not trying to haul everything over and say we should rethink Ceylis, instead I think we should add to it.

I think Ceylis is a great place, but, creating any 'in-depth' rps may require more in depth as to what we have. I'm not expecting it to be hyper-realistic with someone sitting down and doing all the calculations, but it would be nice, I think.

Any Controversy? Do you not like what I suggest? Do you want to add Topics? Comment on topics? Maybe you want to discuss what's been brought up. Maybe something else.

Also, I would like this to be more discussion/debate than argue. I know we usually don't argue, but, just in case your fire is lit, please try to put it out before someone gets burned.

(P.S.: I'm back after my super long hiatus from the forums! I'll try to be more active from here on out!)

Ok, I'll put here all I thought of until now. It may conflict with something in previous lores, but hopefully not by more than a little detail or two.

Here's the map I created a while ago.
imgur.com/mcNoEbn.jpg


I'll start with the 9-tailed foxes:

9-tailed foxes control all elements and have vast knowledge of most spells, but that doesn't necessarily include heritage related magic. That means, very specific kinds of magic that only one or a small group of individuals (not just foxes) can cast.
An example is the Bloodline magic some of the Moonpack foxes could use; it dealt with modifying physical and mystical capabilities of individuals by altering their blood (kind of messing with DNA).

There are four 9-tailed magefoxes, and I'm hoping no one really wants to add more (xD).

Cey (or Ceylis) is the water-element, that despite being a powerful mage with all other elements, can do godly stuff with water-related spells and sub-elements. That means she has ridiculous control over water, ice, nature (plants and animals), shapeshifting, healing and other things I may have forgotten.

Kel (or Kelris) is the earth-element. He created the Kelestrian Plateau and was responsible for the whole Zyfrian arc of our story. He now lives in the Kelestrian Marshes, that were part of Ceylis Forest, but Cey kindly let him turn into his own place. Frustrated with his biggest creation (Kelestria) turning into a nightmare, he became bitter and kind of evil, so he started twisting whatever he found in the marshes and watching creatures suffer. He's still absurdly powerful, but he knows Cey is too, so he doesn't charge into the forest just as she doesn't charge into the marshes.

About the Kelestrian Arc:

The Plateau wasn't inhabited by anthros then, and the Kelestrian foxes were just very, very, VERY, adaptive. They weren't magefoxes, but when the Anthros moved into the plateau and started performing their magic experiments there, that influenced the foxes and they started learning that magic. The anthros removed them, and they started living in the Forest of Zyfria, a very magic-heavy forest place. That made the former Kelestrian foxes become Zyfrian foxes in a few generations. They started raiding Kelestria (now they used Anthro concepts and called that a city) and started a war against the Anthros. The anthros won, but they paid a huge cost for corrupting magic so much. They tried to use a magefox and imbue it with high-technological magic, and ended up creating the Omega.

The Omega Project failed horribly, and the corrupt magic started twisting everything mana imbued it could graps, evolving into the Kelestrian Plague. Even with the Omega contained, the Anthros couldn't fight his power back, and most of them went crazy, were killed by their magical machines, or fled. Kelestria became a ghost place, even though it still contained many useful materials and magical secrets. Zyfrian magefoxes kept collecting artifacts here and there, in hopes of finding something to stop the plague, but it finally hit Zyfria.

Desperate to end that, a small party collected secret fragments of a lost spell, that was used to awaken an old member of the Starpack. This one, named Vector, was a 7-tailed, and he teamed up with a certain 7-tailed protagonist and they went into Kelestria in hopes of defeating the Omega. Since no one managed to approach that place after the plague started eating the Forest of Zyfria, no one know if they succeeded or not. Probably not, because the plague spread through Zyfria like fire. Nowadays, Zyfria was completely corrupted and the magefoxes who lived there fled through the desert. The plague can't cross the desert, as there's no magic there for it to feed on. The northern forests were getting consumed more slowly, but no one knows if it spread all the way to the west coast.

So we can know, it didn't, as a goddess lives in the Great Western Forest, and her power is big enough to prevent the plague from entering her lands. This goddess is not a magefox... her name is Rimboe and she uses a cervine anthro form (we keep hands away from this character, it's already owned xD At least for now).

Back to the 9-tailed foxes:
Zyf (Zyfer) is the fire-element magefox. He doesn't have a place of his own. As you probably guessed by name, he created Zyfria, but he didn't stop there. He creates magical lands, just like Ceylis or Kelestria, but he does that as a form of art. He just spills a bunch of magic in there and see what comes out, then leaves and proceeds to another place to "paint another masterpiece". He puts a lot of passion into his creations, but he gets bored of them just as easily, so he gives zero fucks about Zyfria.

Ula (Ulara) is the wind-element magefox. She was never seen in any regions the magefoxes ever lived, so they know nothing about her. Actually, they're not even sure if she exists. Kel and Cey know she does, but they never talk about her or Zyf (because they don't know what they're doing now and where they are). Ula doesn't have a love for creating things, but she values freedom a lot. Rumors say she's a winged magefox and lives in the sky. That's partially correct... she IS a winged magefox and soars most of the time, but she can't live in the sky, obviously. However, Zyf and Ula are now together (but no one knows it) and they're building some sort of city in the sky, just above the Forbidden Ridge. We could use that someday for a plot, but I'm hoping it's not right now. Also, they might have gotten kits, but no one can know for sure.


Other things:

Looking at the map, we can see the Mirror Desert. It's named like that because it's highly magic repellent. This is where some of the Kelestrian foxes started to live. They turned into Mirrors, which are foxes with no magic, but instead are amazing shapeshifters. They live in the cannyons, where they manage to hunt sparse food, find a couple of small water bodies and where they can have their homes safe from the sun.

While other foxes were living in Zyfria, believing the most powerful foxes could only have 7 tails, a fire-element named Cinder walked into the desert, hoping the place's hostility to magic would help him develop his magic even further. He was a 7-tailed and an old one. He decided to try getting an 8th tail instead of waiting to die. He managed to become an 8-tailed magefox just in time and fled to Ceylis with a renewed lifespan. He's different from other 7 and 8 tailed foxes, as he only uses one element: fire. He does amazing things with that element though, even freezing things (by moving thermic energy off of things), wind spells (by controlling pressure with hot and cold air zones), and water (by reducing temperature of the air and using its humidity).


About the Moonpack Lands we see in the map:

Asuza was the leader of their pack, and was a 7-tailed magefox, with psionic and mind spells. Even if the Bloodline magic was used in there, she had none of it.

There were two factions inside the Moonpack, the females and the bloodline witches (also females). The males were simply stripped of of their magical powers by the bloodline witches, and kept as a lowly caste. The leader of the bloodline witches was Sanguine, a 7-tailed fox. She was a prodigy and much younger than the previous leader of the witches (which was Mother Orenda). She tolerated the cruel things they were doing in the pack for a while, but never accepted it.

One special kit was born in the Moonpack, named Rayne. His blood glowed, and the witches quickly wanted to remove whatever power he might have. Sanguine persuaded Asuza to hide him, so he wouldn't be violated; she felt there was something about his powers and didn't want to use bloodline magic on him. Asuza did that and they kept Rayne as a secret, and spread word that he died in the ritual. Coincidently, Rayne was discovered just as the plague was nearing the Moonpack lands. The witches opposed Asuza for fooling them, and all of Asuza's attempts to remove her people to flee from the plague was interpreted as attempts to further mess with the witches matters.

At the same time, Sanguine moved quickly and made a huge ritual that hit the entire Moonpack lands. She used her bloodline in a larger scale and stripped all Moonpack members of all their powers, turning all of them into common foxes without powers - including herself. She believed that was the only way to pay for their sins, and despite it being a stupid solution, that's what she did. The ritual pratically invited the plague, which hit the Moonpack lands HARD. Asuza managed to get away from the center of the ritual, but was still impacted considerably, and ended up turning into a 3-tailed, losing most of her powers (and being the only case of a magefox who lost tails and still lived).


About Cey Lands: Northern Forest

The Northern Cey Forest is where our characters and all other Zyfrian survivors live now. They crossed the desert, found the forest and started living there. The occurrance of magefoxes there is still rare, but there are some natives.

That's where the House of Clarity is. I'll paste what I wrote about it so far:

I have these characters listed and described, but they're not too important. I've been playing some rps with Lute and they were part of it, but they're not main characters. Clarity is important, but not as a PC.


About the South: Southern Tundra

That area is mostly inhabitted by wolves. They have no magic (even though they COULD learn it if they decided to become wizards). I wrote something about this place too, and it's written in a character's story.


About the Kelestrian Marshes:

I wrote about one important character here only, other than Kel himself.

This isn't much, but I figured I would be able to use that and turn it into something bigger one day.

Now, about Kel's doings...


Finally, the Heart of Cey:

That's where I imagine as the place with huge magefox population. They might even have trails connecting the locations (not roads!), the villages, temples... I'll talk more about it below, but I wrote already about two factions in there..


NOW, About the other things Nan pointed out...

As I see, they organize in packs, in villages. They don't build things with the same materials the anthros do, but they build things out of wood, leaves, vines, rocks... so they have huts, small and large, their dens may have shelves here and there, but no beds, no pillows, no fridge, no fans, no cars, no glass, no metal tools. No bell towers in my opinion, no fortifications (but they could be built out of wood) as magic goes through that quite easily. Definitely no giant metal towers. Water reservoir might be used here and there, but the villages are probably build close to water bodies, so I don't think it would be needed, though it would bring some comfort.

They may create adornments with natural materials, and the most advanced thing they produce is cloth, but there is a bit of magic involved in cloth production, so clothes aren't something the magefoxes use a lot.

Artisans, magefoxes or other species, will usually only make wooden pieces, like staves, small statues, simple wooden tools and maybe weapons. I don't think an animal other than an ape would be able to use things like complex weapons, like bows and arrows... biting is far more useful than trying to manipulate a knife, or a sword. Staves are mostly used as spell focuses.

What they grow... well, they might be able to grow fruits and other vegetables, but they don't eat that, so they will just hunt. Rabbits, cervines and herbivore species may have more successful plantations, but it's probably not enough for large populations to survive on... they still get food from nature. The forest lands aren't too good to grow stuff, but we still ARE good on food.

Unfortunately (but I'm not deciding this alone) I don't think they use musical instruments, that's too complex. But maybe drums and other simple things... not flutes, pianos, violins, accordions...

About commerce, I'm sure it happens, but with the things they would need, mostly magic related items, as material components, herbs, spell focuses (such as charms, staves, wands..). There aren't books in Cey... knowledge is told and they organize huge reunions from time to time where they share what they learned, what they created, what they build, new spells, and so on. No technology at all.

Guilds? Yes! But the guilds are more of a way to separate jobs I think. You don't get paid for a general job, such as the Wind Watchers, but you might get paid for doing particular jobs (like bringing something to someone, teaching them magic). Payments aren't in gold or money, but food, and goods.

Speaking of food, I guess there may be some level of cooking, especially for vegetarians, but it's probably considered exotic and too formal.

TL;DR version:

9tailed foxes are water(cey), fire(zyf), earth(kel) and ula(wind).

Zyf likes Ula and they make secret magics in the sky.
Cey has nice forest.
Kel is a bad boy and likes to spoil other people's stuffs.

History of Kelestra/Zyfria.

Kelestra went wrong, Starkits are dead, Moonpack people are dead. Other Zyfrian people fled to Cey.

In Cey there are vampires created by Kel, a strategist wolf, a clean-freak fox, a guild of people who disable tornadoes and some druids.

Kel lives in the Kelestrian Marshes, and there's a fox making an army there.

---

Nan's answers:

NO: technology, towers, metals, bells, instruments, books. Big cities, structures, weapons.
YES: small plantations, wooden utensils, commerce of small objects and some mats. Villages, dens, caves. Told knowledge.

So, now that we have confirmed that Ceylis is less a village named after the nation (i.e. New York, New York.) but rather an unnamed village/town, I will shift the direction to there.

What do we have, then? What do we produce? What positions do we have, whatnot, so on and so forth!

Also, we seemingly have no name for our group nor our land, we should remedy this! We also should make a chart of what objects [name] produces or if nothing else, what workshops we have, what plants we grow, and what structures we have!

tl;dr: I was a fool and thought Cey was the town we lived in!