Orsire'anar, Dark elf city.

Above the seething ocean of upper asthenospheric magma, looms a black vaulted ceiling bristling with the roots of vast, inverted trees. Their trunks hang stalactite tight, splaying upsidedown umbrellas of shaggy green leaves, drinking in the infernal glow. 
Great ovoid dormitories of spider silk, hammock in the leafy boughs like clutches of demented silver eggs, offering shade from the baleful glare below. Sandwiched between them are gangplank paths of resin smelling wood that sway limply on silken tethers with each exhalation of scalding sulphurous steam. Iron cauldrons are lowered by chains to cook in the heat of the lower altitudes. fruit-bats ride the thermals in contented stupor. Cicadas buzz and in the distance the great whooping calls of gibbons resound beneath the igneous rock. This is Orsire'anar, greatest city of the dark elves. 

Meals in Orsire'anar:

1. Chaffles made from gibbon cheese and snake eggs, topped with escargot.
2. Fermenting bats glazed in cicada honeydew secretions and rotisseried.
3. Brain served raw and thinking from a gibbon with hobbled arms.
4. Squirming Insect grubs slathered in melty gibbon cheese with pomegranate and fig.
5. Pickled snake meat and bat foetus skewers.
6. Live baby snakes, cut straight from the mother.
7. Slowcooked snake, pulled, and served in salt and vinegar.
8. Jellied gibbon eyes on bug-meal hardtack, with a cheese platter.
9. Snottite noodles in mushroom stew with hard boiled snake eggs and blood sausage.
10. Candied wasps, dried mushroom and pomegranate seeds.

Drinks in Orsire'anar:

1. Pomegranate moonshine, speed fermented with snottite acid. 
2. Vintage fig and mushroom wine. 
3. Giant spider haemolymph, tapped straight from the steed.
4. Gibbon milk sweetened with cicada honeydew secretions.
5. Snake wine, with added wasps. 
6. Carbonated fruit juice.
7. Herbal tea made from assorted plants and fungi.
8. Fish oil imports, squeezed from stygofauna in a subterranean freshwater ocean above.
9. Pulped insect larvae in dilute vinegar, chewy like boba. 
10. Colour shifting hallucinogenic mushroom juice.

The dark elves of  Orsire'anar are interested in buying:

• Ice, or anything similarly cold.
• Books and paintings. They have a certain smugness that such things can only be appreciated in places with light.
• Surface goods, preferably nothing metal due to the heat.
• Your eyes, if they're pretty, you’ll hardly need them venturing back into the dark afterall.
• Untarnished silver, an excellent way to detect poison.
• Slaves, the prettier the better.

They sell:

• Fire resistant timber and carpentry, from the inverted pomegranate trees.
• Food, at low prices too.
• Spider silk rope, tents and garnments most of which are super skimpy due to the heat.
• Poisons in an alarming wide variety. 
• Amber, with little insects in them.
• Giant spiders, domesticated as steeds, temperament as a house cat.
• Slaves, if you’re that kind of a person.

 

Tulpa and Egregore lists and inspiration

 

What they are:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulpa
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egregore

What they do:

1. Inhibits or elicits emotion
2. only moves when not percieved by a sense (e.g. sight, hearing, smell)
3. Adds or removes a sense or ability (e.g. speaking a language)
4. cannot be percieved with a certain sense
5. cannot be percieved as doing certain things, will be percieved as doing something else
6. knows about who knows of it, or those who reference it
7. manifests to those who know of it, or whenever it is referenced
8. Antimemetic; causes itself to be forgotten
9. causes other unrelated memories to be forgotten or fabricated
10. inserts itself into unrelated memories
11. Alters related or unrelated memories
12. causes itself to be percieved as having a certain relationship to the observer (e.g your child, your mortal enemy)
13. Believes that it is something or someone
14. Causes itself to be perceived as a certain thing or person
15. Causes observers to feel a certain way about it
16. Causes belief in an untrue thing or disbelief in a true thing (e.g. I’m trapped, I can fly)
17. can only be refered to in a certain way (e.g. 1st person, in limrick)
18. Blends distinct objects or concepts into a hybrid form, both materially and semantically
19. Causes objects or people to lose their semantic identity and adopt a new one, either imposed from a template or derived from nearby entities.
20. Causes an inability to distinguish between two or more concepts
21. Causes an inability to distinguish between two or more senses
22. Embodies a concept as understood by the observer
23. spreads by taking over words and the concepts tied to them. When it absorbs a word, it also consumes the shared understanding of what that word means in human thought.
24. Can read minds or memories
25. Can only be perceived indirectly
26. Manifests as different entities to different observers simultaneously.
27. Shifts its traits depending on how it's defined
28. Traps attention—once perceived, it cannot be ignored
29. acts inversely to how observers perceive it
30. Antisymbolic; dismantles social constructs (money, nation, law) and the human condition (beauty, family, enviable), rendering reality down into base truths — cease to be human, there is only a collection of meat and organs, there is only a mass of vibrating atoms without meaningful distinction from the oxygen and nitrogen atoms around them.
31. Induces agnosia: inability to interpret sensations and hence to recognize things. Can be tied to a specific sense or be more general.
32. Increases pareidolia: enhancement of a person's ability and tendency to recognise patterns and meaning within vague stimuli, such as seeing shapes in clouds and seeing faces in inanimate objects or abstract patterns
33. Creates, removes or transfers subconscious habits
34. Splits the mind, creates an alter ego, multiple personality disorder
35. Adds or removes something from the id or superego
36. Adds, removes or induces an anxiety, a fear, or a dread
37. Hallucinatory fufilment of an anxiety, a fear, or a dread
38. Controls the bodies of the sleeping, or forces the awake to watch fully aware as unwilling participants
39. Causes seizures, coma, paralysis or some other directly debiliating, less psychological effect

 

Appearance:

1. Fuligin: a hypothetical colour darker than black.
2. Synaesthesia: stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway.
3. Olo is a color discovered in April 2025 by a team of scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, that cannot be perceived with the naked eye. "Researchers used lasers to create stimulation in individual cone cells in the retina — leading to the perception of a completely new colour." It is claimed that #00FFCC, the hex color for turquoise, is the closest color to olo that screens can produce.
4. Stygian colors: These are simultaneously dark and impossibly saturated. For example, to see "stygian blue": staring at bright yellow causes a dark blue afterimage, then on looking at black, the blue is seen as blue against the black, also as dark as the black. The color is not possible to achieve through normal vision, because the lack of incident light (in the black) prevents saturation of the blue/yellow chromatic signal (the blue appearance).
5. Self-luminous colors: These mimic the effect of glowing material, even when viewed on a medium such as paper, which can only reflect and not emit its own light. For example, to see "self-luminous red": staring at green causes a red afterimage, then on looking at white, the red is seen against the white and may seem to be brighter than the white.
6. Hyperbolic colors: These are impossibly highly saturated. For example, to see "hyperbolic orange": staring at bright cyan causes an orange afterimage, then on looking at orange, the resulting orange afterimage seen against the orange background may cause an orange color purer than the purest orange color that can be made by any normally seen light.
7. Colors outside physical color space: In rare experimental conditions, observers reported seeing entirely new colours such as reddish-green and bluish-yellow—combinations normally thought impossible due to the brain’s opponent-process system. These colours were vivid yet indescribable, unlike any known hues, and sometimes appeared as one colour seen through another, creating a sense of transparency.
8. Drifting: the texture, shape, and structure of objects appear to progressively warp, melt, or morph while being stared at, returning to normal once focus is shifted. It often includes effects like texture movement and visual trails. Subtypes include morphing (spontaneous, chaotic distortion), breathing (rhythmic expansion and contraction), melting (surfaces appearing to liquefy), and flowing (textures moving in a looped, fluid motion, especially on detailed surfaces like wood or fur).
9. Chromatic aberration: colours on the edges of objects appear split into overlapping layers, typically red, green, and blue. This creates a distorted, fringed outline that makes the environment resemble the view through red-blue 3D glasses.
10. Recursion: parts of the environment repeat themselves in a self-similar, fractal-like pattern. These repeating sections may appear to zoom in or out of the original image, creating a looping or layered visual.
11. Symmetrical texture repetition: textures appear to mirror themselves repeatedly in intricate, symmetrical patterns. This repetition maintains its detail even when closely examined and is most noticeable in the peripheral vision, often on rough surfaces like grass, carpets, or bark. When staring at a fixed point, the patterns can grow more complex.
12. Texture liquidation: texture, shape, and general structure of objects and scenery appear progressively simplified, smudged and stylized in such a way that one's external environment begins to take on the general appearance of a painting or cartoon.
13. Visual twisting: a distortion where parts of the visual field appear to curl or spiral around a central point. May cause inability to resolve objects or have any sense of depth perception
14. Cubism: subjects are deconstructed and reassembled into abstract forms, showing multiple viewpoints at once rather than a single perspective, combining various angles into one image.
15. Children's drawings: typically characterised by bold lines, simple shapes, and vibrant colours. Visually, these artworks feature disproportionate figures, floating elements, and symbolic rather than realistic depiction.
16. Letters: marks made to hold meaning, shapes repeated until they become familiar. They are lines and curves arranged with intention, their forms neither natural nor random, but entirely human.
17. An earworm: a fragment of melody that loops endlessly in the mind, uninvited and persistent.

Sources of inspiration:

all of these are worth a look

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_phobias
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_manias
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mental_disorders
https://www.effectindex.com/effects/
https://www.effectindex.com/effects/drifting
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impossible_color
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fuligin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_Martian_Manhunter
https://rottenpulp.blogspot.com/2022/12/entity-06-excess-reality-squad.html
https://rottenpulp.blogspot.com/2023/01/entity-07-culture-vampire.html
https://rottenpulp.blogspot.com/2023/12/entity-009-lost-in-mall-machine.html
https://rottenpulp.blogspot.com/2025/05/entity-11-habit-former.html
https://wardagainstevil.com/2025/03/07/treat-illusions-as-you-would-any-other-lie-no-rolls/
https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-055
https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-091
https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-247
https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-400
https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-426
https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-444
https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-637
https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-1074
https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-1128
https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-1504
https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-1539
https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-2510
https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-2521
https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-2559
https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-3533
https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-3930
https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-5712

Wuxia/Xianxia/Murim Tropes and terminology.

 

Factions & Sects

Orthodox:
Follow strict rules and value reputation and "face" highly. Often portrayed as righteous or good, but frequently include elements of hypocrisy, political scheming, and Machiavellian manoeuvring.

Unorthodox:
Operate outside the rules. May include criminal elements, vigilante gangs, rebels, or freedom fighters. Frequently depicted as morally ambiguous or outright villainous syndicates, though they can blur into either direction.

Demonic:
Religious cults led by charismatic or tyrannical figures. They often uphold strength as the ultimate virtue. While some are shown with complexity or nuance, many maintain dark aspects such as slavery, raiding, forced indoctrination, or drug trafficking. Occasionally depicted as cartoonishly evil (e.g., human sacrifice, mass murder).

---

Cultivation & Internal Systems

Qi:
A type of life force or magical energy, functionally similar to mana.

Meridians:
A secondary circulatory system that channels qi throughout the body.

Dantians:
Energy cores within the meridian system. The lower dantian (below the navel) is most commonly referenced. The heart and brain (pituitary gland) dantians are sometimes included—using them often causes drawbacks like shortened lifespan or madness. The lower dantian, however, is never shown to have adverse effects.

Five Phases:
Wood, Water, Earth, Metal, Fire — the elemental basis for many systems.

Yin & Yang:
Symbolise female/male, cold/hot, dark/light, moon/sun, passive/active, contactive/expansive dualities.

Dao Heart & Heart Demons:
Refer to a cultivator’s conviction or spiritual purpose. Heart demons may represent inner turmoil, crises of faith, or psychological weaknesses. In some stories, they manifest as literal voices or entities undermining the cultivator’s willpower.

Qi Deviation:
Occurs when qi flows incorrectly. Always results in injury, and may cause insanity or death, depending on severity.

Qi Reversal:
A technique where qi is circulated in the opposite direction. It grants temporary power but almost always causes qi deviation. Even in stories with partial workarounds, it’s usually a desperate, fatal move.

Dao:
An overarching philosophical/religious concept. Generally translated as “the Way” or “life path,” but its meaning is vast, nuanced, and context-dependent.

Cultivation:
The process of absorbing and refining qi to build one’s power. Involves laying a strong foundation—poor foundations hinder future growth.

---

Techniques, Powers & Items

Killing Intent:
A magical aura projecting murderous intent. Can terrify enemies or give away one’s position if not properly suppressed. It's tied to the emotion of bloodlust but is somewhat controllable.

Whispering Technique:
Allows voice projection to specific individuals, sometimes called telepathy. Vocal cords move but the speech is undetectable to others.

Qi Blade:
A technique where qi is emitted from a blade, extending its range and lethality.

Telekinetic Sword:
Lets users control their sword remotely.

Flying Sword:
Used for flight. Other items such as gourds or even large leaves can also be used.

Qinggong:
Lightness or movement techniques that enhance agility and speed to superhuman levels.

Formations:
A broad term covering magical or strategic setups. May involve trap deployment, military formations, or spiritual arrays.

Music Dao:
Cultivation or techniques using music to produce magical effects or inflict physical damage.

Dual Cultivation:
Refers to sexual cultivation using yin and yang synergy between male and female practitioners. Typically benifical to both partners.

Cauldrons:
Slang for unwilling dual cultivation partners, often drained of qi. Rare for this to even be referenced in the stuff I read, but not so rare I don't know what it is. Forums and Reddit suggest they're more common in badly written light novels, where main characters are written as psychopathic self inserts.

Pills:
Based on traditional Chinese medicine. Herbs and pills are omnipresent. Performance-enhancing substances are used by everyone who cultivates and always portrayed positively. Occasionally, magical alcohol, food, or water serves a similar purpose.

---

Physiques, Creatures & Spirits

Demonic Beasts:
Vary widely but often share traits such as high intelligence, the ability to speak, magical powers, humanoid or monstrous forms, a valuable internal core, and the capacity to cultivate.

Sword Spirits:
Weapons (usually swords) that possess souls. This concept may extend to other objects.

 Ghostly Mentor:
A common trope where an initially unseen master saps the protagonist's cultivation. Once they gain enough qi, the mentor materialises and begins teaching, eventually offering enough benefit to offset the cost.

Poison Body:
A body infused with poison—often through extreme suffering—making the user immune to toxins and capable of poisoning others with their qi. Usually causes chronic pain.

Ice Yin Physique: Females with ice powers but suffer from illnesses due to excess cold yin qi. Sometide an influx of Yang Qi solves the issue, which some authors implement in usavoury ways. Excess yang can lead to overheating. There's probably a fire or light based yang equivalent to the ice yin physique, but it’s rarely explored in detail.

Qi Draining Physique: Some yin bodies can siphon yang qi on touch, often as part of an illness that compels them to do so. A yang counterpart that absorbs yin is likely but isn't something i've seen.

Gu Insects:
Insect-based methods used for control, coercion, or assassination.

Death Qi User:
Uses energy derived from death. Can see spirits and command them using shamanic practices.

Jiangshi:
Usually refers to rigid, hopping undead. May also apply to any intact-bodied undead.

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Narrative Frameworks

Transmigration, Regression & Systems:
Common storytelling devices, overused.

• Transmigration: Involves a character’s soul entering another body, typically in another world, sometimes that of a dead, pathetic or vile person. Ethical concerns are rarely addressed, they just pretend to be the person around their friends and fammily. Ocassionaly born as a baby with past life memories. The world they end up in is also typically one they read about in a light novel or was in a videogame they enjoyed, the novels and games are always original creations by the story.
  

• Regression: A character returns to their younger self with all memories intact. Sometimes they possess another body like in transmigration.

• Past Life Memories: Sometimes results in personality shifts. Rarely distinguishable from transmigration.

• Systems: A helpful cheat system, Almost always tacky game-like UI elements (missions, shops, gaccha pulls, rewards. I have seen a single exception to this format), often poorly implemented, but made to be essential to the plot.
  

Terminal Illness:
A common challenge for protagonists to overcome. The terminal illness often provides great power.

Revenge:
A major motivator for many characters. Destroyed sects, dead loved ones, tragic pasts.

Foreseen Tragedy:
Another common motivator. Often tied to regression, transmigration, or systems and revenge plots

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Organisations & Sects

• Escort Agencies: Deliver mail, protect cargo, and provide bodyguard services.

• Tang Clan: Poison users from Sichuan. Orthodox.

• Jaegal/Zhuge Clan: Strategists and propagandists. Orthodox.

• Seol Clan (North Sea Ice Palace): Sometimes Mongolian-inspired. Based on Olkhon Island in Lake Baikal. Literal ice palace. Orthodox?

• Mount Hua Sect: Plum blossom swordsmanship. Orthodox.

• Zhongnan Sect: Based in Xi’an, Shaanxi Province. Snow blossom swordsmanship. Rivals of Mount Hua. Orthodox.

• Mount Emei Sect: Warrior nuns. Orthodox.

• Beggar Sect: Intelligence network run by beggars. Orthodox.

• Shaolin Temple: Buddhist monks, focus on unarmed combat. Orthodox.

• Wudang Sect: Swordsmen. Taoist. Emphasise yin-yang balance (taiji). Based in Wudang Mountains. Orthodox.

• Namgoong Clan: Extremely powerful and influential, often depicted as number one in both regards. Orthodox.
  

• Peng Sect: Brute strength fighters. Use massive weapons. From Hebei. Orthodox.

• Mohist Sect: Typically experts in machinery, traps, and automatons. Adhere to Mohist rather than Daoist or Buddhist philosophy. Orthodox.

• Nanman Beast Palace: Exists in two popular franchises, I know nothing about them beyond that they come from Yunnan Province.

• Green Forest: Bandit union. Unorthodox.

• Yangtze Pirates: Pirates operating on the Yangtze River. Unorthodox.

• Hao Clan: Composed of the lowest societal classes—thieves, prostitutes, smugglers, drug dealers. Sell information more freely than the Beggar Sect. Unorthodox.

• Ming Cult / Heavenly Demon Divine Cult: Based on Manichaeism. Has ties to the Ming Dynasty. Most ubiquitous Demonic.

• Blood Cult: Use blood magic and necromancy. Known for mass murder. Occasionally shows splinter groups with moral ambiguity, but overall remains unambigously evil.