How's this for a setting idea?
All the world is a forest. There are many races in the forest: The Bat People, The Invisible People, The Fierce People. At the edge of the world, the forest ends and the land of the dead begins; people go there when they die. But there is a peculiar race that seems to have come from beyond the land of the dead itself: The Termite People. They consume the forest, building many things from the residue of trees, and every day the world gets a little smaller.
Sound like a good concept?
For those who don't recognize it, it's the state of affairs from the viewpoint of one of the tribes in the Amazon River basin in John Boorman's The Emerald Forest. The Termite People are actually westerners -- Brazillians, and those that work for them. But if you divorce it from its context, the literal images of the names are pretty suggestive, and might spawn some good scenario ideas.
What if you stick with the bog-standard medievalesque D&D setting, but have an invasion by (literal) termite people who are (literally) tearing apart the world, piece by piece, making it smaller?
That could be interesting. I wondering how small a piece of the world could get and still support living things?
ReplyDeleteI read up-to "Sound like a good concept?" before hitting the reply button. I didn't see the whole post till just now. The first thing that popped into my teeny-tiny brain was the movie "Pitch Black" w/ Vin Diesel in them (Don't ask my why, it just did). The one with the Necomonicons, 'devourers of worlds'.
ReplyDeleteWhether it would be my 'cup of tea' is debatable, but it does promote creativity! The Scarab-people joined forces with the Termite queen. She gets the forest, the scarab beetle people get the dead flesh! Interesting indeed!
TB
Very cool. It reminds me of Orangutans. Their name literally means Forest People, because the people in that part of the world thought they were just an especially slovenly and ugly form of people.
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