everything i think of is a total cliche. i could have:
-drink from sacred lake
-eat sacred fruit
-preform specil ritural
-make a deal with a demon (wich is what some people do in similar circumstances with sort of similar conciquesnces in a book i just read. (its called geas by the way and is great
just sayin) )everything is so overdone
i realy dont want to fall into the steriotypes. so much so ive banned dwarves and elves (i know i said dwarves where slaves but its just a race of humans that is basicaly dwarves. just seemed that when they where dwarves they HAD to do this this and this. these people are my interpretation of dwarves and much less high fantasy)Honestly, there are so many stories and myths out there that basically anything you can come up with was probably done elsewhere. IMHO, the trick is to take known elements and make something unique out of them.
Off the top of my head, you could turn it into a sort of 'spirit-tribe' culture that went slightly feral. South American tribes in particular were highly respectful of the Jaguar. Now imagine if the greatest hunters of that tribe wore Jaguar skins and became more animal-like. Now imagine if they took it too far and couldn't turn back.
I'm no expert, but that sounds pretty cool to me. It isn't a cliche hand-wave, it's something that might happen if magic were real, and it's something that probably would happen with the right ingredients. Build the flavor of the setting around what you want to happen so it all meshes together, and I doubt anyone will complain.
They're cat people because they're cursed. The idea of changing your form permanently is probably not to appealing to normal people. As for the curses origins...well cliches abound once again. They did X wrong and Y punished them.
But really, don't get too hung up on it. Flesh out the cliche though. Why is the lake sacred? Does the tree that bore the fruit have its roots wrapped around the bones of a once-great sentient cat that protected the wilds? Why do people not normally eat this fruit? Is there a price to pay?
Answer questions and eventually you'll dig deep enough into the rabbit hole that you're digging your own tunnel.
several years later the tribe is attacked by the imperium and a fight ensues. in the midst of the chaos a gigantic lion joins the fray, ripping the imperium general from his horse and obliterating those around him. his troops turn and flee.
the lion speaks to the tribes men and says he is the shaman that disappeared. he then leads them to a large mountain range known as the red hills that are in a sort of narrow horseshoe shape around a lake. at the centre of the lake is an island with many trees (the plains do have some small trees but very few and quite stunted) and a large rock plateau. there is a cave inside that rock that has a story written on the wall. on top of the plateau is a set of standing stones with runes on.
the story says that the lioness went there to die and her remains went into the ground to give it the nutrients for the trees to grow making the trees sacred (these trees happen to be great for making bows which is an important tradition to the tribe). it also tells them that if they make a fire from the wood of the trees amidst the stones they can summon her. they do this and she appears in the flames and gives them her gift.
after this they become lion like in appearance with increased strength and the wisdom of the gods. wrote a lot more than i was planning to there :D any sugestions? thanks
Long ago, in the time of my grandfather's grandfather's grandfather, the People were beset upon by invaders from the north. They came with long knives and skins of iron and flasks of fire that burned even the waters of the River the Brings Life from the Red Stone Mountains. The sons and daughters of the People were slain and the rest driven from their homes. They fled into the Red Stone Mountains and were full of sorrow. The Lion Goddess wept for Her people and flooded the River that Brings Life with Her tears, washing away many of the invaders.
The leader of the iron warriors, angered by the People and their Goddess, hunted them for many moons. He and his iron warriors cornered the People on the shore of a lake sacred to the tribes. In the middle of the battle, a fierce lioness roared out a fearsome challenge and tore the leader of the iron warriors from the saddle of his horse. She ripped out his throat and chased the rest of the invaders away.
The Goddess had returned to the People and saved them. That night, they danced on the sacred isle and she lay with the men and women of the People. The sons and daughters of that night were born in Her image and so have our People since. We are Her childen in body and soul and She has gifted us with Her strength and Her wisdom.
I got bored at work and wrote this and now I realize it could be a creation story for the Na'vi as well haha.
ha thats great. yeah i stated making this campaign a while back and had finaly decided trees wherent too cliché then i saw avatar the day after and decided against it :D love the idea of her laying with the men. makes more sense than a dance :D c heers
Men and women. It opens up divine bloodlines for a player into that sort of story.
the mountains where still whole then so there was no spring. but the lioness shajuasplit the mountains in two somehow and causeed a rift in teh ground so deep it reached the tunnels and watter bubbled up through the spring (like an aretisan well).
god im rubbish at being creative. every little detail bugs me so much.
can anyone think of a good way of spicing up ice caps melting? being a pedantic fool like i am i had to work out exactly how the water got to teh lake if it is a desert and looked into springs. so ive decided that the water flows there through a series of underground passages from huge lake to the north. these tunnels where acturaly made by huge rock worms around the time humans first arived. back then the seabeds where almost dry and sea levels much lower. when the ice melted the water rose and flooded the tunnels, drowning the worms and making aronia an island / continent separate from the rest of the world.
the mountains where still whole then so there was no spring. but the lioness shajuasplit the mountains in two somehow and causeed a rift in teh ground so deep it reached the tunnels and watter bubbled up through the spring (like an aretisan well).
god im rubbish at being creative. every little detail bugs me so much.
Entrences to the elemental plane of fire.
They were opened by some enemy of the Rock worms, but when it came time to stop the melting the Fire Elements said, "Our work is not finished. Destory the ICE!"
So, the enemies of the Rock worms drowned too.
can anyone think of a good way of spicing up ice caps melting? being a pedantic fool like i am i had to work out exactly how the water got to teh lake if it is a desert and looked into springs. so ive decided that the water flows there through a series of underground passages from huge lake to the north. these tunnels where acturaly made by huge rock worms around the time humans first arived. back then the seabeds where almost dry and sea levels much lower. when the ice melted the water rose and flooded the tunnels, drowning the worms and making aronia an island / continent separate from the rest of the world.
the mountains where still whole then so there was no spring. but the lioness shajuasplit the mountains in two somehow and causeed a rift in teh ground so deep it reached the tunnels and watter bubbled up through the spring (like an aretisan well).
god im rubbish at being creative. every little detail bugs me so much.
Many years ago, so far back even the Stars were different, the People were dying. The fiery deserts were cracked and dry. An ancient river from the north stopped and the grass and trees withered. Our goddess Shajua came to the People, to her sons and daughters and said to them she would find the water. She traveled north to the stony teeth that bite the sky and found no water. Her anger was so great she shattered the mountains with a mighty roar, cleaving a rift so deep it opened the tunnels of the rock eater worms.
Still she found no water and traveled further north into the cold white lands of the ice devils. They had stolen the water with their icy breath, locking it into the glaciers. Shajua asked the ice devils to return the water to the river and they laughed cruelly at her, blowing a cold winter wind into her face. Icicles formed on her whiskers and fur. With another mighty roar, she shattered the cold white lands of the ice devils as she shattered the stony teeth. Her anger warmed her breath and melted the glaciers, returning the water to the deserts of her People.
A great torrent of water washed through the rift and the tunnels, drowning the rock eaters and washing away the ice devils into the fiery deserts. The ice devils were melted adding their life and power to the river, making our People and our Land strong.
im nearly ready to unleash my fearsome lion man colony on my players. just the details to sort out. but i still cant decide how they became cat people. ie written a small history for the world and there was a huge empire (incidentaly brought dwarves to same continent as slaves) and it was wiping out the african like tribes in a big plain. so this tribe did X and became cat people to defend them selves.
everything i think of is a total cliche. i could have:
-drink from sacred lake
-eat sacred fruit
-preform specil ritural
-make a deal with a demon (wich is what some people do in similar circumstances with sort of similar conciquesnces in a book i just read. (its called geas by the way and is great just sayin) )
everything is so overdone
I agree with the folks further up. The whole D&D Game is a big book of 'fanatasy clichies' to begin with, so don't worry about it, just mix the cliches up and make them fun.
Umberto Eco said something like this about Casablanca: "One or two cliches make us wince, but a hundred clhices make us smile, because we sense that the cliches have called a gathering to talk amongst themselves as we listen in".
And at the end of the day, one of the great things about fnatasy worlds without carefully-recorded history is that you can have ALL of those things be true... D&D has gotten better at this, as witness the origins of the half-orc in PHB2: "Some they blah blah, while others say blah blah, but I have it on good authority from a Sage at Arcane U that the REAL story is blah blah." In fact, fi you want cliches, internal strife among the cat people over which version of that creation story is the real one is probably literally the oldest cliche in the book!
(Oh, and they're actually cats who turned into people, not the other way around, by the way... they were so curious about the live of man that they tricked an old witch into letting them walk like men, then sank her and her magic cauldron into the middle of the lake. It's why they don't swim there, and the doors to all their houses face away from the lakeshore. The lake itself never freezes even in the coldest winters because the cauldron bubbling down at the bottom keeps it warm year-round.)
-JC/MM