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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Inyssius" data-source="post: 4714216" data-attributes="member: 65483">It's a two-axis thing.Waterfalls of acid, slowly flowing ever west as they etch the copper sky. The moon is the gleaming eye of a night-black cyclopean turtle, closing in on the world to take vengeance on God for destroying the Pheonix King's world tree. Everyone can plane shift at will, but this ability is sorely truncated in this era; most people are slaved to the merciless yet loving Eternal Daughter to keep anyone from forming Dreamtime bubbles whenever they grow bored.That's both fantastical and high magic.On the other end, you've got no fantasy, and no magic. Here, we see the Dark Ages with the serial numbers filed off. The last Crusade has slowed to a halt with the onset of tuberculosis, and the legions are taking out their frustration on the local serfs. You're not a good enough fighter to take them all on; the only viable plan is banditry. You'll need an army of your own to get anything done, assuming you're not a wealthy diplomat or the Pope. Bleah.But the two axes don't have to go together. You can have high magic, but low fantasy. You've got great mages, yes, but the world really isn't that much different from the last one. It's the Dark Ages again, except everyone has flaming swords this time. There might be orcish hordes. Give me a break.Or whatever. Higher fantasy, lower magic: the goblin king has no mages, but his priesthood assures him that he must eat ten humans each day to keep the sun rising. Instead of farms, some people raise ferocious Black Pudding colonies for food (turns out the stuff can be both tasty and nonlethal if you dunk it in ammonium nitrate before cooking); this has allowed population densities to increase tenfold in those nations, though terrible accidents are more common as the breeding pens rot through. The leader of the Assassin's Guild is a black dragon; though dragons can't fly (with a size and shape like that? They'd tear themselves apart!), the black ones are stealthy as night.Obviously, I prefer the first and last. I think most people do.</blockquote>

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