hard mode: no tentacles
Isn't that just Exalted?
Wtf is the isle of man doing?
>>92635512The reason suffering exists in the setting is because the benevolent higher beings made a treaty with the malevolent ones to not let existence be a paradise while also not making it a hell hole
>>92635527Seeking the final leg of the forbidden one
High Middle ages or Early Middle ages?
>>92635512Why do you keep making these threads when nothing of worth has ever come out of any of them?
>>92635527Kicking Jay.
>>92635512>replace tentacles with antlersthere ya go, junior.
A short game in this vein came out not long ago. Felvidek.I like these Actually Medieval Setting threads. May return with more inspirations if I have time.
>>92635512What about a giant hand that flys around and crushes one person a day but it flies just slightly faster than whoever it's target is, I wonder how that would effect society
>>92638320Give it a face too
>>92638320What about a giant toilet that flies around and flushes one person per day
>>92635512We already did that decades ago.Ita called Assholia.It has giant ticks and rape-wolves.
>>92635512define eldritch settingsI would argue most dnd settings are eldritch due to being supernatural and weird
>>92635512>Cult of the harvest god tries to make the labd bountiful.>Mass children sacrifice gows wrong>Now a tomato-folk has raped my elder neighour and a gang of local pumpkin-like gangsters are hanging people on the sreets and puking seeds into their mouths.>Rot is setting in on the streets, it smells like cabbage and armpits>The river is cranberry juice and sentient, potential ally though.
>>92639822Isn’t that over the garden wall?
>>92639850Never watched it, but if it has all of those things I will definitively do now.
>>92635512You go first. Be specific.
>>92639552I believe the kids call that skibidi toilet.
Between Two Fires, but with christianity replaced with a christianity-analogue. The Demons are slightly more abstract, maybe rip off Barlow's Inferno for their look. But they (kinda) understand humans and have a cruel sense of humor, so they fuck with people. They subject humans to unfair tests of character to prove an esoteric point to an absent Creator. Maybe the only Angels who remain on earth are something like those Watcher guys from Noah; banished angels who aren't evil, just very jaded, but can be convinced to help. All the surviving heavenly (still creepy and many-winged and many-eyed) are holed up in Heaven or just gone somewhere else.It'd be a place to have Tieflings and Aasimar (the OG crossbreed kind) and have them actually be appropriate and relevant.
>>92639996Toilet skibidi
>>92639822>medieval setting>tomato-folkPathetic.
>>92635512Orc men rape human womenOrc men rape human menOrc men rape elven womenOrc men rape elven menOrc men rape dwarven womenOrc men rape dwarven menOrc men rape gnome womenOrc men rape gnome menOrc men rape halfling womenOrc men rape halfling menOrc men rape orc womenOrc men rape orc men
>>92635512Every single heraldic figure is eldrich entity nobles of the world entered pact with, and now depict on coats of arms. Nobles are degenerated in more ways than one
>>92643509That's a lot of rape.
>>92643600Only the eldritch horrors are safe from the orc rape.
>>92643797Don't be racist anon
>>92635527Kicking and stomping. The murderlegs have no brakes.
>>92643698
>>92643594Excellent idea. Additionally, each of these heraldic figures has various strange and grotesque-looking creatures as dedicated followers and henchmen.
>Medieval marginalia/grotesques and gargoyles as monsters>Pliny the Elder's humanoidsAlso lovecraftian ghouls are severely underused imo
>>92638041Felvidek is cool and pretty funny at times. I like the bit where the knight meets the deformed villager and thinks its a monster before getting corrected, then he meets a monster and thinks its another village freak before the monster sees the original freak and gets spooked off.
>>92643600Unsurprising given there's a lot of orcs.
>>92635520Exalted is something akin to a late 90s, early 2000s action show. Both of the animated and 3d variety. Imagine Power Rangers (I swear to Christ I'm not kidding), Animorphs, Avatar, and Xena thrown in a blender with DBZ and an absolute shitload of other anime that range as far as Yugioh and goddamn Pokemon. You get Exalted as a result. Funky hairdos, scaling OP as fuck power levels that make no sense, and a strangely 'coming of age' aspect to the Solars as they level up... The monster enslave-uh 'collecting' and death match card games are only side quests.I get a similar feeling with Atlantis: the Second Age. Even though that one's more Beast Wars mixed in with Gargoyles having a four way with Conan and Tarzan.
>>92642011Would you prefer potatos
>>92637320i understood that reference
So the giant tentacle.... OH FUDGE.I guess I lost... THE GAME, fellow young people :DMy wife's dead.
>>92649010yeah, cuz I fucked her to death
>>92649010Fuck you for making me lose after almost 5 fucking years you absolute cretin.
>>92643797Back to discord
>>92635512Eldritch doesn't mean anything at this point.So does lovecraftian.
>>92635512"Why was the Isle of Man never conquered, papa?"
every coat of arms a creature
>>92649874don't mind if I do
>>92635512More like /tg/ makes an eldritch medieval seething
>>92635512Isn't that just Dark Souls/Demon Souls/Felvidek/Vermis/Fear & Hunger/Blasphemous/Darkest Dungeon?I feel like there's been a rise of "ultra-gritty medieval fantasy aesthetics."
>>92635512Every human being is born with a certain amount of chi/prana/vril/life force. The amount of life force they have determines their physical and mental attributes, as well as their social status. Us mortals can't detect or measure this life force, but it affects our destinies from the day we're born.
>>92643797How the hell did you know?
>>92648306I like your metaphors. I'm already more interested in everything you just said and I have no idea what it is.
>>92659251There is just one problem - all iterations of the system are shit.
>>92650672All of these things you listed are quite different from each other. The only thing they might have in common is being classified as somewhat "grimdark" which isn't the same thing as eldritch horror.
>>92635512The idea that this thing maybe be alive and sentient is kinda disturbing
>>92635512replace all tentacles with gastropods, done
Huge hole in the ground. Giant spider web covers it. City built in the web.
>>92635527making every day leg day.
>>92635561CRINGEthe reason suffering exists is because the benevolent higher beings only want people who can make lemonade out of lemons instead of a bunch of sissy cowardly ontological KEKS.
>>92638041Felvidek is about as close as you get to "eldritch medieval" (given it's historical context), but it also opted for tentacles. Given the whole story and deal with turks, something like camel monstrosities might have been more apt
>>92635512Berserk is a thing.>>92644945imagine being gangraped by these guys
what if jesters were real?
>>92664497There was a movie with this premise I think, it was called The Joker.
>>92664610did he have three head appendages with eyes on them?
>>92664497>>92664610>>92664838Wait... Beholder Jester.
>>92661764Oh yes. Plus the setting kind of falls apart because the players are more interested in the death card game tournaments and less in the Scalie Empress.
>>92648346pretty sure anons whole point was that tomato's are new world, so are potatos.
>>92644945>edieval marginalia/grotesques and gargoyles as monstersSeconding this.
This guy is roaming the late-medieval historically accurate landscape.
>>92639822>>92648346Turnipfolk would be more accurate
>>92635527Wheeling and dealing (pain)
>>92650418Seethe, Dilate and Copeactually sound like a trinity you might cram into a setting as universal forces or something.
If I wanted to go for a medievil weird fantasy thing in this vain, where should I look for magic inspo?Ocultism and devil shit seems like the most obvious place but also maybe a bit played out or just normal, its the devil its not that freaky.Alchemy is an option but frankly doesnt interest me and I think many people would agree (source: my ass)where do we go from there?
An eldritch entity takes interest upon the world and sees it as having potential, but imperfect. It's not going to 'fix' the worlds problems as we know it. Rather, its going to make the world and its problems more sensible in its own eyes. Overtime the world is altered despite best efforts from world leaders and religions to stop the spreading corruption. The more altered the world becomes the more entities take interest and begin aiding the alteration project, fighting against it to instill their own, or just causing havok for shits and giggles. Their sense of imperfection is less like what humans would deem an ideal society or state of world, but more akin to that of a videogame modder or ttrpg homebrewer. Think of the games Kenshi, Skyrim, and similar along with their modding communities with all the lore breaking, degeneracy, and creativity that it comes with. Except the local inhabitants of the world are aware of the changes and are actively fighting against it, or siding with their new gods for the changes they grant and in the hope of garnering their favor for prosperity and power.
>>92680433I'd point you into the direction of medieval grimoires and spell formulas. Check out the Merseburger Zaubersprüche for example. Some instances from the middle ages would be the Lorscher Bienensegen, Nine Herbs Charm, Millstätter Blutsegen or the Geheimnis der heiligen Gertrudis. You could also look into esoteric works written by christian mystics like Hildegard von Bingen.
>>92635512>Setting mostly consists of extensively-walled city-states that are fortified to shit.>Anywhere outside the hundred-meter stone walls is either a clearing that must be maintained, often a farm or a trail, or is dense magic forest.>Said magic forests issue forth all kinds of weird animals, and only get stranger and stranger as one goes further and further into their depths.>Legends say you can find things like the farie Kingdom, the Fountain of Youth, or the Swirling Vortex if you go in far enough. However anyone who travels too far off the beaten path rarely finds their way back home.>Some may travel through not just space, but time as well, in their questing.>Others will notice they being to change, and can no longer quite say if they are the same man that entered the forest three nights prior.>Towering pilotable golems made of stone and steel are used to combat the spread of the forest, and fight the larger dragons that issue from it.
>>92635512>>92639822>>92641307>>92643594>>92682090My solution is to play up the alien nature of the fae folk, angels, and demons.They all operate on rules that, as mortals, we don't understand. Humans can invoke them with rituals, and what's more, there's no alignment chart to tell you whomst is whom, and what is whats.Thus preserving the alienness of it all. All three are willing to cut a deal with mortals in their eternal proxy war. These beings can alter reality, if given permission to do so.The result is that magic and dealing with outsiders is a very dangerous monkey's paw. Except instead of some grand church of humanity to act as a counterbalance. There is none.At least none at the time the players are playing. Because it is a dark age. A time of curses and boons, of magic, and darkness where safety stops at the village barricades and the castle of your local lord.I've been playing world of darkness, and the fae from changeling the lost are frkkin horrifying.
>>92682654>angels, demons and fae as rivaling eldritch forcesSounds pretty good to me! There should also be a level of goofyness to them like pic related though (or the OP pic) in order to not exaggerate the grimness of the overall look and feel into edgelord territory. I also think making the medieval part of the setting as grounded and close to historical accurateness as possible would create a nice contrast to the otherwordly elements.
>>92635527It's causing some TT-Pain
>>92637320thats good rat.
>>92687296perfect demon aesthetic
>>92687305I'm honestly surprised that fantasy settings aren't more creative with their demons
>>92684070Simple, to you and me. It's silly, or even goofy. It looks like some proto-Dorthey and oz shit.To peasant farmer Arthur De'moulin of not!france this is a depiction of his only daughter being marched away over the horizon by three fae brothers in exchange for being able to feed his village, wife, and two sons with a good harvest. While his wife begs them not to take the little girl she raised.I'm thinking this setting runs on Contracts, Pacts, and deals. Both good and ill. Some creatures may be genuinely kind, and others malicious. But they all run on contracts that can be multiple human lifetimes long. With effects, punishments, and curses that can last just as long.So you got three types of human magic practioners.>Sorcerers: these guys make pacts for power and occult knowlage.>Witches: Wise women and herbalists who pass on hillbilly magic knowlage, and the ability to curse>Wizards: treat magic like an occult science and jealously guard their knowlageWitches and Wizards have a major thing in common. There's no universities of magic or anything. You want to get into magic? you gotta either sell out, or apprentice the same way a squire would to a knight.And since we're throwing alignment in the bin. Any of these magic users can be churchy too. A monastery or nunnery may be full of witches and wizards, and any magic user, just like any magical creature could be a good or evil person.Let's embrace the grey morality perspective.Horst the Magi didn't blow up the town granary for shiggles because he's evil. He did so because he and the local baron had a falling out. They sent letters, it got heated.The lord threatened him directly, so the wizard blew something up, now a bunch of villagers are going to face starvation, and they're probably going to want to string that wizard up by his beard.Dominos of suffering boys!Same way in the modern world two third world countries get into a slap fight and suddenly my gas price jumps by a dollar.
>>92635512>No tentaclesSurprisingly, Lovecraftian horrors didn't feature tentacles much outside of the big C-man himself and other authors and artists kept shoving them in there.Azathoth and Yog-Sototh and such were never described as having tentacles in Lovecrafts works.>>92635512Bloodborne fits the bill for the most part. The NPCs and PCs are Victorian inspired, but just swapping that shit out for medieval is all you really need to do, plus drop the fire arms.
>>92682654>Fae FolkContracts are very vague or very specific to the point of ridiculousness.IE: Your chickens that will lay golden eggs so long as you do x with a y at the end of every month of the z calendar under the observation of a one eyed dwarf as he recites the poems of forgotten times. Failure to do so will result in sour milk, constant insect bites, and gout in both feet until the next month where the contract must be renewed. If the renewal is missed three consecutive times, all members of your bloodline will be harvested in compensation.>Demons Contracts are either a transaction or an agreement of cooperation with heavy consequences that are not usually forseen.IE: You want to be able to shoot a fireballs for a day? sacrifice a rat. Disappointed in the strength and number of the fireballs and now mad that the town guard are on your ass? Its what you can expect from both a pathetic sacrifice and your own choices. If you want, you can pay for a subscription. It will get you the power you want, so long as pay upkeep every four years and do my errands whenever I call on you to.>AngelsContracts demand you to live virtuously and use the powers/blessing they give in accordance to their demands or you will be punished.IE: You will be very successful in business, provided you only use 10% of it on yourself and give the rest to the poor. Also, there are heavy boundaries to how you can use the money you keep.
How could you juxtapose Eldritch encounters between a more modern setting to a medieval setting? Only thing on my mind is how wholly ignorant people were back then.
>>92689050Eldritch and arcane are often used interchangeably, as though magic is a steam engine and the distinction is like using coal instead of charcoal.Arcane is unknown to those outside of the craft. Eldritch is what should not be but is anyway.Arcane is knowing that a light bulb will not light up without a power source, and looks mystical to those who've never seen one.Eldritch is having to stir the soup after heating it up in the microwave then heat it again, despite the fact that the soup should be hot the first time even though that did was heat up the bowl not the soup.To the average peasant, magic is magic and will not suffer any mental breaks from seeing a fireball of a different color being launched about. The same cannot be said about those who know how magic works, only to see things that do not abide by the laws of their 'vast and infinite knowledge'. Even worse, those who know about these eldritch horrors will be those with the strongest reaction, because they know about what is happening and the possible ramifications behind it.
>>92687982The practice of dealing with spirits was actually called Necromancy back in the middle ages. Obviously it included the dead, but also demons, nonhuman spirits, angels, etc...The whole thing was centered around books of names and experiences, with the idea being that the same creature always answers to a particular name, and by recording all the interactions with it you could tell what it was good for and how dangerous it was, at least in theory.There were also whole systems of astrology categorizing and organizing these entities into various groups and types.They also often disagreed on these categories, had conflicting experiences, constantly ran into issues of translations of names and spells, mixed different methods together, etc... So I think a key point of the setting would be that there could be several large powerful groups who assert they've got everything 100% figured out and have a solid understanding of magic as a science or a religion, only they all disagree with each other and for every "solid foundational principle" there's a dozen exceptions. And then outside these groups it's just total chaos with people doing anything they can think of with sometimes effective, sometimes disastrous, results.
>>92687442Designing demons for coolness or edge, rather than grotesquery and nightmare-surrealism, is the fatal flaw in a lot of people's designs.
>>92690293To be more specific. Whatever you do with demons they should contain a sense of wrongness. They are perversions of the natural order, which makes it ironic when a lot of the designs you see are obsessed with replicating the aesthetic of the natural predator and very little else, of designing a "better wolf".
>>92690310>>92690293/x/ can be a great inspiration as long as you don't base it around the ussual skinwalker meme creatures
>>92688867>Contracts are either a transaction or an agreement of cooperation with heavy consequences that are not usually forseen.They also steal your immortal soul.
>>92643509I've got an ideaRape-folk, rape-ents and rape-dryads. All have a tendency to show up in rape fields.
>>92692241...but is that enough rape?
>>92691090Steal? no.Appear at the moment you're at your lowest and offer you the deal for some metaphysical fuckery you won't understand till the bill comes due?yes
Sometimes when it rains for too long and too often, Fish From Another World swim around and sometimes peck at the little buildings and creatures. Some like it here so much that they swim into the ocean and never leave.
If you flay a human corpse three days after death and bury it under a full moon, it will return as an immortal servant. But it can only be given three commands. After fulfilling its third task (or being given a fourth order by mistake) it melts into a pile of fleshy jelly. Some mausoleums are staffed entirely by rows and rows of undead sweepers, embalmers, and guards. There are also vast merchant cities were slavery is outlawed but undead servants are the norm. Visitors are sometimes surprised to be offered a glass of wine by a man they killed last week.
Players get penalties for not following the ten commandments. Demons appearing and offering contracts will become more frequent if players commit any of the seven deadly sins.
>>92687442Nobody ever gave a solid reason why there was a stretch of time where demons had faces on their asses other than it just being a meme back in the day. Like how the weird margin art was just monk shit posting.
>>92696419>Build a time machine>Travel to the middle aged>Master the language necessary to talk to monastics and artists>Ask them about line art and other things that confuse modern society>They reply with 'lol. Lmao.', 'Lurk before illuminating, newheathen', and, 'Theed'
>>92696419Ne telleth nat hym gomeres
>>92635512Alright, so I had an idea for one from awhile ago I dug up and I don't know how eldritch you might consider it but humanity somehow slew a number of greater gods and it fucked up the lands really bad. For example, where the sun god died the sun hangs forever in the sky for miles even though it sets elsewhere and now there's a huge zone in once fertile lands where everything is burnt to a crisp from overexposure and there are similar areas elsewhere where other gods died. The moon god left a great forest shrouded in eternal night with a giant moon hovering above and things started to change and adapt to the darkness, the fire god exploded like a nuke and left a glass crater in a desert where there are now giant pillars of flame erupting all over, the god of agriculture rotted his farmlands into a grotesque soup that became a poison swamp, etc. So there's discussion on this by scholars about how true the gods were as the moon and sun and such still exist despite them being dead but there's also the unsetting sun and moon which have a very real effect on the land too and so then what exactly are they?
>>92698349Then there were lesser gods, now known as demons, inspired by the Ars Goetia in appearance, who were sealed away because the stuff that killed gods was hard to come by and reserved for the big boys. Temples and shrines were built over their prisons. Sometimes they were kept under guard, if near population centers for example, and others were so isolated they were just abandoned, but some people still knew or would figure out how to summon them and make bargains. They'd usually try to fuck with the bargainer, which people didn't always know since talking about them was verboten. One character was basically a choir boy whose puberty ruined his singing voice so he snuck into a temple, poured a bag of sand onto this etched seal, and completed a little ritual. This demon, a human face framed by a metal crown on the back of a big crab, sifts up through the sand and listens to the request for a beautiful voice and gave him a woman's. He then ended up basically being a honey trap spy/assassin for his home kingdom in lieu of being put to death for interacting with a demon. There's an order of thaumaturgists who travel the continent making sure the seals are intact and forcing the demons to speak truths using special power. There are also gods and demons who haven't been killed or imprisoned. The sea god had infiltrated subterranean caverns and filled them with monsters mutated from abyssal fish.
>>92698349>>92698431Neither polytheism nor the ars goetia are medieval in the slightest. The slain gods could theoretically be the old pagan deities but I don't think some 17th century christian fanfiction should get included into a pseudo middle-age setting.
>>92699072Vikings are arguably in the middle-age setting and they christianisized pretty late. And I'm not even mentioning Latgallians.
>>92699149>VikingsHave never been a thing. Even if I deign to use that word they christianized in the early medieval period so I don't know what you are talking about. >And I'm not even mentioning Latgallians.Good because nobody gives a fuck about them.
>92699211Ah, it's a troll, nevermind.Anyways, Harald united (conquered) Norway in the 1100s and Latgallians fought against Teutonic Order & Bishopric of Riga - and nearly won.
>>92635512Why not go ted kyzinski and have magic becoming so ever-present and anarchtic that the world is being torn apart but most people being like "it's ok magic will fix this" as the dimensions become torn.>Bro you ever notice the quick growing magic wheat tastes thinner and thinner.>You're being paranoid; Grilzsd the flattener is just to fanatic in his work
>>92699211You should. The Northern Crusades paved the way for the foundations of German Prussia and the militaristic Junker class. Furthermore, the Teuton's expansionist wars in Lithuania and Poland helped set in the concept of the 'drive to east,' which inspired later wars instigated by Germany.
>>92701023Yeah didn't one of their priests call for the genocide of the Poles ... in the fucking Middle Ages. Ultimately got him imprisoned by the Church since Poles are Catholic.
>>92689697>So I think a key point of the setting would be that there could be several large powerful groups who assert they've got everything 100% figured out and have a solid understanding of magic as a science or a religion, only they all disagree with each other and for every "solid foundational principle" there's a dozen exceptions.That's perfect for a medieval setting, especially if those groups are totally at loggerheads with each other. (Once they start comparing notes systematically and trying to really nail down what's going on instead of fighting with each other, you're going renaissance.)It's vital that none of the groups has it actually right, but that really won't stop them from claiming that they do.
>>92699072I suppose there's not much explicitly medieval there but I didn't realize we were making something with historical accuracy in mind and I was mostly focused on the arguably eldritch nature of certain things while the ars goetia was just a visual reference for the lesser gods since they looked interesting and I wanted them to be semi-formed/misshapen beings. I didn't develop the setting too much desu because I became busy with other stuff but the one thing I did have in mind was that the gods were explicitly outsiders from another plane/planet/whatever, basically lesser great old ones, who had over time come to fully believe they were these deities that they had adopted from the human populations to assert dominance over them. The thing that "killed" them forced apart what they arrived with from what they drew from the planet and in doing so created the disaster zones. One of the few remaining gods is secretly at the center of the church, like the great queen spider, and produced the means to defeat the rest, basically sending out crusades to defeat the remainder whenever they pop up with an army of foreigners or monsters or whatever. Which is a little more medieval, I guess.
>>92694398Feels a bit off desu
