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title: Runthrough for Locations Template

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# Runthrough for Locations Template

This document has been created to outline certain questions that need to be answered regarding new and important locations for the pills lore. Answering these questions can help the lorecrafters and the loremaster gain valuable insights into the inner workings of a specific location, how they fit in with the larger universe, and most importantly, how they can be used in conjunction with new ideas and developments for the lore. When creating a location, try to answer each of the questions listed in this template as fully as you can. Don’t worry about writing too much; these templates have been designed mostly to get as much information about your lore contributions as possible, and they can be condensed later as your ideas develop.

Working through these questions as a whole can also help you gain greater perspective on what you’re creating; the chances are, you may encounter questions here that you didn’t think of before, or find answers that open up new possibilities for your location.

For brevity, you could just answer the **first three questions** and come back to the rest of the questions later. The first three questions give the most rounded idea of what your location is, but it’s recommended to answer all of the questions. You’ll also find specific examples along with the questions to help demonstrate the kind of answers being looked for (these sample locations have no connection to the pills lore at the moment).

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### What is the name of your location?
Most location names tend to lean into what the location actually is and give insights into what someone should expect going in. The Abyss can be a harrowing empty space full of horrors, the Forestlands are full of robust tall trees that house all manner of life, the Endless Ocean is a...well, *endless ocean* (these are just examples but you get the idea right?). **A name, especially one for a location, is an immediate impression on what your location actually is.** It is the first thing a person will encounter, when it comes to your location, is its name. So, what is the name of your location? 

> It’s also worth remembering though that your name doesn’t have to be insightful, your location could be intentionally mysterious with a name that only heightens the mystery. The choice is yours. 
> 
Some examples below:

* **Castle Dread**
* **Osa**

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### What type of location is it? (a planet, a building, a town, city, etc)
It goes without saying that there’s a whole buffet table of variety when it comes to the type of location you’re creating. Is it a planet? A building? A topographical part of a world? Another plane of existence entirely? Most of the time, the location you’re writing about might also exist within another location that exists in the pills universe, it’s worth mentioning here if that’s the case. You could be writing about a church that exists on a planet for example, or a moon that exists near a planet. Feel free to be as simple or complex in your answer as you want. The intention of the answer here is to allow anyone reading to know the kind of location you’re creating in as simple a term as you can describe, to give them a picture in their head of what it is and how it might fit in with other locations.

* Castle Dread is a floating fortress that exists in the Foresaken Sea — a vast body of water only accessible to those that have died recently.
* Osa is a planet-sized snake that slithers across the cosmos.

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### Sum up your location in one sentence.
Now that you have a name and a specific location, it’s time to tell us what makes your location so special. What separates it from other locations of its type? In this answer, try to highlight the peculiarities and special features that can be found in your location — don’t worry too much about describing the looks of the location, that’ll come later. Instead focus on why a person might visit it, or maybe even, stay away from it? Who the location is for and who isn’t it for? What should be absolutely known about the location before a lorecrafter develops lore for it, what is the most important thing to know about it?

* Castle Dread is a nightmarish place that serves as a makeshift limbo to the recently deceased souls that have found themselves in the Foresaken Sea; there, souls are tested to discover which afterlife a person is destined for.
* Osa is a gargantuan snake that devours small suns for sustenance, it is an ancient but also idle-minded creature whose only purpose seems to be devouring and then moving on to its next meal. 

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### Describe your location, what does it physically look like?
The more descriptive you are here, often the better it is for others to imagine your location and use it in their own lore crafting. Try to picture yourself either in or above your location and describe what you’re seeing. Even minute details can be really insightful into the look and feel of a location. 

* Castle Dread is a large floating fortress, its bleak black towers have been built upon a levitating island of rock. It’s architecture is mostly formed of impressively ornate skulls; screaming skulls top its towers, a yawning skull marks its front entrance, and smaller, more human-sized skulls form the walls that make up its outer depths. It floats above the sea of damned souls as they reach out for it, but brings only a few inside. Those that do make it inside will find themselves in an impressive interior filled with overscaled halls bearing long black banners, skeletal creatures with trailing black robes, and artistic celebrations of skulls (paintings, statues, furniture, and more).
* Osa is a gargantuan creature and clearly ancient, in the time since its existence began things have been growing across its back and now the giant snake hosts a full and thriving jungle. Within the jungle there is a network of vines and trees that connect to one another through their roots and hanging branches, along with beautiful flowers that change colours rapidly. A person that finds themselves on Osa’s back will become entranced by the beautiful flowers — to the point that they will eventually starve. There are no creatures on Osa, only trees and other such plant-life, as Osa eats anything that evolves here like a gardener tending to the weeds.

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### What is the history of your location?
Has anything important ever happened at your location that is worth knowing? Where did your location come from, if anywhere at all, and why does it exist now? The answer to these questions and the overall question itself can cement your location in time and importance, allowing it to fit in with the lore and give lorecrafters insights into how they can use it. Perhaps there was a massive war in the location and now it’s in a sorry state, or perhaps it’s more akin to an unknown temple sitting on the edge of space, it once housed many worshippers that have long since faded to dust in the explosion of the universe? Feel free to go into as much detail as you want here! It might also help you, if you’re creating a timeline, to use the **000-999 method** — where 000 is the beginning of the universe and 999 is the absolute end of creation; you can use this method to create a tenuous timeline (see an example of that below!)

* Castle Dread was originally created by a creature known as Emperor Skull, who was one of the souls originally lost in the Foresaken Sea. Not one to give in to defeat, Emperor Skull constructed the castle out of the remains of other sinners and set it to levitate above the waters. Over the years he began judging souls and punishing the ones he deemed to be unfit. His work didn’t go unnoticed and eventually greater divine entities granted him the power to move souls from the Foresaken Seas to other afterlives that he deemed correct. Emperor Skull ruled for quite some time until the denizens of the Foresaken Sea joined together to defeat him and plunge him back into the waters, now Castle Dread is ruled over by a callous society of his former apostles, *The Robes of Carn*, who use Emperor Skull’s magnificent staff to carry out judgement on the souls.

> **000-999 example:**
Castle Dread Timeline:
> 100.
*Emperor Skull constructs the castle after being lost in the Foresaken Sea.*
> 115.
*The Castle begins judging souls and punishing them.*
> 185.
*Emperor Skull is given the powers by the great divine to ascend or descend souls into new afterlives.*
> 560.
*Emperor Skull is killed by renegade souls and Castle Dread is left without a leader.*
> 600.
*The Robes of the Carn take up Emperor Skull’s position and start judging souls as a society.*

* Osa has existed since the beginning of time, always floating throughout the cosmos in search of new suns to devour. Not much is really known about it, except that it is ancient, and the forerunner races discovered that some of the flora that grows on Osa can actually be used in a myriad of different but extremely useful ways (like becoming the basis for immortality potions, or curing disease). At some point in history, these forerunners lived on Osa’s back until their society collapsed and Osa’s name faded into myth.

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### What importance/associations does it have? (either in the lore or to a certain group)
Why is the location important? The answer to this particular question could have implications for the whole universe or even just for a small association of creatures. Perhaps it is a temple that houses a powerful artifact that hasn’t been seen since the beginning of creation, perhaps it’s a planet on the border of the galaxy that is important only to a select group of species that call it home, or perhaps even the function of the location serves as an important point in the universe’s gargantuan mechanisms. There’s also a chance that the location isn’t important at all, perhaps it was once to a select few, but has now faded into obscurity. In answering this particular question try to pinpoint what it is that lorecrafters should know specifically about the function of the location, why it exists if you will, as well as any associations it has (like is it home to a group of people, do people frequent there, or did people used to visit often but now don’t?) — a brief explanation about the group frequenting it can also be really insightful into the location itself, so feel free to add that too!

* Castle Dread is home to the Robes of the Carn, powerful skeletal deciders of fate who use the castle to assign lost souls into their correct afterlives. The castle is, in essence, a waypoint between afterlives and serves an important function as to sorting out the sinners from those that deserve worthy endings.
* Osa was once important to the forerunner species in the universe, but with their demise not many have visited or even know about the snake world. It has faded into such obscurity that finding the planet has become the life goals of many scholars and explorers, seeing the gargantuan planet as kind of an *Atlantis* or *El Dorado* of the universe. 

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### Does it have any real-world mirrors?
Is your location based on anything real, perhaps something that exists in crypto culture, or maybe even a piece of literature or other artistic form? It’s always worth mentioning what you’ve based your ideas on to give other lorecrafters an idea behind the foundations of the idea. With those foundations in place they can help you develop the idea and grow it, knowing what you’ve based it on.

