Some Say That An Invisible Red String Is Tied Around The Fingers Of Soulmates Meant To Be Together Forever.

First Line Prompt #5

A “THE END IS HERE” sign hangs around the neck of a zombie that limps through the view of the scope on their rifle.

Small fantasy worldbuilding elements you might want to think about:

A currency that isn’t gold-standard/having gold be as valuable as tin

A currency that runs entirely on a perishable resource, like cocoa beans

A clock that isn’t 24-hours

More or less than four seasons/seasons other than the ones we know

Fantastical weather patterns like irregular cloud formations, iridescent rain

Multiple moons/no moon

Planetary rings

A northern lights effect, but near the equator

Roads that aren’t brown or grey/black, like San Juan’s blue bricks

Jewelry beyond precious gems and metals

Marriage signifiers other than wedding bands

The husband taking the wife's name / newlyweds inventing a new surname upon marriage

No concept of virginity or bastardry

More than 2 genders/no concept of gender

Monotheism, but not creationism

Gods that don’t look like people

Domesticated pets that aren’t re-skinned dogs and cats

Some normalized supernatural element that has nothing to do with the plot

Magical communication that isn’t Fantasy Zoom

“Books” that aren’t bound or scrolls

A nonverbal means of communicating, like sign language

A race of people who are obligate carnivores/ vegetarians/ vegans/ pescatarians (not religious, biological imperative)

I’ve done about half of these myself in one WIP or another and a little detail here or there goes a long way in reminding the audience that this isn’t Kansas anymore.

Basic overlooked worldbuilding questions

Whether you are writing a futuristic dystopia or a cloud city of dragons, you need to figure out how people get basic supplies. These are often the most overlooked worldbuilding questions since it’s more fun to think about how cultures honor the dead or where the mountain ranges are, but answers are necessary to create a complete world.

-Where does the water come from and how is it distributed?

-Who makes the food?

-Who transports and distributes the food?

-If your world has modern utilities, are they widespread or only for the rich? For that matter, do utilities have to be modified to work in your world (for example, electric lines with anti-magic coating)?

-What happens to trash?

-What happens to sewage? 

-What building materials are available?

-What do people do when they get sick?

-What do people do in the case of a natural disaster?

-What do people do in the case of a fire?

-How are large objects moved?

-How are items that take skilled labor to make created and distributed?

Remember, the answers might be different for people at different economic levels.

You are the child of Death. Everyone always assumes that you were adopted, but you are in fact Death's biological child, although they are unwilling to tell how exactly this happened.

Theres a wandering immortal who has been planting flowers and trees after the fall of Humanity..700 years later the remaining survivors wake up from cryosleep to a foreign, yet breath taking earth.

Witch House

Glass teapot with floral scented tea, with three glass teacups

Mismatched floral teacups, some half full of tea

Rain spattered windowpanes

Candles placed haphazardly around a cluttered space

Bird skulls neatly arranged by size on a dark wooden shelf

Immense books with well-thumbed pages with cracked leather covers and several silk bookmarks filling a bookshelf

Small green shoots sprouting from glass jars and bottles, budding

The scent of herbs drying as the hang from the ceiling

Tiny bottles and flasks labeled absinthe in elaborate but unsteady handwriting

Minutely detailed renderings of human anatomy plastered to one wall

Dusty and faded lace curtains tied back with a length of ribbon

A closet that presents outfits depending on your mood

The scent of wood smoke and wax

Books laying half open and scattered across the room

A worn oval rug that retains its bright colors

Crystals clustered on a desk, some rough, some polished Note: This is not meant to be dismissive of pagan culture or modern magic practitioners! Please feel free to let me know if there’s a way I can be more respectful!

Happy Birthday @hannahhook7744!!

Since I have no creative bones in my body, for your present, I just made moodboards for my favorites of your fics and original works. (putting them under the cut)

The Marvelous Misadventures of Hannah Hook

The Badun Detective Agency

The Invisible Truth

A Twist in their Tales

The Lost Children

The Deadly Game of Life (Year 1)

As chair of the wizard- [PARRIES A SPELL] As chair of the wizard counc- [PARRIES A DIFFERENT SPELL] As chair of the wizard council, I- [PARRIES A DIFFERENT SPELL] As chair of the wizard council I think staffs should be illegal during these meetings.

I'm a big fan of wizards-as-programmers, but I think it's so much better when you lean into programming tropes.

A spell the wizard uses to light the group's campfire has an error somewhere in its depths, and sometimes it doesn't work at all. The wizard spends a lot of his time trying to track down the exact conditions that cause the failure.

The wizard is attempting to create a new spell that marries two older spells together, but while they were both written within the context of Zephyrus the Starweaver's foundational work, they each used a slightly different version, and untangling the collisions make a short project take months of work.

The wizard has grown too comfortable reusing old spells, and in particular, his teleportation spell keeps finding its components rearranged and remixed, its parts copied into a dozen different places in the spellbook. This is overall not actually a problem per se, but the party's rogue grows a bit concerned when the wizard's "drying spell" seems to just be a special case of teleportation where you teleport five feet to the left and leave the wetness behind.

A wizard is constantly fiddling with his spells, making minor tweaks and changes, getting them easier to cast, with better effects, adding bells and whistles. The "shelter for the night" spell includes a tea kettle that brings itself to a boil at dawn, which the wizard is inordinately pleased with. He reports on efficiency improvements to the indifference of anyone listening.

A different wizard immediately forgets all details of his spells after he's written them. He could not begin to tell you how any of it works, at least not without sitting down for a few hours or days to figure out how he set things up. The point is that it works, and once it does, the wizard can safely stop thinking about it.

Wizards enjoy each other's company, but you must be circumspect about spellwork. Having another wizard look through your spellbook makes you aware of every minor flaw, and you might not be able to answer questions about why a spell was written in a certain way, if you remember at all.

Wizards all have their own preferences as far as which scripts they write in, the formatting of their spellbook, its dimensions and material quality, and of course which famous wizards they've taken the most foundational knowledge from. The enlightened view is that all approaches have their strengths and weaknesses, but this has never stopped anyone from getting into a protracted argument.

Sometimes a wizard will sit down with an ancient tome attempting to find answers to a complicated problem, and finally find someone from across time who was trying to do the same thing, only for the final note to be "nevermind, fixed it".

When inventing a fantasy religion a lot of people a) make the mistake of assuming that everyone in fantasy world would worship the same gods and b) assume that polytheistic religions see all of their gods as morally good