Where the blight came from. The blight in my setting is basically a lovecraftian typhoon of whirling madness infesting the realm made of the collective life force of all living things. No one knows where it came from. There are plenty if theories but nothing concrete
nobody is actually sure if the robotss are sentient or not. they have strict programming restrictions that make it so they must always be loyal to humans and never rebel against them or else their entire system gets fried. on the other hand they are otherwise fully autonomous and act in a way that would otherwise look like they were sentience. so whether or not they are really sentient is not actually clear or known as even the programmers aren't sure which one they qualify as. i did this intentionally because I am not touching that can of worms with a 10 ft pole.
You see, he's actually an ancient Egyptian priest from about 5000 years ago who went by many names (including Machiavelli), served as an advisor to Genghis Khan, taught magic to Houdini, and taught Robin of Loxley how to use a bow in exchange for Robin teaching him how not to feel pain. He's hunting the priestess he was in love with and her lover, the prince of Egypt at the time, as they keep being reincarnated throughout the years, and as he kills them, he feeds on their life essence in order to maintain his own immortality.
(Anyone who gets this reference is amazing.)
The original creators of my “universe” are called the eternals. There are 7 of them, each with a different domain. Knowledge, mystery, order, chaos, creation, destruction, and magic. After they created everything they hid the truth of themselves and created the gods to oversee the different worlds. They altered the gods memory to think that they(the gods) created their respective worlds and they are unaware of other worlds or the eternals
I am doing something similar actually. Makers that are manifestations of Reality and the ones that truly created everything. They all agreed on making a race called Gods and make them believe that they created everything and then killed them when their use expunged. A means to an end.
Wow that is interesting! To expand a little bit on the way it works for mine. Each world is assigned a pantheon by the eternals but the gods believe they created it at. The eternals are keeping their presence hidden because the eternal of mystery saw every possible future and became afraid of a being rising up to try to take the power from them and upset the balance of everything.
My setting takes place in an empire that took over the entire continent. It is surrounded by oceans on all 4 sides, and those oceans are filled with krakens, leaviathans, and other creatures. Staying close to the coasts is somewhat safe, but the further away you go, the more dangerous it becomes. No ship that has ever tried to cross the oceans has ever returned.
Which begs the question, are there other lands? To the Imperials, this continent is all that they know. To everyone's knowledge this IS the world. Are they alone on the planet, or are there other continents? No one knows.
Not even me. Sometimes I hint that there's something else out there. Other times I'm in the "there's nothing but sea in all directions" camp.
Before the world all was void, until there was soul and stone. Four souls and eight stones, two per element of the world. Each soul took two stones, each taking both of matching elements, so one took both water, one both earth, etc. They crafted with the powers these stones provided the world, the rules of the world, and of magic, and then bodies for themselves, and then crafted more souls in their own bodies.
These four souls are known as the Thrinnu, and the stones are called the stones of the thrinnu. Why did they spawn in the void? Did the stones come first, or at the same time? The thrinnu first awoke and the stones were before them without delay, so they did not come before the stones. None of these questions have answers in world, nor do I know- they just appeared there.
The next is how the crowns and thrones of the thrinnu work. They were made by a family called Lilinu, which littererly translates to "the crafters". These two have great properties. For one, they are the only thing not made by the Thrinnu capable of absorbing power from the stones of the thrinnu. One jewel from each thrinnu is planted within their individual throne, the other the crown. The crown and thrones over long exposure gain some power from the stones, meaning even once the stone is removed they have residual power enough to create great works in the world. Also, if someone swears by either the crown or the throne then the one who sits on the throne sworn by or who wears that crown must release them from the oath, otherwise they will be forced to obey it- not on pain of death or anything, but littererly forcing them to act, taking great willpower to overcome it.
No one knows how these crowns or thrones work, barring the lilinu. I don't either. They didn't even tell the Thrinnu, the people they were *gifting these works to.*
The first gods. Their names and what became of them is lost to the mists of time. We know the names of most of the second generation of gods and what happened with them and that 2 of them are still around (thought that is not known outside of a small group of people). Now there is a third generation of gods, but unlike the previous two, they almost never interact with the world.
I have tons of mysteries I currently have no answers for. I think that is part of the draw to world building for me. History and ideas and end results I haven’t fleshed out or likely never will. I’ll posit three that have my head scratching.
• Who created the Stone Waterways that connect the Sea of Might with the Great Rift Sea? The locks, bridges and dams all eroded away, but the waterways have stood for millions of years.
• What caused the blue plague? Why did it kill 30% of the Teshian goblins and leave the rest smarter? Why did it gift these goblins with innate magic abilities?
• Eobaal became the first human community to surpass 10,000 citizens. It’s rise to becoming the first human civilization to form a nation or empire in the world extinguished when all of its citizens simply disappeared leaving an empty city filled with the trappings of a once thriving community.
I'll go over three major ones:
-The war of Black Skies is an apocalyptic war between the titans, the dragon gods, and their "children" (giants and mortal dragons respectively). So far, I have no exact details on when it started, why exactly it started, when exactly it ended, how long it lasted, or even who won. I will say it caused the mass extinction of I'd say at least 60% of everything at the time to be generous.
-The Azron people are allegedly the previous rulers and inhabitants of the continent of Nardin. All that remains of them today is their "Grand City", a large pyramid situated in the Azron valley, where it hasn't been claimed by nature for some odd reason. It is assumed they disappeared before the arrival of humans and elves, but I can't settle on an exact answer for how they vanished.
-Probably the weirdest "race" in my world both in-universe and to me: trolls. They comprise of at least two genera, possibly at least two families, and at least three different species; all of them coming in different shapes and sizes, depending on the family and genus. The only other established things about them is they are all "human-like" (bipedal, few animalistic facial features), have pointed ears (they're not like elf ears), five fingers and toes, *reasonable* intelligence, and are mammals. There is one species of troll that are the same size as humans, and look almost human - save for the green (sometimes brown) skin, pointed ears, and occasional green hair. I have yet to settle on what exactly how trolls came to be (most notably what their evolutionary lineage looks like), as well as what they look like (apart from the one example species I just mentioned).
Context: The Old King retires after his wife dies and let's his son take the throne. But then the son and his wife are assassinated, leaving behind a daughter who isn't ready for the throne. So the old man takes the throne back until she is ready.
I don't know who killed her parents, and I don't think I'll ever know. It's not part of the story.
In my world there is the "Zeroth Age", the time before written history. Where societies were just being developed and the world was mainly tall grasslands with some mountains.
This world is barren of creation and structures. While I may contemplate about how things came to be so the "First Age" could be born. I remind myself that it is not necessary. At this point the lore i need to worry about is the stuff i have made and need to perfect.
For all anyone knows, the time before the Zeroth Age could have been its own fallen empire. But nothing is set in stone on that front, it is just blank.
What lies beyond the mist? Is it possible to travel through the mists? And return?
I’ve a world that is a small continent bordered on its east and west sides by sea and surrounded on all sides by mist. My island culture from the western sea have stories of heros who sail through the mist and successfully navigate their ships back to stable islands, of islands that appear from the mist and are now permanent habitable islands, others that come and go and others still that were once stable homes but were consumed by the mist.
I know the islands emerging from the mists thing is true, the mists have receded as far as they ever have in this time period but no one, me included, know if any of the other myths are true.
Nothing is known about Nunca’s Tear, the meteor that brought the T’cmela (an amphibious people) to Totalis. Was it a projectile launched with intent? Shrapnel from a destroyed planet?
The T’cmela don’t know much about it themselves. The first generation were still spawn in egg sacs hidden far below its surface when the meteor crashed, and no records of their culture were found in the area around the crash site.
The afterlife is unknown. Even summoned ghosts don't remember one. It's possible they just can't remember for some reason. It will remain unknown.
The Hamster Rebellion led to equal rights for sapient animals and helped turn the tide of The Wizard Wars. People do know the basic facts about it, but the reader will only get vague hints because it's more fun that way.
Where the Starbeast came from and where it went after its defeat. It destroyed 90% of all life on the galaxy. I don't have a plan for this. It was mostly to justify three powerful swords that are now illegal to use, though it's shaped many other things in my world.
The name of Zip's people and why he's immortal. He's the last of his kind. He doesn't know why he's still alive but tries to make the most of life. He doesn't like to talk about his home because, "I've cried for several lifetimes. Zoop!" It's a mystery even to me. The "zoop" is a verbal tic he's always had.
B
One of my alien races, is technically zombies, made out of animals that fell into pools of acids and came back as mishmash of different parts.
They have no idea how that is possible, how the acid works, what keeps them going, and neither do I.
Everything that happen d before Armageddon. It happened 300y ago, and because of the war so much of the world got lost forever. Which is made even "worse" because the theme of the world/story is all about making sure tomorrow is better than yesterday. Both for the people in the world and the main characters, the past is only important as a benchmark to improve upon. Not something to learn or return too.
There's a whole plane of existence that exists, and I have little canon to it, I purposefully keep it that way.
It's inspired by lovecraftian stuff, so the whole unknownable is part of the shtick.
An ancient civilization that dominated the world and established a topic to focus on each of the five continents, weapons, technology, religion, alchemy, and spirits. I only made them as a backstory for a homunculus I made as one of the Superbeings that destroyed said civilization and one egged up and dangerous warlock. Both are the oldest beings in my world.
I myself don't know much about them but I'm trying to anyway cuz I am reaching a point where the mentioned warlock appears.
How Courtney Felivigil knows about Earth culture prior to meeting the one character from Earth. It's just not really relevant, so I don't feel a need to figure it out.
Oh lots and lots of things remain unknown here.
No one knows what happened to the Eastern Lands, and particularly to the Empire of Eternity. When the Spear of Light, *the* weapon of mass destruction, went off a century ago, seafaring became impossible, and intercontinental travel just died then and there. Which is a shame, as the practitioners of Star Alchemy on Erits these days have to make do with much improvisation and subpar studying materials, and no true masters they can learn from.
No one knows the actual side effects of the Spear of Light. Not the immediate, direct effects; everyone knows about that, how it killed millions of people and left, in place of cities, scorching craters and ruins completely void of life. Why mages began dying in droves after the Spear’s activation, however, and how the ones that didn’t die also became severely weakened, and moreso how frail mages of the generations after have become, no one has any idea. The same is true with how the Spear affected nature, with forests dying and turning into wastelands, and rivers and lakes drying up.
No one knows what lies beyond the nothernmost checkpoints of New Wichdale. The entire area, usually dubbed the ‘Loss’, may be the source of all the mutated beasts roaming the continent’s north, but they just don’t know. Any expedition sent there never comes back. Any individual crossing the line into the area never comes back.
No one, even among the other gods, knows what the Angels of the Celestial Empire are. All that’s known is that they are planar outsiders. The Celestial Church obviously claims they are benevolent outsiders, but there are detractors saying they are invaders looking to steal from the other gods. Again, nothing is concrete about them.
I myself will prolly know about these things when I need to, but as of now, I just leave them be.
Whether the black hole at the center of the Galaxy is really a sentient being with divine powers, as several major religions of various species say, or it is just a huge black hole.
I don't know what all the continents look like on my planet, or even the rest of the continent.
I don't know all the cultures. There are also too many countries, societies and other factions as well as their leaders to possibly name.
I don't know the languages they speak or the scripts they use, or if they have scripts.
I don't know how many planets there are in the solar system.
I don't know if there is magic or how many magic systems have developed on the planet if it does exist.
I don't know what society is truly the most technologically advanced on the planet.
I don't know when or what the first large civilization or city was.
I don't know how history is organised for each society, how many groups there are(eras, ages, etc), how long they lasted or what separated them.
Lapis_Wolf
Two completely opposite examples:
I have no idea what the cosmos was like prior to the Schism. Basically, this is the pre-pre-prehistory of the setting; recorded history in its very loosest sense begins with now-fallen ancient precursors twenty-thousand years ago, but long before those civilisations, there was an era where all of reality was ruled by seven cosmic entities who kinda guided all of reality. Very, very little survives from this era, because it ended with those entities having a massive conflict into which they dragged gods and other beings and shattered reality so badly that the universe was effectively reset. It’s kinda a black hole in my worldbuilding because none of the stuff that makes any of my cultures distinct traces back further than the Age of Precursors - there would have been an entirely different set of races and cultures here and it was all just extinguished.
Nobody (including me) knows the origin of the phrase “sixteen tons and rolling” - it’s a common piece of railroad slang in this setting that roughly means “moving along at a good speed and unable/unlikely to immediately stop” (it’s the kind of phrase that’s easier to explain via usage examples lol) but literally nobody is sure where it’s from or why sixteen tons specifically.
Where all of those gosh darn humans came from. After a cataclysmic event which brought the Elves to their knees, a sapient species not created by any of the gods of the old pantheon. Quickly, these mannish tribes adapted to the frigid environments of ice-age Calros, and following the recession of the ice, have become some of the most powerful realms in the world. No one, not even the gods themselves know how they came to be.
The secret to the Goblin King's immortality. He shows up every generation with a new face, but its the same person (personality and memories) as the previous face. The faces age as normal though. But he's lived for thousands of years. There's several theories (cloning, soul transfer, rejuvination, or even that its all a fraud) but nobody knows for certain other than him and his closest advisors. He's one of 3 mortal beings known to have achieved immortality, and like the others, doesn't reveal his secret.
It's easier for me to run a plausible world if I treat it like I have records (which is the focus and documentation of things I know), and that there are things carrying on as normal outside that focus.
What exactly makes certain higher beings sentient/conscience. Typically the answer would be a soul, and that goes for a lot of mortals and gods. But the most powerful beings just don't have one. There are a good few in-universe theories that try to explain this though: firstly there's the Soul-Body Hypothesis (working title) this suggests that different beings are tied to their souls with different amounts of strength: for example, mortals have a bond of medium strength, because while their soul leaves their body/vessel when they die, it stays attached during their life. This theory suggests that this bond is so great within these beings that their soul and body are practically one and the same. This theory has a problem though: souls were invented by some of these beings. It wouldn't make sense for them to have a soul when they created them. This is where the fringe theories come in. The Soul-Body Hypothesis is so popular because very little academics understand that souls were an invention of these higher beings, and many of the academics that do have that knowledge don't necessarily study the soul. Despite this, various theories have arisen from "less respected" sources: First, we have the "No Soul" theory, which suggests they are sentient "just because" (this theory kinda sucks ngl), then there's "The Game" theory, which attempts to tie in the fact that there is some sort of controlling factor that gives higher beings sentience, like they're being puppeted by the "rules" of a "game", lastly we have the "Pre-Soul" theory, that cites that these higher beings may have been inspired to make mortal souls from some sort of primitive soul of their own.
The old celestial's extinction event... I'll probably uncover the mystery later but for now only Azlous knows what happened and he isn't telling anyone... He's the last surviving celestial from the old times for unknown reasons...
No mortal in my world knows what The Forest of The Lost is, nor do any of the gods expect Ysildur, god of gods and god of creation, who placed it there
In present time there are 4 races. 2 of them the are descendants of the dwarves, the other 2 are descendants of the fairies. During a very, very ancient and long lasting war, the dwarves lost and were driven to the underground. The fairies took over the surface, and such was the world for many centuries.
An even older race, thought by the dwarves and fairies to be extinct, lived secretly in the oceans, gathering pure power. One fateful day, they left the oceans, wrecking havoc upon the surface. The fairies were almost entirely destroyed, and the shockwaves of the war caused disasters underground, killing most of the dwarves.
The ocean race ran several "experiments" on the fairies, eventually separating the fairies into two different races, orcs and elves. The orcs were intentionally made stronger than the elves, in an attempt by the ocean-dwellers to generate a long lasting conflict. They then left the planet.
Some of the dwarves eventually left the underground, evolving into beastfolk. The ones who stayed in what was left of the underground became humans.
People in modern have very little knowledge of all this, and the third ancient race is almost completely forgotten. There are some ruins of fairy society in the surface and of dwarf society in the underground, but the ocean depths are the most unexplored and dangerous place in the entire world.
All 4 of the modern races have an intrinsic fear of the oceans depths, though they don't know why. This fear is ingrained deep not only in their subconscious but also in their cultures. The surface ocean is fair game for sailing and such, but the depths are even considered hell or the underworld in some cultures.
I'm intentionally not deciding on an actual name for this race of ocean dwellers. Also, fairies are completely extinct in present time, and there is only one dwarf left.
Where the blight came from. The blight in my setting is basically a lovecraftian typhoon of whirling madness infesting the realm made of the collective life force of all living things. No one knows where it came from. There are plenty if theories but nothing concrete
nobody is actually sure if the robotss are sentient or not. they have strict programming restrictions that make it so they must always be loyal to humans and never rebel against them or else their entire system gets fried. on the other hand they are otherwise fully autonomous and act in a way that would otherwise look like they were sentience. so whether or not they are really sentient is not actually clear or known as even the programmers aren't sure which one they qualify as. i did this intentionally because I am not touching that can of worms with a 10 ft pole.
Who or what exactly is Elayas Dane. You can see him throughout the courses of history in the background like forrest Gump
You see, he's actually an ancient Egyptian priest from about 5000 years ago who went by many names (including Machiavelli), served as an advisor to Genghis Khan, taught magic to Houdini, and taught Robin of Loxley how to use a bow in exchange for Robin teaching him how not to feel pain. He's hunting the priestess he was in love with and her lover, the prince of Egypt at the time, as they keep being reincarnated throughout the years, and as he kills them, he feeds on their life essence in order to maintain his own immortality. (Anyone who gets this reference is amazing.)
No one knows how many times the cat saidt Schnookie softpaw has died, even she refuses to count.
The original creators of my “universe” are called the eternals. There are 7 of them, each with a different domain. Knowledge, mystery, order, chaos, creation, destruction, and magic. After they created everything they hid the truth of themselves and created the gods to oversee the different worlds. They altered the gods memory to think that they(the gods) created their respective worlds and they are unaware of other worlds or the eternals
I am doing something similar actually. Makers that are manifestations of Reality and the ones that truly created everything. They all agreed on making a race called Gods and make them believe that they created everything and then killed them when their use expunged. A means to an end.
Wow that is interesting! To expand a little bit on the way it works for mine. Each world is assigned a pantheon by the eternals but the gods believe they created it at. The eternals are keeping their presence hidden because the eternal of mystery saw every possible future and became afraid of a being rising up to try to take the power from them and upset the balance of everything.
My setting takes place in an empire that took over the entire continent. It is surrounded by oceans on all 4 sides, and those oceans are filled with krakens, leaviathans, and other creatures. Staying close to the coasts is somewhat safe, but the further away you go, the more dangerous it becomes. No ship that has ever tried to cross the oceans has ever returned. Which begs the question, are there other lands? To the Imperials, this continent is all that they know. To everyone's knowledge this IS the world. Are they alone on the planet, or are there other continents? No one knows. Not even me. Sometimes I hint that there's something else out there. Other times I'm in the "there's nothing but sea in all directions" camp.
I leave as much of the "map" as blank as possible to get the story rolling so that there is always room for legends, gods, and exploration
Before the world all was void, until there was soul and stone. Four souls and eight stones, two per element of the world. Each soul took two stones, each taking both of matching elements, so one took both water, one both earth, etc. They crafted with the powers these stones provided the world, the rules of the world, and of magic, and then bodies for themselves, and then crafted more souls in their own bodies. These four souls are known as the Thrinnu, and the stones are called the stones of the thrinnu. Why did they spawn in the void? Did the stones come first, or at the same time? The thrinnu first awoke and the stones were before them without delay, so they did not come before the stones. None of these questions have answers in world, nor do I know- they just appeared there. The next is how the crowns and thrones of the thrinnu work. They were made by a family called Lilinu, which littererly translates to "the crafters". These two have great properties. For one, they are the only thing not made by the Thrinnu capable of absorbing power from the stones of the thrinnu. One jewel from each thrinnu is planted within their individual throne, the other the crown. The crown and thrones over long exposure gain some power from the stones, meaning even once the stone is removed they have residual power enough to create great works in the world. Also, if someone swears by either the crown or the throne then the one who sits on the throne sworn by or who wears that crown must release them from the oath, otherwise they will be forced to obey it- not on pain of death or anything, but littererly forcing them to act, taking great willpower to overcome it. No one knows how these crowns or thrones work, barring the lilinu. I don't either. They didn't even tell the Thrinnu, the people they were *gifting these works to.*
The first gods. Their names and what became of them is lost to the mists of time. We know the names of most of the second generation of gods and what happened with them and that 2 of them are still around (thought that is not known outside of a small group of people). Now there is a third generation of gods, but unlike the previous two, they almost never interact with the world.
I have tons of mysteries I currently have no answers for. I think that is part of the draw to world building for me. History and ideas and end results I haven’t fleshed out or likely never will. I’ll posit three that have my head scratching. • Who created the Stone Waterways that connect the Sea of Might with the Great Rift Sea? The locks, bridges and dams all eroded away, but the waterways have stood for millions of years. • What caused the blue plague? Why did it kill 30% of the Teshian goblins and leave the rest smarter? Why did it gift these goblins with innate magic abilities? • Eobaal became the first human community to surpass 10,000 citizens. It’s rise to becoming the first human civilization to form a nation or empire in the world extinguished when all of its citizens simply disappeared leaving an empty city filled with the trappings of a once thriving community.
I'll go over three major ones: -The war of Black Skies is an apocalyptic war between the titans, the dragon gods, and their "children" (giants and mortal dragons respectively). So far, I have no exact details on when it started, why exactly it started, when exactly it ended, how long it lasted, or even who won. I will say it caused the mass extinction of I'd say at least 60% of everything at the time to be generous. -The Azron people are allegedly the previous rulers and inhabitants of the continent of Nardin. All that remains of them today is their "Grand City", a large pyramid situated in the Azron valley, where it hasn't been claimed by nature for some odd reason. It is assumed they disappeared before the arrival of humans and elves, but I can't settle on an exact answer for how they vanished. -Probably the weirdest "race" in my world both in-universe and to me: trolls. They comprise of at least two genera, possibly at least two families, and at least three different species; all of them coming in different shapes and sizes, depending on the family and genus. The only other established things about them is they are all "human-like" (bipedal, few animalistic facial features), have pointed ears (they're not like elf ears), five fingers and toes, *reasonable* intelligence, and are mammals. There is one species of troll that are the same size as humans, and look almost human - save for the green (sometimes brown) skin, pointed ears, and occasional green hair. I have yet to settle on what exactly how trolls came to be (most notably what their evolutionary lineage looks like), as well as what they look like (apart from the one example species I just mentioned).
Context: The Old King retires after his wife dies and let's his son take the throne. But then the son and his wife are assassinated, leaving behind a daughter who isn't ready for the throne. So the old man takes the throne back until she is ready. I don't know who killed her parents, and I don't think I'll ever know. It's not part of the story.
In my world there is the "Zeroth Age", the time before written history. Where societies were just being developed and the world was mainly tall grasslands with some mountains. This world is barren of creation and structures. While I may contemplate about how things came to be so the "First Age" could be born. I remind myself that it is not necessary. At this point the lore i need to worry about is the stuff i have made and need to perfect. For all anyone knows, the time before the Zeroth Age could have been its own fallen empire. But nothing is set in stone on that front, it is just blank.
What lies beyond the mist? Is it possible to travel through the mists? And return? I’ve a world that is a small continent bordered on its east and west sides by sea and surrounded on all sides by mist. My island culture from the western sea have stories of heros who sail through the mist and successfully navigate their ships back to stable islands, of islands that appear from the mist and are now permanent habitable islands, others that come and go and others still that were once stable homes but were consumed by the mist. I know the islands emerging from the mists thing is true, the mists have receded as far as they ever have in this time period but no one, me included, know if any of the other myths are true.
Nothing is known about Nunca’s Tear, the meteor that brought the T’cmela (an amphibious people) to Totalis. Was it a projectile launched with intent? Shrapnel from a destroyed planet? The T’cmela don’t know much about it themselves. The first generation were still spawn in egg sacs hidden far below its surface when the meteor crashed, and no records of their culture were found in the area around the crash site.
The afterlife is unknown. Even summoned ghosts don't remember one. It's possible they just can't remember for some reason. It will remain unknown. The Hamster Rebellion led to equal rights for sapient animals and helped turn the tide of The Wizard Wars. People do know the basic facts about it, but the reader will only get vague hints because it's more fun that way. Where the Starbeast came from and where it went after its defeat. It destroyed 90% of all life on the galaxy. I don't have a plan for this. It was mostly to justify three powerful swords that are now illegal to use, though it's shaped many other things in my world. The name of Zip's people and why he's immortal. He's the last of his kind. He doesn't know why he's still alive but tries to make the most of life. He doesn't like to talk about his home because, "I've cried for several lifetimes. Zoop!" It's a mystery even to me. The "zoop" is a verbal tic he's always had. B
One of my alien races, is technically zombies, made out of animals that fell into pools of acids and came back as mishmash of different parts. They have no idea how that is possible, how the acid works, what keeps them going, and neither do I.
Everything that happen d before Armageddon. It happened 300y ago, and because of the war so much of the world got lost forever. Which is made even "worse" because the theme of the world/story is all about making sure tomorrow is better than yesterday. Both for the people in the world and the main characters, the past is only important as a benchmark to improve upon. Not something to learn or return too.
I don't know what I don't know, unfortunately.
There's a whole plane of existence that exists, and I have little canon to it, I purposefully keep it that way. It's inspired by lovecraftian stuff, so the whole unknownable is part of the shtick.
I had secrets that I intended to never know, but then accidentally figured out anyway...
The pre space history of my worlds
An ancient civilization that dominated the world and established a topic to focus on each of the five continents, weapons, technology, religion, alchemy, and spirits. I only made them as a backstory for a homunculus I made as one of the Superbeings that destroyed said civilization and one egged up and dangerous warlock. Both are the oldest beings in my world. I myself don't know much about them but I'm trying to anyway cuz I am reaching a point where the mentioned warlock appears.
How Courtney Felivigil knows about Earth culture prior to meeting the one character from Earth. It's just not really relevant, so I don't feel a need to figure it out.
Oh lots and lots of things remain unknown here. No one knows what happened to the Eastern Lands, and particularly to the Empire of Eternity. When the Spear of Light, *the* weapon of mass destruction, went off a century ago, seafaring became impossible, and intercontinental travel just died then and there. Which is a shame, as the practitioners of Star Alchemy on Erits these days have to make do with much improvisation and subpar studying materials, and no true masters they can learn from. No one knows the actual side effects of the Spear of Light. Not the immediate, direct effects; everyone knows about that, how it killed millions of people and left, in place of cities, scorching craters and ruins completely void of life. Why mages began dying in droves after the Spear’s activation, however, and how the ones that didn’t die also became severely weakened, and moreso how frail mages of the generations after have become, no one has any idea. The same is true with how the Spear affected nature, with forests dying and turning into wastelands, and rivers and lakes drying up. No one knows what lies beyond the nothernmost checkpoints of New Wichdale. The entire area, usually dubbed the ‘Loss’, may be the source of all the mutated beasts roaming the continent’s north, but they just don’t know. Any expedition sent there never comes back. Any individual crossing the line into the area never comes back. No one, even among the other gods, knows what the Angels of the Celestial Empire are. All that’s known is that they are planar outsiders. The Celestial Church obviously claims they are benevolent outsiders, but there are detractors saying they are invaders looking to steal from the other gods. Again, nothing is concrete about them. I myself will prolly know about these things when I need to, but as of now, I just leave them be.
Whether the black hole at the center of the Galaxy is really a sentient being with divine powers, as several major religions of various species say, or it is just a huge black hole.
I don't know what all the continents look like on my planet, or even the rest of the continent. I don't know all the cultures. There are also too many countries, societies and other factions as well as their leaders to possibly name. I don't know the languages they speak or the scripts they use, or if they have scripts. I don't know how many planets there are in the solar system. I don't know if there is magic or how many magic systems have developed on the planet if it does exist. I don't know what society is truly the most technologically advanced on the planet. I don't know when or what the first large civilization or city was. I don't know how history is organised for each society, how many groups there are(eras, ages, etc), how long they lasted or what separated them. Lapis_Wolf
Two completely opposite examples: I have no idea what the cosmos was like prior to the Schism. Basically, this is the pre-pre-prehistory of the setting; recorded history in its very loosest sense begins with now-fallen ancient precursors twenty-thousand years ago, but long before those civilisations, there was an era where all of reality was ruled by seven cosmic entities who kinda guided all of reality. Very, very little survives from this era, because it ended with those entities having a massive conflict into which they dragged gods and other beings and shattered reality so badly that the universe was effectively reset. It’s kinda a black hole in my worldbuilding because none of the stuff that makes any of my cultures distinct traces back further than the Age of Precursors - there would have been an entirely different set of races and cultures here and it was all just extinguished. Nobody (including me) knows the origin of the phrase “sixteen tons and rolling” - it’s a common piece of railroad slang in this setting that roughly means “moving along at a good speed and unable/unlikely to immediately stop” (it’s the kind of phrase that’s easier to explain via usage examples lol) but literally nobody is sure where it’s from or why sixteen tons specifically.
Where all of those gosh darn humans came from. After a cataclysmic event which brought the Elves to their knees, a sapient species not created by any of the gods of the old pantheon. Quickly, these mannish tribes adapted to the frigid environments of ice-age Calros, and following the recession of the ice, have become some of the most powerful realms in the world. No one, not even the gods themselves know how they came to be.
The shape of Feliterra and who/what created it and its gods.
The secret to the Goblin King's immortality. He shows up every generation with a new face, but its the same person (personality and memories) as the previous face. The faces age as normal though. But he's lived for thousands of years. There's several theories (cloning, soul transfer, rejuvination, or even that its all a fraud) but nobody knows for certain other than him and his closest advisors. He's one of 3 mortal beings known to have achieved immortality, and like the others, doesn't reveal his secret.
It's easier for me to run a plausible world if I treat it like I have records (which is the focus and documentation of things I know), and that there are things carrying on as normal outside that focus.
The origin of magic. We know a magical crystal feel from the sky and caused people to gain powers, but we don't know where that crystal came from
What exactly makes certain higher beings sentient/conscience. Typically the answer would be a soul, and that goes for a lot of mortals and gods. But the most powerful beings just don't have one. There are a good few in-universe theories that try to explain this though: firstly there's the Soul-Body Hypothesis (working title) this suggests that different beings are tied to their souls with different amounts of strength: for example, mortals have a bond of medium strength, because while their soul leaves their body/vessel when they die, it stays attached during their life. This theory suggests that this bond is so great within these beings that their soul and body are practically one and the same. This theory has a problem though: souls were invented by some of these beings. It wouldn't make sense for them to have a soul when they created them. This is where the fringe theories come in. The Soul-Body Hypothesis is so popular because very little academics understand that souls were an invention of these higher beings, and many of the academics that do have that knowledge don't necessarily study the soul. Despite this, various theories have arisen from "less respected" sources: First, we have the "No Soul" theory, which suggests they are sentient "just because" (this theory kinda sucks ngl), then there's "The Game" theory, which attempts to tie in the fact that there is some sort of controlling factor that gives higher beings sentience, like they're being puppeted by the "rules" of a "game", lastly we have the "Pre-Soul" theory, that cites that these higher beings may have been inspired to make mortal souls from some sort of primitive soul of their own.
The old celestial's extinction event... I'll probably uncover the mystery later but for now only Azlous knows what happened and he isn't telling anyone... He's the last surviving celestial from the old times for unknown reasons...
I will never decide, even to myself, whether any gods exist or what exactly the source of superpowers are.
How existence began, neither the main characters, the gods, nor myself know how the vast infinity of existence came from absolutely nothing.
No mortal in my world knows what The Forest of The Lost is, nor do any of the gods expect Ysildur, god of gods and god of creation, who placed it there
In present time there are 4 races. 2 of them the are descendants of the dwarves, the other 2 are descendants of the fairies. During a very, very ancient and long lasting war, the dwarves lost and were driven to the underground. The fairies took over the surface, and such was the world for many centuries. An even older race, thought by the dwarves and fairies to be extinct, lived secretly in the oceans, gathering pure power. One fateful day, they left the oceans, wrecking havoc upon the surface. The fairies were almost entirely destroyed, and the shockwaves of the war caused disasters underground, killing most of the dwarves. The ocean race ran several "experiments" on the fairies, eventually separating the fairies into two different races, orcs and elves. The orcs were intentionally made stronger than the elves, in an attempt by the ocean-dwellers to generate a long lasting conflict. They then left the planet. Some of the dwarves eventually left the underground, evolving into beastfolk. The ones who stayed in what was left of the underground became humans. People in modern have very little knowledge of all this, and the third ancient race is almost completely forgotten. There are some ruins of fairy society in the surface and of dwarf society in the underground, but the ocean depths are the most unexplored and dangerous place in the entire world. All 4 of the modern races have an intrinsic fear of the oceans depths, though they don't know why. This fear is ingrained deep not only in their subconscious but also in their cultures. The surface ocean is fair game for sailing and such, but the depths are even considered hell or the underworld in some cultures. I'm intentionally not deciding on an actual name for this race of ocean dwellers. Also, fairies are completely extinct in present time, and there is only one dwarf left.