text stringlengths 22 2.11M |
|---|
[Question]
[
Vampires are a very common creature in various fantasy stories, they drink blood and often human food poisons them. Forgetting for the time being the additional rumours/fiction such as sunlight, crosses and immortality could such a being sustain itself from drinking blood alone?
Obviously human blood ten... |
[Question]
[
Recurringly in Sci-Fi spaceships manage to make it to lightspeed and above. Is there a scientifically plausible explanation of such capacity? How does it impact the spaceship's design and its passengers lives?
[Answer]
I was thinking about this topic a lot and I still didn't find any plausible FTL mec... |
[Question]
[
I inherited a worldbuilding project, and the former authors liked some things that seem unrealistic. One of them is that one of the world's biggests rivers splits into two other rivers some 300-400 kms before reaching the sea, definitely before area where the delta should be expected.
 FTL travel has become stranded, orbiting an isolated star with no rocky planets. (There *was* a planet, but it was destroyed by their crash-landing in the star system.) The civilization is comfortably capable of... |
[Question]
[
So I asked [this question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/16900/what-are-the-requirements-for-the-zombie-in-order-to-reach-a-full-zombie-apocaly) a few days ago, with excellent and certainly useful feedback. I've decided I'd like to build upon that question with some ways to combat our... |
[Question]
[
In my story's world, witchcraft is a respected institution, with the most powerful practitioners being at the top echelons of society. Due to this, society traces its lineage through matrilineal lines. Witchcraft is usually exclusive to females, however there is a way for males to gain access to magic ab... |
[Question]
[
Imagine when a jet fighter swoops in to drop a 400 pounds giant chainsaw to you just so that you can use it to grind down one problematic enemy into a pulp then discard it a foot away from you. What power source would suit such a weapon with only 1 instant use before breaking itself apart?
[Answer]
**... |
[Question]
[
A battlemage practiced the art of close combat fighting, and could deal huge amounts of damage to his opponents at point blank range. He also had a special robe, which was enchanted by a powerful spell such that it parries all ballistic projectiles.
Unless the enemy attack completely overwhelm the battle... |
[Question]
[
First, let me explain the situation. Post-apocalypse setting, a group of humans (let's say around a hundred of them) have to find safe places to live at, protected from animals, bandits, and other menaces. They decided on a group of tall buildings (as in the picture), between 12 and 18 stories high. They... |
[Question]
[
SPECTRE (SPecial Executive for Counterintelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion) is a nefarious organization run by me, a criminal mastermind named Ernesto Blofeld. It has its tentacles in many different parts of the world and is connected with varied criminal groups involved in drug trafficking, ga... |
[Question]
[
In this world, religious leaders of a world religion practice a form of ritual magic that is essential to human existence. Certain rituals must be performed at certain times for nature to function properly. The sun must rise and set, seasons must come and go, rain must be delivered to places that need it... |
[Question]
[
Say an explorer lands on a previously undiscovered land, filled with humans, humanoids, wildlife, elementals, undead, demons... you name it.
One would expect that these existing inhabitants would have their own power struggle. For example, the humans would be fending off the undead while also fighting ag... |
[Question]
[
There's a ruin of an ancient structure built by an old powerful civilization thousands of years before. Nearby is one of the fresher cities of this world, currently undergoing an industrial revolution. The ruins are known to the denizens of the city, and it isn't especially hard to get to them from the c... |
[Question]
[
So the main team of characters is traveling back in time from "modern day" to medieval Europe, arriving around the 1300s.
Assumptions: They Know they are going, they have space and time to prepare, the team consists of 10 people in their mid-20s with a variety of skills. They are not returning to modern ... |
[Question]
[
## The Demonstration
You're a rich, successful CEO/capitalist working in the electronics business. Your R&D division is exceptional and routinely fabs state of the art processors at bleeding edge processes. (If it helps, you're in an equivalent position to the CEO of Foxconn, Samsung or Intel).
A person ... |
[Question]
[
In a world I am building, gods exist; they are extremely powerful, omnipresent and active. While thinking up some larger scale empires for the world, I realized that their gods would be so powerful that a theocracy would be the best government by default, whether it be under a God-Emperor or a High Pries... |
[Question]
[
The situation is the following:
* a country, in theory an industrial power (modern times equivalent), maintains a tiny (but well trained) peace-time army which could be used as a source of officers and NCOs
* the country is suddenly forced into a proxy war and is likely to enter directly sooner or later
... |
[Question]
[
Two of the societies in my world are supposed to be vegetarian/vegan.
Society 1 lives in a temperate climate, similar to central/eastern Europe. I've thought of cotton-like plants for clothing and high protein/high-calorie plants and mushrooms they live off of.
However I'm still stuck with materials fo... |
[Question]
[
**Closed.** This question is [off-topic](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers.
---
Closed 2 years ago.
* You are asking questions about a story set in a world instead of about building a world. For more information, see [Why is my question "Too Story Based" and how do I ge... |
[Question]
[
**Closed.** This question is [off-topic](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers.
---
This question does not appear to be about **worldbuilding**, within the scope defined in the [help center](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/help).
Closed 6 years ago.
[Improve this que... |
[Question]
[
The older man looked at the younger one. He took a deep breath and began to tell his tale, just like he was told before when he himself was that young.
>
> I've been here way longer than you, let me tell you how this all started and why are you here now. They came without a sign and attacked without war... |
[Question]
[
Conventional materials used in today's textile industry are not sustainable. But 'natural' materials (silk, cotton, ...) and synthetic (polyester, ...) require a lot of resources to produce and then labor to make into proper clothes.
Plus, one can't mass produce clothes or have a pre-stocked inventory a... |
[Question]
[
The argument for superheroes to capture villains alive is that superheroes are already illegally operating as vigilantes and compensating for muggle law enforcement is all they are morally obligated. The burden of dealing with super villains permanently falls squarely on the justice system, not the the s... |
[Question]
[
I need to land about a thousand heavy troop transports and some supporting spacecrafts, somewhere remote and preferably underpopulated. I've watched your television broadcasts and seen how previous invasions have been undermined by nosy kids and TV-repair men. So I know I need to stay away from your citi... |
[Question]
[
**This question already has answers here**:
[If an FTL spacecraft entered Earth orbit, how long would it take for humans to build a FTL spacecraft?](/questions/36077/if-an-ftl-spacecraft-entered-earth-orbit-how-long-would-it-take-for-humans-to-b)
(11 answers)
Closed 7 years ago.
Let's say aliens a... |
[Question]
[
So, I have a small tribe of island people with stone-age technology who have [discovered how to make gunpowder](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/77880/what-explosives-could-a-small-island-nation-feasibly-discover-without-metal). However, they want to make war on the neighboring islands, ... |
[Question]
[
On my world, the day lasts 9 years: 4.5 years of light, followed by 4.5 years of dark. The inhabitants of this world survive by migrating along the ring of dusk and dawn.
How do these people tell time? Obviously the good old standard of counting day and night will not work, nor will ancient methods such ... |
[Question]
[
[**Definition from Wikipedia**](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sacrifice):
>
> Human sacrifice is the act of killing one
> or more human beings, usually as an offering to a deity, as part of a
> religious ritual.
>
>
>
The person to be sacrificed can be part of a ritual with or without consent,... |
[Question]
[
I've been puzzling over the logistics of orbital spaceports, and this has been the one sticking point I keep coming to: radiation control between docked, or even neighboring, ships. Mass limitations on ships without "torch" engines, which are engines without a high enough thrust *and* specific impulse to... |
[Question]
[
It basically says it all in the title. I assume the human will eventually succumb to malnutrition, but I wonder what the minimum number of trees are necessary to provide the human with enough energy to survive the longest.
Assuming the human:
1. has ample shelter
2. has a way to open coconuts
3. is in a ... |
[Question]
[
My main protagonist is going to fast-forward himself in time by 1000 years. He will simply reappear in the same place (marked by a small beacon), the process being instant for him (no hibernation etc). This is the only "magical" technology in the universe, known only by the protagonist.
However, he wants... |
[Question]
[
I have been trying to find an answer to my question for a couple hours now but I haven't had any luck on Google though I might be searching using the wrong terms I'm not sure as I know next to nothing about mining. Anyway, could it be possible for a mine rich in either iron or copper to also produce some... |
[Question]
[
Here on Earth, time standardisation was enabled by the invention of accurate time pieces which allowed us to create a global constant (GMT/Zulu time) and regional offsets. If we travel outside our time-zone for a meeting, we can be sure to know when to leave to arrive there at the right time.
In an FTL e... |
[Question]
[
I know the basic steps involved in creating your own country:
1. Own sovereign, undisputed land (that, if in the ocean, is 200 nautical miles away from the nearest sovereign nation).
2. Possess a permanent population.
3. Have a government system in place.
Once a country has all of the above, to gain adm... |
[Question]
[
The [Clock of the Long Now](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clock_of_the_Long_Now) is a clock designed to mark time for 10,000 years. That's a really long time for humans, but what if there existed a species that would see such a clock as "a bit short lived"? This species would make J. R. R. Tolkien's elve... |
[Question]
[
I was planning a short story that focuses on a rainy day in a city, and I realized that there's one interesting feature of it: Even though the weather seems bleak, and it affects the actions of those in the story, anyone reading it knows that the next day will be, in all probability, sunny, bringing a li... |
[Question]
[
It seems like [nothing can move faster than light](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_light#Fundamental_role_in_physics) and this is quite bothersome for interstellar travel. It takes decades in the best case to get anywhere interesting in our little Milkyway (Many thousands of years to travel an appr... |
[Question]
[
I have a character on the surface of Enceladus, one of the moons of Saturn. It has an icy surface on top of what is believed to be a liquid ocean. There is no atmosphere, though near its south polar region there are what appear to be canyons filled with long lines of geysers that eject mostly water vapor... |
[Question]
[
There have been a few questions about an [intelligent](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/3001/what-would-an-avian-castle-look-like) [avian species](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/2975/how-would-an-avian-city-be-different-from-ours) lately and they have gotten me thinkin... |
[Question]
[
We know, unlike what Hollywood would have you believe, that plate armor was actually incredibly effective when it was being used. In order to combat this, some bright spark came up with the concept of the mace/warhammer, which would simply transmit its crushing force through the armor to break the poor t... |
[Question]
[
Consider a group of humans at a bronze-age to early iron-age technological level colonizing a new earthlike planet. There is just one difference - there exists on the planet *something* which changes the nature of human sexuality - and the colonists don't know what it is, nor can they stop it from having... |
[Question]
[
I've been wondering if it's possible for an airship to fly by passive means - specifically, no engines (steam or otherwise).
I'm thinking in terms of a world where lighter-than-air gas (and it's containment) is fairly readily available, but that hasn't discovered mechanised propulsion.
The problem is - ... |
[Question]
[
A lot of species on earth do not care for their offspring; they spawn thousands of eggs, that hatch into larvae, and then grow up towards full size.
If a hypothetical species was sentient in the final steps of that process, then what sort of society might they form? There would be no maternal or paternal... |
[Question]
[
I am constructing a two dimensional world, but ran into a problem with one of the fundamental forces, gravity.
I first tried to see what would happen if I just used the normal law of gravity, $\frac{m\_1m\_2}{r^2}$. As it turns out, it has a problem:
Consider a person standing on an edge of a "planet" in... |
[Question]
[
Santa keeps his elves under horrid, appalling conditions. Working everyday of the year for little pay in the freezing cold of the North Pole. But just how many elves does he need?
How many elves would it take to build enough toys for 2+ billion boys and girls across the world?
[Answer]
You have to mak... |
[Question]
[
Starliners are huge colony ships. They carry enough equipment, building materials, embryos, colonists and nutrient rich rations to permanently establish a sizeable colony on a far-flung world. Although they’re big, they aren’t designed to act as generation ships. Instead any perishables (like people) are... |
[Question]
[
In Britopia there were the Leftists who believed motorists should drive on the left and the Rightists who believed they should drive on the Right. The vote split exactly down the middle and it was finally decided that there would be no rule at all.
In the end it was further decided that there would be no... |
[Question]
[
In my world, magic is unavoidably unreliable, for example:
You have a puncture. You cast a spell to mend it and with equal probability either it is mended or another tire is punctured.
You are trying to save an injured person. You cast a spell. Either they are saved or you kill them.
**Question**
It seem... |
[Question]
[
This question is inspired by [Could medieval people produce automatic firearms if they had access to the schematics?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/10610/could-medieval-people-produce-automatic-firearms-if-they-had-access-to-the-schem)
I have simply moved it forwards in time as follow... |
[Question]
[
## Some Context
This story is a fable set in a magic forest full of intelligent animals that live in a huge community. [Maleficent](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1587310/) depicts a forest that's very close to what I'm thinking.
The magic present in the forest allows for the growth of a myriad of exotic p... |
[Question]
[
So this should probably belong on clothes.stackexchange.com, if there were such a thing, but here I am with a question that I hope is not too complicated or specific for this site.
My situation: I've got an order of witches, that try to hide themselves. They've got powers in the area of gravity manipulat... |
[Question]
[
After nearly a decade of development and public prototypes, the Mizaru company is ready to unveil the cybereye. A fully cybernetic eye that provides its user/host with high definition vision, enhanced zoom for the more expensive models, and ability to take photos with a special blink.
Originally the cybe... |
[Question]
[
My story takes place on an Earth-like, inhabited world that is far larger than Earth, has roughly 110% of Earth's gravity, and has unusually high (and generally unexplained) EM emissions permeating its atmosphere sufficient to disrupt radio transmissions beyond a few miles.
Humans from earth have begun t... |
[Question]
[
So in many games you have regions that are bordered on all sides by impassible geography of some sort or another. This has always bothered me as necessary but also acts as a reminder to pull you out of the fantasy.
I am looking for some real world examples of geography that could fit the bill and be used... |
[Question]
[
I'm writing a semi-realistic science fiction story set, let's say, 500 years in the future, where humanity has colonized some of the solar system. For combat purposes, I've been playing with the idea of two common weapon types:
1. a semi-automatic ballistic weapon with frangible rounds, for defense onboa... |
[Question]
[
So I've got a medieval fantasy world where humanity has been forced to live exclusively in fortified towns and city states because of attacks by monsters. These monsters are not kaiju level in size so smaller and more populous, think [Grimm](http://rwby.wikia.com/wiki/Grimm) from RWBY. They do not active... |
[Question]
[
The World has just received an official communication: on December the 21st 2022 we will receive a special visit.
Techno Mage Master Balmelgas will be visiting Earth on his wonder ship Sol Invictus.
His purpose: to adopt a Rose.
In exchange he will give to the World one material we may need. Just one b... |
[Question]
[
There is a species that is quite sentient. Its members know about the world, they have hopes and dreams and great aspirations of what they might do with their lives. They are intelligent, creative, caring, empathetic and deeply feeling individuals. However, this particular species bears a heavy curse. Th... |
[Question]
[
**The setting:** Very distant future, Earth is long gone/forgotten/just not around anymore. Humanity, whatever it may consist of (people, AI, something in-between) inhabits a single vast generation ship that roams the stars with no fixed destination, using material from the star systems it arrives at to ... |
[Question]
[
In Ant Man and the Wasp, Ant Man starts the movie on house arrest. House arrest is enforced by a standard ankle tracking monitor. Of course, this security mechanism proves woefully inadequate since, you know, he's Ant Man. He doesn't attempt to escape himself but Hank Pym needs him and shrinks him down, ... |
[Question]
[
I have an idea for a story in a post-apocalyptic setting where guns and other explosive devices unusable or otherwise impractical.
Is it possible to do this by changing the atmosphere (either by adding, removing, or changing the proportions of the chemicals that make up the standard earth atmosphere)?
Th... |
[Question]
[
*Please note:* **This is not a duplicate** of my [previous question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/31349/everything-joe-says-is-true-how-can-he-get-around-it), and in fact has a quite different premise.
Joe is just an average guy, aside from one passive superpower that Joe has had sin... |
[Question]
[
## Backstory and Setting
I'm forging a story that starts with our protagonists living in an absolutely awful urban location. Think near-post industrial revolution, without the regulations that eventually formed in order to protect workers, the public, and the environment. The boom of industrial and minin... |
[Question]
[
What do [digital immortality](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/40926/why-brain-upload-is-a-concept-of-immortality), [teleportation](http://powerlisting.wikia.com/wiki/Teleportation), the show *[Doctor Who](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regeneration_(Doctor_Who))*, and a [horror game rele... |
[Question]
[
For the purposes of this question, assume that:
* reincarnation is a real thing, and is based on a "soul" which, after (and only after) death of one host body, potentially with some delay, is reborn into a different host body1, *and*
* reincarnation only takes place within the same species2 (so no cross-... |
[Question]
[
I world-build for tabletop RPGs so I have Tolkien/DnD/Forgotten Realms like elves in mind. The assumptions are:
* The ratio of humans to elves in the world has been more or less constant.
* Humans live ~50 years and have 5-7 children per woman.
* Elves reach sexual maturity at 80-100 years of age and liv... |
[Question]
[
**Closed**. This question is [opinion-based](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers.
---
**Want to improve this question?** Update the question so it can be answered with facts and citations by [editing this post](/posts/101922/edit).
Closed 5 years ago.
[Improve this question... |
[Question]
[
Let's consider that the card game needs to be played, and equipment that may even kill you if you lose (via blades, electric shocks or the like, it could also even kill people by summoning supernatural forces to anyone who were to lose the game). Less damage than the death of the person can also be regul... |
[Question]
[
John Smith is a time traveller from the year 2018, he goes back in time to the year 1200 and in the process falls in love with a woman of that era. He doesn't want to abandon her so he decides to bring her with him.
How would John protect her from modern disease - what realistic measures would he take to... |
[Question]
[
So my indomitable army of bunnies have developed space travel and built their first space ship for the exploration of the great universe. However they have a problem!
After some consultation with the great god, google, they have come to the conclusion that laser and plasma weaponry are most likely not fe... |
[Question]
[
Modern Earth; a series of connected events (natural disasters, mass migration, drug-resistant pandemic, collapse in biodiversity, armed conflict) have led to a significant reduction in human population over a single generation.
Does "civilisation" continue? Societies could certainly adapt to short-term d... |
[Question]
[
**Suppose two people want to transmit some binary data (a png image perhaps) by voice.**
Two of my characters want to share binary data but they can only use their voice and no other form of communication is possible.
By "voice", I mean any sounds that can be reliably produced and differentiated by avera... |
[Question]
[
>
> *Me Gam. Me Giant. Me not very smart but me need food. Me need to find*
> *job.*
>
>
>
In my world Giants are a thing. And they need to eat too. In fact, they need way more food than most of us. Therefore, they need a job to make money and buy food.
First here are some specs on my Giants :
* The ... |
[Question]
[
In my world, humanity has populated the stars and now lives in isolated groups in single star systems. Most people never leave the system they were raised in [interstellar travel is very unusual, but not *unheard of*]. In these star systems, there are many colonies, both orbital and planetside. Note terr... |
[Question]
[
**Closed**. This question needs [details or clarity](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers.
---
**Want to improve this question?** Add details and clarify the problem by [editing this post](/posts/146947/edit).
Closed 4 years ago.
[Improve this question](/posts/146947/edit)
... |
[Question]
[
Cicad the singer is having a downtime in his career.
Over the millennia, Cicad sang anywhere from royal courts to farmers' cottages and have been rewarded with many, many hand-claps.
But to keep going, indeed to preserve his immortality, he must sing - in battle.
When leading a charge to meet the enemy, ... |
[Question]
[
In the story I’m working on, there is a strict ruleset on how magic works, one of the main points being it needs a “fuel” to work, and that “fuel” is VERY expensive. That being, most magicians use their skills while saving the most fuel possible. Against ordinary foes, without any magical abilities, they... |
[Question]
[
On an expedition to an inhabited planet, we encounter intelligent life. However, they are not as intelligent as we are. They have language, but it's less expressive and more concerned with the immediate - a strong vocabulary and simple grammar relating to hunting or foraging, say, but no deep abstract co... |
[Question]
[
Many video games and movies set in a medieval-like fantasy setting feature implausibly huge weapons, which would be completely impractical in real combat.
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/vPwBA.jpg)
Sometimes people defend the realism of su... |
[Question]
[
On Earth ancient cultures developed marriage system of polygamy where one husband had multiple wives. What environmental or social differences would you need to create a world with an ancient culture that had one wife with multiple husbands?
The tech level will be on par with ancient Greece or Rome. The ... |
[Question]
[
I'm developing a world with many different races, many of whom live in relative isolation. I'm trying to understand how the fashion of each cultures/species would evolve. In our world we're obsessed with clothes, the idea of walking around town without them is near unthinkable. However consider a colony ... |
[Question]
[
After further development in AI, will social networking sites create fake accounts like humans using AI and make this AI's to talk/chat to real people?
They might do this to get money through ads and make people addicted to their sites.
As many people might share / chat less in the future, will the sites... |
[Question]
[
Assuming these supercomputers can think/reason in "internet battle terms", aka. having the capability to predict their opponents' movements and recognize patterns and prepare for different types of attacks.
* What would a battle between them "look like"?
* What sort of timescale would the full battle tak... |
[Question]
[
Another mermaid questions I'm afraid!
Fish have tail fins which are vertical, whales have fins which are horizontal. My race of merfolk are:
* Very active (more likely to be warm blooded)
* Have gills and lungs so can breath in and out of water
* Have scaled tails (like a fish) and human-like skin on the... |
[Question]
[
This question is inspired by discussion in the comments of the question [What kind of supernatural powers don't break the masquerade?](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/63334/what-kind-of-supernatural-powers-dont-break-the-masquerade)
TL;DR Suppose you want to create a world where beings ... |
[Question]
[
If we were to pull the following races out of a D&D players handbook and remove them from the setting/history of Faerun and look at them from a biological/non-magic perspective (no other planes of existence, no Fey realm etc etc etc)
* Human
* Elf
* Halfling
* Gnome
* Dwarf
* Orc
* Half Elf
* Half Orc
I ... |
[Question]
[
**Closed.** This question is [off-topic](/help/closed-questions). It is not currently accepting answers.
---
This question does not appear to be about worldbuilding, within the scope defined in the [help center](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/help).
Closed 8 years ago.
[Improve this questio... |
[Question]
[
Imagine a city where the primary population is an avian race. Well assume for the sake of argument that these birdlike creatures have "hands" as well as wings which allows them to develop and use at least a Victorian/early 20th century level of technology.
They are also approximately human sized.
What so... |
[Question]
[
This is a partner question to [How do centaurs get enough oxygen to run](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/7289/how-do-centaurs-get-enough-oxygen-to-run)
Centaurs are a common mythological figure, with the body of a man where a horses head would be. They usual exist in a fantasy world but... |
[Question]
[
In one of my fictitious planets, there are large cells that reside in the ocean and are 3 feet (almost 1 metre) in diameter. The cells themselves are aggregates of many amoeboid cells, have only one cell membrane, but many nuclei.
My question is: is such a large size for a single celled organism possible... |
[Question]
[
I won't claim to be a biologist, but I'm fairly certain that it's really hard for disease to survive in space because most bacteria and viruses need a host in order to survive for long periods of time.
So, let's say a group of very healthy astronauts were sent out into space. Their only contact is with ... |
[Question]
[
Imagine a world things evolved slightly different: **plants never evolved into trees**. There are bushes, herbs, mosses, etc, but no trees. Thus no wood to make planks, nor for building.
Given abundant resources of coal and any metals or other needed materials, could a bunch of humans dropped here with n... |
[Question]
[
We've all heard about the 1822 [Babbage Difference Engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Difference_engine) and other mechanical computer ideas of the 19th century. Sadly, Babbage's computer and printer ideas were never implemented in our world†, and computers did not exist until the 1940s.
Now imagine a... |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.