Spyglassrealms - Spyglass Realms

It's the 8th anniversary of Sphaera today! I created the original map of the world that became Sphaera on 4/24/2015. In celebration of this worldiversary, here's the project's overview article on WorldAnvil!

worldanvil.com

The Sphaera Project

An introduction to the Sphaeraverse and its metanarrative reasoning.

It is possible that somewhere off the coast of Newfoundland there is an iceberg shaped like a giant dick.

What are you to yourself?

To myself? The one guy who knows me better than any other guy could?

I see my self as a sort of explorer in a harsh, treacherous, and alien landscape. I think of myself as going on long expeditions into parts of my mind that other people have never seen before. And on the way I find things: strange creatures, wonderous gems, magnificent bounty.

To invading germs, you are a jungle full of hungry tigers. To your gut bacteria, you are a warm orchard of perpetual bounty. To your eyelash mites, you are a walking fortress and a mountaintop pasture. How many generations have you hosted? What do they name the wilderness of you?

— "Host" by @cryptonature, in his book Field Guide to the Haunted Forest

People are walking biomes if u think about it

not the first time this has been discussed or suggested but an easy fix to skyrim's dearth of interesting themes is to add a philosophical dilemma to absorbing souls. you start absorbing souls, you begin getting unsettling dreams. you begin to question: when you shout, is it you, is it the dragon? have you tamed it? have you become it? who are you? Is it fair to those souls, to destroy them so utterly? yes you have to save the world - but what of the cost? and what will you become by the end?

ties neatly into the central dilemma in paarthunax's character - the idea that one can conquest one's own nature. your character will keep absorbing souls - that's the story as written - but you're presented with two different options in what that could mean in alduin (an insatiable eater - in some ways not too different to your consumption of souls) and in paarthunax (who has restrained himself).

I tend to dislike stories that present choices as instincts and part of 'nature' but this dilemma - that you're becoming less mortal, more dragon, through devouring souls, something you can't seem to stop, unless you choose to stop fighting - at least adds complexity to the bare bones of skyrim's dragon storyline.