General Idea Topic

seitora

Well-Known Member
#1
Since my progress topic was derailed so I'd rather shunt actual ideas back to here.

I'm currently toying around with an anthropomorphic setting with humanoid foxes, otters, salamanders, etc.

In this setting, dragons exist, but I'm thinking about dividing them into two categories : Trueborn and Ascended.

 
Trueborn Dragons are born at birth as dragons.

However, all creatures who are of the reptile phylum have the chance (so salamanders, alligators, chameleons, snakes, etc.), over their lifetime, to evolve through inner strength and study, and become a Dragon, gaining wings, fangs, and other doohicketies that are unique to each Dragon. Dragons don't age, but they are killed.
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
#4
daniel_gudman said:
Yeah, I guess so actually. I very vaguely think I might have heard about this before but I don't remember it at all so it might be the first time I've heard of it. Asian dragons are of a little bit different lore than Western dragons, but my idea certainly wouldn't have any fish turning into dragons.
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
#5
Random add-on to my first idea about anthropomorphic creatures. I'm thinking about using a salamander as a main character, either villain or hero. Why? Because real-world salamanders are famous for their regeneration abilities among vertebrae animals. It's not just limbs and tails, they can even regenerate eyes and organs, so presumably anthropomorphic salamanders could go into battle and take a ton of abuse and shrug it off because they'll heal back from it anyways.
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
#6
An idea I have been casually toying around with in my head for the last few months is an urban fantasy spliced with post-apocalypse. The main character is a lich, a good-guy type of lich, as good as can be for the genre anyways. At the time, he is the only living lich in the world, and hasn’t been hunted down yet by virtue of being young, hiding out in a tiny vilage (~300 people) in rural Canada and being a genuine nice guy, so there’s no obvious signs like dark rituals or digging up graves.

Then a magical apocalypse happens, and he is the only survivor in the world. The only one. Then the story follows his efforts to learn more of his magic to be able to rebuild the human race, rebuild society, figure out what triggered the apocalypse and possibly fight some horrors that either survived the apocalypse or were never human to begin with.

At one point I had an idea strand that ended up with him turning into some sort of Leto II type abomination and promptly snipped that train of thought off since it was weird.
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
#7
Another idea: a female reincarnates as a male. There's lots of stories where the reverse happens, but I genuinely have never seen this play on genders. I have the amusing mental image of some old powerful sorceress dying from old age and using her magic to reincarnate, only to accidentally end up as a male instead of a female. Bonus even if it's into a matriarchal society instead of a more patriarchal one.
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
#8
A new thing that I've been kicking around in my head for a few months.

Basically, in ye olde feudal times, a group of swords-and-sorcery adventurers go to fight the big bad evil demon lord. However, said BBEDL is too powerful for mere humans to fight and kill. So the adventurers wander some more, and find/create a ritual that pools together their will, hopes, and desires that summons/births a low-G god (along the lines of a spirit summon in fantasy franchises). Together with this god, the adventurers manage to kill the BBEDL. However, in the process, one of the female party members dies. She wasn't the strongest, not even close, but she was the heart of the group.

The god is able to stay behind in this world, and him and the remaining party members all become essentially immortal. They mostly go their separate ways, only coming together again to keep an eye on new threats. Time passes, the memory of and ability to use magic fades away, and the modern age happens as we hit present-era Earth. Everything else was basically background and set-up for the actual story.

The god, or one of the party members figures out how to reincarnate their fallen female party member. She won't have any of her memories, but that's fine. They just want her reborn soul to live a happy life. To this end, the entire gang all comes together and lives in the same small city/large town, and each couple up with their old romantic flames. The only one who doesn't get together with somebody else is the spirit-god. Also, he's male, bishonen, and basically looks about high-school age. You can probably tell where I'm going with this.

Anyways, the old party members all have kids. The reincarnated girl's parents are what was her past life's sister and that sister's lover, now-husband. Additionally, they had a son before she did, because they wanted her to be a younger child, not an older/only child. Reincarnated girl's older brother isn't anybody 'special', but since he's raised by two centuries-old adventurers who are able to use magic, he's still a fairly kickass big brother. As the reincarnated girl grows up, she has an extremely good family and life, with parents and a big brother who love her and want her to be and help her to be the best person she can be. Then she goes to school, making friends with the kids of the other adventurers. Also, the bishonen immortal spirit-god attends her school, entering her grade and class.

This feels like it would really work best as a feel-good VN. Multiple routes, going friendship-only or romance, and the protagonist, the reincarnated girl, slowly unravels the mysteries around her parents and her friends' parents, and the new handsome transfer student who espouses her parents' own beliefs in helping everyone be the best they can be. There would have to be a few things to contrast against the overall positive vibes, because there has to be setbacks to make a story. Possibly reincarnated big bad evil demon lord who also goes to her school, or something.
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
#9
Not even a story idea in itself, but a mash-up of character archetypes that just about writes itself...a bratty shortstack blonde tsundere...who is also really good at solving puzzles and is the greatest detective alive. She zigzags the globe with her boyfriend bodyguard, an ex-phantom thief who she captured on one of her cases and now has to accompany her everywhere as eyecandy and a bedwarmer and assist her as part of his rehab sentence. As the greatest detective alive, she knows she's a massive tsundere, but is unwilling/unable to do anything about it.

Despite a lot of the character archetypes, when the chips are down and the stakes are high, she is absolutely brilliant at her job. Solves murder cases in hours. Walks into an underground and unroots criminal organisations in days.
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
#10
While bouncing lewd ideas around in my head, I accidentally came up with a non-lewd idea.

Take a modern-day western European-esque setting with a hidden magical society, ala FSN or Harry Potter. Put in magical families that are essentially large quasi-aristocratic extended families/clans, with a core of a few dozen magical users and a few hundred non-magic users that form almost an entire village unto itself.

In that context, what I came up with a Count of Monte Cristo-esque revenge idea of a benevolent nobleman who gets betrayed and executed, only through either deliberate magical back-up plans or contrived deus ex machina (preferably the former), gets reborn as the daughter of one of his loyal servant couples, and grows up as a maid in the household of those who betrayed him. Then the story would be her uncovering all the dirt of those who betrayed her, getting them all arrested and executed in a single night-long purge, and taking over her household again.


In this setting, body possession/rebirth is something that simply doesn't happen, so the traitors cannot possibly have any clue the former head of house they offed is right under their noses as this shy, demure, meek servant girl who supposedly can't use magic. Loose lips, lots of drink, and so on, and they'll mention bits and pieces that she'll use to unravel the conspiracy and figure out who all is guilty and innocent.


There wouldn't be any real gender dysphoria, because she's very revenge-focused. But still lots of fish-out-of-water moments, because what would be the point of having him reborn as a girl and not as a guy (well, that, and I guess the powers that be that betrayed him would like maid eyecandy instead of ho-hum butler guy).

Her purge would basically be poisoning as many as she can all at once, then knifeplay to assassinate several more, then using the magic she supposedly doesn't have to take the last few out all by surprise. I also have it in my head she would perform this purge night in her mid-teens. All the years prior to that are investigating and unrooting the deepest depths of the conspiracy to make sure she doesn't miss anyone, actually setting it up so she can kill every conspirator in a single night, and physically improving her physique and magic in secret because she knows how to min-max from the beginning this time

(the lewd ideas I was bouncing around in my head were bodyswapping ideas, which somehow led to this. As for the lewd part...after she takes over the clan again, she fully takes responsibility for killing off so many of their magic users and promises to replenish their numbers through the efforts of her own loins :p Magic users in this setting would typically live 2-3 centuries, and she would live much longer than that thanks to her min-maxing, so lots of years of fertility!)

After the purge is over, she takes over her clan again under hew new legal identity. It would basically be an open secret in magic society that she's the reborn form of the former lord, but it's very much a freak accident/one-time thing, so it's not like other people can just go and get themselves a new body too. Whenever the ruling council of her family's remaining mages pisses her off, or people from other families, she makes a point of showing up in a maid outfit again.

I don't have the motive entirely fleshed out in my head for her being overthrown, but likely a combination of the top few wanting power and rare items the head was able to accumulate, and the dregs coming along for the material wealth. Maybe a little bit of him trying to push some family reforms through, too. He'd probably have been born late 1800s, so he would still be relatively conservative. 16 years later, being fully a child of the 21st century, she would be pushing some really radical reforms through then. Something like:

"I'm going to push these reforms through. If you have any objections, I'm actually, honestly open to fair and reasonable criticism. If you're just being whiny and want to try and overthrow me, well, look at what happened to the last group that did that."
I do have it in my head if she did her purge before finishing high school, she'd at least finish high school as a 'relatively normal' teenage girl while running the house on nights and weekends.
 
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