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Flying fists under strange suns - a Wuxia and Planet open world building

Pirx

Pirx

is taken by a fey mood
Pronouns
He/Him
The city built into the dry, red stone of the tall cliff was alive with song and joyous laughter. The thousands of brightly colored lamps mirrored by the slow, brackish water deep in the canal below. High above, crescent bats flattered in the evening breeze, their slim, silvery wings glistening in the dying light of the autumn sun. The air was thick with the rich, aromatic smells of thousands of festive meals being prepared and the almost sickeningly sweet smell of the golden plum trees in full bloom.

The colorful crowds filled the steep streets and galleries. Here and there, the children set off the first fireworks of the evening, stolen from the bags of the firemasters. A crime that would go unpunished today. Cries of amazement broke out, when ever a particularly large rocket was lighted, its bright sparks illuminating the encroaching darkness. All this was nearly enough to draw the eye away from the crumbling facades and statues, broken not by the hand of living beings but by time itself. The houses, balconies and walls, once as garishly colored as the people now celebrating beneath them, had been washed down to timid pastels by rainstorms long forgotten.

From the far side of the canal, Red Viper watched the morbid spectacle with disinterest. Her eyes were drawn to the large pleasure barks on the waters below. In between silken pillows, plates of foods equally exotic and expensive and jugs filled to overflowing with golden plum wine, her prey awaited her. She could see his lean figure dressed in the finest robes right among the crowd. As one of the few humans on the boat, Red Viper could easily make him out. He appeared completely taken in by the festivities. He would not see her coming.

Gingerly, she leapt from the cliff and in three long jumps reached the shore. Without stopping, the young human woman rushed across the lazy waters of the canal. Her mind was focused, she had made herself light as a feather. Her quick steps did not even break the surface of the water. In a few heartbeats, she would be upon the man that killed her master and destroyed her temple...


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Hello, SV!

this thread is going to be an open world building exercise in creating a new setting for stories, roleplaying and the like. Anyone interested is welcome to participate. As of right now, this is little more than a few half-baked ideas.

The premise: What if you take a pulpy Sword and Planet setting and combine it with a hefty dose of Wuxia. Human martial artists, through means we may or may not discover, have come to alien worlds full of wonder to practice their art and drink strange new drinks. And of course they've brought all of their drama with them. So expect rivaling schools, quests for revenge and dramatic feuds.

To start us off, I'll ask a few questions that we can use to establish the basic framework on which to build:

  1. What time period are our human heroes and villains from? The past (when?), the present or the future?
  2. Where on Earth are they from and what martial arts to they practice? Do we keep to the classic Wuxia staple of wushu masters from China? Or will they be afro-brazilians practicing capoeira between the stars?
  3. Do we care how humans got from earth to the planet(s) we want to explore? Or do we hand wave it as "something, something, now you're here and you're stuck"
    1. And if we do care, how DID they get here? Can they travel freely back and forth between Earth and here?
  4. Is this setting going to take place on one planet or across several planets, moons and asteroids? One star system or many?
I think this is enough for now. If you're interested to join in this undertaking, please share your thoughts!
 
I think a good backstory might be something along the lines of "Oh, the ancient masters created powerful sorcery to travel to other stars, but then there was (big backstory war event) and now we don't know how to make new ones or use the old ones all that well."
 
Pirx said:
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To start us off, I'll ask a few questions that we can use to establish the basic framework on which to build:

  1. What time period are our human heroes and villains from? The past (when?), the present or the future?
  2. Where on Earth are they from and what martial arts to they practice? Do we keep to the classic Wuxia staple of wushu masters from China? Or will they be afro-brazilians practicing capoeira between the stars?
  3. Do we care how humans got from earth to the planet(s) we want to explore? Or do we hand wave it as "something, something, now you're here and you're stuck"
    1. And if we do care, how DID they get here? Can they travel freely back and forth between Earth and here?
  4. Is this setting going to take place on one planet or across several planets, moons and asteroids? One star system or many?
I think this is enough for now. If you're interested to join in this undertaking, please share your thoughts!
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1) I'd go with "Future Alternate." It's a future, but not "our" future, as it came from a past that was deeply shaped by the presence of sorcery and martial arts.
2) Different martial arts would be good I think. Including made-up alien ones.
4) A single planet with offhanded mentions of other planets would be easier as a starting worldbuilding conceit.

And some random ideas:
-There was a great conflict between the martial-arts-using masters of old and the "Iron Lords", who proclaimed the superiority of technology and built wondrous machines. The Iron Lords eventually lost when their own machines turned too smart, and overthrow them. Nowadays "machine-men" are rare, preferring to live secluded lives of contemplation. But there are a few who took up the way of the fist, to further their voyage of self-discovery.
-The ancient masters are said to have chained the very stars into ornaments capable of granting a fleeting godhood- And a lasting energy source- To these wearing them. These "Star Anchors" can manipulate gravity, alter the passing of time- But not reverse it- And twist fates.
-One of the old masters was the Pale Queen, who championed the idea of "trascendence through enlightened suffering." Her heritage includes ruins and artifacts designed to test that axiom. Labyrinths of steel-sharp ice, crystalized traumatic memories used as weapons, swords that cut the wielder as much as their target, techniques based on using pain and sorrow as a catalyst for power.
 
Some thoughts on this:
The setting could be a Xianxia setting from the ancient past, where cultivators capable of destroying and creating worlds and traversing galaxies by themselves were uncomfortably common.

They this cultivator civilization did something bad, so bad that Heaven itself wiped them out and restricted cultivation such that Xianxia became reduced to Wuxia. The sudden lack of cultivators to run everything caused a dark age and the natural hoarding tendencies of Xianxia cultivators meant that all the wonders of the age were destroyed in the fighting or remains hidden in various sealed abodes of Immortals who managed to survive the cataclysm.

Technology rose up to fill the gap as there were no longer any cultivators regularly changing and destroying things to keep people in stasis. Indeed all the great works of High Technology are the result of technology managing to ape some of the ancient alchemy and formations after all while living things could no longer cultivate that does not mean machines can't manipulate Qi.

The various gods that sometimes appear in Sword and Planet settings are the few remaining Cultivators in their hidden realms. They are essentially trapped as the moment they step out they are smited by Heaven so they can only act from afar and guide the civilizations that they can reach who came to view them as gods.

Wuxia martial artists are all that is left of the cultivator tradition. And the reason why they are confined to their own sub-community that is generally adjacent to the criminal elements ie Jianghu, Murim, etc. is that despite many thousands of years passing the various civilizations remember that Martial Artists(Cultivators) were punished their evil so the Martial Artists of the current time carry the stigma with some Sects try to redeem the image and live lives of ascetic monks devoted to doing good.
 
Are you going with the classic Sword and Planet tradition of the human transplants having superpowers compared to the locals?

Not enough to make them utterly unstoppable, but enough give them an edge, at least when combined with extant badassery.

How similar or different from Earthly life are the locals? Are there multiple sapient peoples?

What kind of societies are we looking at?

Admission: my knowledge of Wuxia is minimal, and my knowledge of Sword and Planet comes from extensive reading of the work of Edgar Rice Burroughs.
 
Mannan said:
The various gods that sometimes appear in Sword and Planet settings are the few remaining Cultivators in their hidden realms. They are essentially trapped as the moment they step out they are smited by Heaven so they can only act from afar and guide the civilizations that they can reach who came to view them as gods.
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I really like the idea of Gods in this fantasy world being Cultivators who've ascended, but even they can't violate the heavens to interact with civilization freely.

If this sword and sorcery world has divine casters like D&D, I could see cleric cultivators who gain their power from emulating these once mighty cultivators.

Also are there gonna be other races besides humans? I like the idea that the animosity between Elves and Orcs may stem from an Elvish cultivator Corellon blinding Gruumsh, an Orcish Cultivator, and the history of this affected relations for centuries. (Of course we change the names from Forgotten Realms lore, but you get the idea).

Pirx said:
  1. What time period are our human heroes and villains from? The past (when?), the present or the future?
  2. Where on Earth are they from and what martial arts to they practice? Do we keep to the classic Wuxia staple of wushu masters from China? Or will they be afro-brazilians practicing capoeira between the stars?
  3. Do we care how humans got from earth to the planet(s) we want to explore? Or do we hand wave it as "something, something, now you're here and you're stuck"
    1. And if we do care, how DID they get here? Can they travel freely back and forth between Earth and here?
  4. Is this setting going to take place on one planet or across several planets, moons and asteroids? One star system or many?
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Click to shrink...

1. I like the idea our Isekai cultivators are from a future where natural cultivation aids are rare/hard to find, because they've been over harvested or horded by a few sects who act as megacorporations (I'm seeing Cyberpunk influence). The cultivators are seeking new lands to be able to cultivate their own personal ways, or at least escape the reach of the powerful corpo-cultivators, but of course they will arrive soon enough.

2. I like the idea of mixing martial arts from around the world, Krav Maga, Jujitsu, Sumo, Lucha Libre, all kinds but taken up to 11. In addition I can see cultivators learning the local styles of martial arts and boosting those up as well, maybe taking Dwarven hammer style or Elvish archery to new heights.

3. I think the world they're from has developed inter-dimensional travel, but where someone ends up is a crapshoot, so it takes foolish brave volunteers to head out to see if the world is safe to go to, or just full radiation hellscapes. These are like the first colonizers or explorers, but soon enough, bigger sects wills start coming once they find out this realm is safe and plentiful.

4. I think start off one planet, but I don't mind the idea of treasure planet style ships that can take people to other planets in the system at some point, Spelljammer style.
 
CoreBrute said:
Elves and Orcs
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Elves and Orcs?

This is a fusion of the Sword and Planet genre and Wuxia, why would there be Elves and Orcs?

The former would suggest aliens ranging from "people with different skin colors who lay eggs" to "giant insects" and all kinds of craziness in-between, and the latter would...actually I don't know.

EDIT: Wait, do I come off as an asshole there? Sorry!
 
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krinsbez said:
Elves and Orcs?

This is a fusion of the Sword and Planet genre and Wuxia, why would there be Elves and Orcs?

The former would suggest aliens ranging from "people with different ksin colors who lay eggs" to "giant insects" and all kinds of craziness in-between, and the latter would...actually I don't know.

EDIT: Wait, do I come off as an asshole there? Sorry!
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My bad, I misread sword and planet as sword and sorcery.
 
krinsbez said:
Ah, that explains it somewhat.

But we do gotta decide what kinda people the locals are.
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There's no reason we couldn't have Orcs and whatnot in this world, but I think we could experiment with other choices.

For example, psychic aliens are a thing. How do they react with cultivators? Are cultivators resistant to mind control, or is that a weakness to their form of magic/ki?

If we go with John Carter logic, this planet could have multiple kinds of Martians, each with war with each other. Maybe some are stronger than humans due to biology or living in high gravity, which mean Cultivators need to use powers to level the field in battle.
 
Mannan said:
Some thoughts on this:
The setting could be a Xianxia setting from the ancient past, where cultivators capable of destroying and creating worlds and traversing galaxies by themselves were uncomfortably common.
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Interesting. Although this begets the question of what "Heaven" means in this context. Personally, I think it'd be interesting if there was no heavens to speak of, but rather various polities of more or less ancient and powerful aliens who fought over who was the main power of the galaxy. Something akin to the Dawn War of the Inhibitors from Revelations Space. Maybe even have something like a "Cultivator-hunter" type of monster that has been unleashed post-first-cultivation war, fitting the Inhibitor parallel themselves.
So that pretty much creates, what, two different precursor civs? Three if we count the Iron Lords as a separate civ.

Greater Beasts of Heaven: The oldest and most "alien" of the trio, who probably inspired legends like heavenly dragons and qilins. Currently have fucked off to their own pocket universes, or have died out, leaving behind descendants who truly believe they're gods. Most artifacts would be of the "Too big to consider" variety, like artificial afterlives within moons, sentient coral colonies that passively accumulate dark matter, and seeds capable of terraforming even gas giants. It's possible the Old Masters got a headstart by researching artifacts of the Greater Beasts left behind on Earth/in Sol.

Old Masters: More humanoid, the term covers both Earth's and the planet's own precursors. I'd say the Old Masters probably had a sort of compact among themselves, which was meant to prevent unecessary bloodshed and M.A.D. A highly ritualized thing, probably enforced through magically-binding contracts and "Legislators." As a result the interactions between surviving Old Masters are highly ritualized. Mortals can draw upon these.

Iron Lords: I would say that the Iron Lords are different from the Old Masters insofar they're not really cultivating as much as using alchemy and science, meaning their advancements could be potentially replicated by keen mortals. I feel they're the more mmh, that there were "more" Iron Lords than surviving Old Masters, but that's because the term "Iron Lord" isn't as specific. So you have things like satellite-bound AIs, gigantic mechs and demi-planetary sentiences all falling under the Iron Lord moniker.
 
I like everything you wrote Ark, but this bit in particular caught my imagination:
Arkalest said:
Interesting. Although this begets the question of what "Heaven" means in this context. Personally, I think it'd be interesting if there was no heavens to speak of, but rather various polities of more or less ancient and powerful aliens who fought over who was the main power of the galaxy. Something akin to the Dawn War of the Inhibitors from Revelations Space. Maybe even have something like a "Cultivator-hunter" type of monster that has been unleashed post-first-cultivation war, fitting the Inhibitor parallel themselves.
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maybe 'Heaven' could be something like the Reapers from Mass Effect or the Anti-Spiral from Gurren Lagaan. When cultivation grows too powerful, here anti-cultivation forces will respond automatically to try to eliminate them, even wiping out planets if necessary. This could be how old cultivation ruins could be found on planets with no cultivators.
 
Putting Xianxia views into a more sci-fi bent Heaven in this case would be the first civilization who had grown to such a level that they gained control over the very functions of the universe. Cultivation and qi is not a natural part of the universe. It is something they added onto it to make ascending to their level.

These beings are actually rather good, but their high station and extreme age makes them rather alien, The Greater Beasts of Heaven, though the newest members, the Old Masters, are more human but still divorced from it due to what they have experienced.

Civilization is supposed to grow kinder with age. They were expecting more enlightened philosophers to ascend like the first few immortals (things like the Buddha and things like that) and not the power hungry tyrants that were the Cultivators near the end. So when they judged that their is no more changing cultivator society and the mortal cultures they perpetuated they gave up and destroyed most of them and severed the path to immortality. What supernatural forces remains are the remnants of that system, but the metaphysical framework to allow beings to reach true godhood is gone.

Of course the surviving cultivators are a tenacious lot and are still working on paths to bootstrap themselves to Immortality, no matter if it would result in the deaths of hundreds of worlds to just go one more step. Which is why Heaven is going to wipe them out when they leave their safe havens.
 
I don't know, I feel like we don't need Cultivator Gods to actually be human at all. We're doing Sword and Planet, so why wouldn't they be ascended aliens? Hence why they think differently from humans, with a strange blue and orange morality. We're offending them in someway with our form of cultivation, hence why we keep getting heaven's tribulations.
 
Thank you all for sharing your ideas and your general interest!

I'll try and consolidate your ideas as good as possible (and add my own preferences). This in not meant to be set in stone, merely to structure debate.

My proposal for a timeline for the backstory:

Millions of years ago, a interstellar civilization called the Cultivators emerged. They mastered the secrets of the self and of the cosmos like none had before or since. Traveling the void between the stars, they created many wonders using both what we call technology and spiritual / quasi-magical forces. To them, this was was one and the same. They formed whole worlds to their liking, guided emerging life according to their plans and soon thought themselves the equal of the gods.

This angered the gods (who had grown weak in the face of the Cultivator's rise and hubris) and so the gods petitioned Heaven to step in and punish the Cultivators for their ambition. And so Heaven did. They decided not to test the Cultivators strength of arms, for they feared such a contest might be lost and only elevate the Cultivators to their goal. So Heaven struck the Cultivators at the root of their power, with out the still-mortal beings any the wiser.

For the first art the Cultivators had mastered was the most important one and the foundation of their empire: the art of harmony. Never had a Cultivator taken up arms against their equal. Until Heaven planted envy into their hearts. And before long, the Cultivators began to splinter into ten thousand hosts, all armed against their siblings. War soon raged, for the first time in history. Whole worlds splintered and burned, budding life forms were molded into weapons or trampled under foot. For ten thousand years, faction after faction fell to the tides of history, until only two remained: The Lords of Iron and their bitter rivals, the Esoteric Order of the Inner Path.

One represented technology as we understand it. Their servants were of iron, their fleets artificial worlds and the Lords themselves strove to become like their creations in order to outwit death itself. The other had eschewed most overt technology. Through the power of body and soul they could step between worlds as easily as walking through their own house. War continued to consume the galaxy, until both sides had almost wasted away. Still, the rivals could not let the conflict go. For they both were only half of what had made the Cultivators whole. And harmony between both sides impossible, only hatred could bind them together.

As both groups stood on the verge of defeat, they still possessed the power to end life within the galaxy for ever. And so the gods once more turned to Heaven, to end the bloodshed before there was nothing left. Heaven saw the wisdom of their plea and together with the other gods, collected what power was still hidden from the Cultivators. With a mighty breath, Heaven scattered the hosts of the Order and the Lords and forced those remaining few Cultivators into eternal hiding. Some hid in their fortresses of steel deep in the void. Others sank into meditation so deep, they almost became like cold stone. And thus a truce was finally forced upon them.

The gods had used much of their remaining strength and were closer to death than to life. And even Heaven itself fell into a comatose sleep. So life began once more in the cosmos. Millions of years passed. New species grew and turned their heads towards the stars in wonder. Not all would reach them. They all grasped at the two rivaling secrets of the Lords and the Order: the strength that comes from perfect control over the self and the power that comes from control over nature.

When ever someone traveled along one of the paths, the remaining Lords or the surviving members of the Order would stir in their half-death. Finally, one species traveled the Path of Iron fast and with purpose. So fast did these humans advance, in fact, that both the Lords and the Order stirred. And in a half-waking state, both would reach out. The Lords' dreams permeated the minds of humans, filling their heads with mechanical wonder. The masters of the Order, to keep the balance, stoked the Qi of a few select humans, turning them into a fountain of wisdom.

Their race is closely matched. The humans have taken their first, bold steps out of their cradle and are making a home among the planets of their home star. This is a power over nature most overt and accessible by many. The Order has acted upon a select few individuals around the world and imparted a small fraction of their wisdom upon them. Humans so touched have founded their own schools to foster their new art. This is a power that defies the possibilities dreamed of by the technological side of humanity. But it is a power held in secret and only by a few, who keep to their own, for now. Already, the leap through the air and control mind and body to an impossible degree. It won't be long, before the first human traveling the Inner Path will leap from their home world to another planet. Years, maybe only days...
 
A few notes on my suggested history:

  1. I love the idea of the Cultivators. I wanted to have them as the source for scifi-tech and Wuxia-style antics to give an in-universe reason for why both won't be combined on a regular level. By only giving Wuxia practitioners the ability to travel to other worlds, we limit the influx of humans and can have a small number of adventurers in a strange world. And there is nothing to say that other species could not be given similar powers and also travel the universe in small numbers.
  2. I feel like keeping an unexplained element of the supernatural above the Cultivators enforced the themes of both genres. Without a higher power with motivations both similar and alien to our own, we would lose some of the appeal of both Wuxia / Xianxia and classic Sword and Planet.
I will go over the thread again later tonight and respond a bit more indepth.
 
I am gonna vote for Barsoomesque combo of oddly-colored humans and barely-qualify-as-humanoid.

Bonus if we also include the Barsoomesque conceit that the fact that they're separate species isn't actually acknowledged by the locals. Or rather, a human with purple skin sees a human with orange skin and an anthropomorphic spider with three heads (or whatever) as being equally of another "race" and vice versa.

(You cannot imagine how cool I think it is that ERB consistently refers to 12-foot tall, six-limbed, green-skinned, tusked, bulging-red-eyed, antennaed beings as "Men" and "Women")
 
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So coming in with an idea for a school on earth.
The School of the Slivered Saint , from Mexico,
 
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