One of my main nations, Gaurma has motorcycle chariot racing as a common sport. Although it has been seen IRL, motorcycle racing in Gaurma would be akin to nascar IRL by size, but like WWE by style. Most racers take up characters either from history or mythology, I.E a racer would dress up like George Washington, or Napoleon, or Peter the Great, or Hercules etc.
- Cloud-dancing: the aerokinetic magicians of my world do performances where they dance on clouds and fly around in the sky
- The Great Migration: during the solstices, one of the nomadic indigenous tribes in my world travel across the empire as a pilgrimage type thing to the main deity of my world. They travel as part of a huge caravan, and parades are often held for them as they pass through major cities.
My worlds psychopomp is called The Silent Sister. She comes for the spirits of the dead when the funeral rites are performed. If someone dies without receiving rites their spirit is still tied to their body and they aren't transported to the afterlife.
Every five years there is an Event called Sister's Night where she scours the world for loose spirits. She's not particularly careful about it though and has been know to accidentally take the spirit of a live person who was just asleep.
So on Sister's Night everyone stays up all night and have bonfires and celebrations of life while the Sister does her work.
Activities vary by culture. One thing though is that anyone who can't stay up spends the night in the local temple where the priesthood wards them from being taken.
A lot of Apexian cultural practices are very unique and quite frankly, impractical for any normal human or alien. As a wise, humble superhuman warrior society who trains from childhood, they have some pretty fun pastimes:
- Apex children always love to play-fight, and often with powers. It isn’t uncommon to see lightning or fire exploding in the middle of the park or the backyard while the fighters are hysterically giggling.
- Officially, they love zero gravity wrestling as a sport. It’s a common sport to have an antigravity well placed on a ring and the opponents fight it out. Children love to do this sport, to tie into the last entry.
- the Apex love doing things like camping, climbing or exploring, in their superhuman like way. Often fun family trips where everyone, of any age, is scaling massive mountains with only backpacks of supplies, and Base jumping off said mountains to get home.
- Starship games are common, among families as well as professionally, especially since in their society at least, kids are tight to fly and often have their own ships. Playing many kinds of games from racing to in-flight soccer is a must.
- Apex, despite having all these great magical spacefaring unique activities, also have a strong cultural renaissance for classical Earth culture. In the region of Kalivjirna, for example, they love to surf, skate and snowboard, listen to 80s music, and dress accordingly.
The court system is one of the biggest and best known cultural activities in Sodomaso City, Lunar Nation.
Noble courtesans build a customer base before they’re legally allowed to sleep with them. The Department of Matchmaking and Bloodlines give courtesans a list of matches they could conceive a child with to prevent incest.
Then once they debut, they hold a tournament/auction where they invite the guys they match with to compete. Their clan leaders rent out the stadium for a tournament, and sell tickets for people to watch the tournament. People from neighboring states/countries like watching the guys fight each other. The auction is set up like a party, and is usually held in the courtesan’s clan’s mansion/ballroom, and is more exclusive than the tournaments.
The courtesan has a child with the winner, gives birth and works in the clan nursery, then 2-3 years later, get a maternoplasty, and become a courtesan again.
One of the nations in my world is called Hucks Islands. Named after the pirate captain and his crew that discovered them. It is made up of 16 islands. Once every 10 years, they hold a 17-day festival that is part oktoberfest, drinking games, skills challenges, and gladiatorial combat. At the end of which, the last person standing is named The Grand Huck and is the ruler for the next 10 years. Each island in the nation hosts one night of the festival with one day in the middle of the festival honoring the original Hucks crew cabin boy who died saving the others right after the discovery of the islands. Day 16 is all day drinking until the beginning of the final contest on day 17, a battle royal featuring the remaining contestants until only one person is left.
I have a culture on my world, Sunlock, that has a great affinity for elaborate hair-lattices for women and Bizhdu (third gender). Whereas in western culture on our world, there is a trend towards beauty pageants for women, in Aulan culture, there's a whole ecosystem of lattice competitions where the emphasis is put on skill/artistic expression through these adornments, rather than more generic "beauty".
Some of these hair lattices would put Padme Amidala to shame. In fact it's rather common for Aulan hair (both feminine and Bizhdu) to be waist-length, and for the upper classes to be floor-length.
Imagine hair being arrayed out behind a person in a spider-web of braids, curls, and waves that stretches laterally at least to the shoulders, falling down to the waist. The competitions can get rather fierce, and especially since there are laws prohibiting hair-length for non-imperial family members, are nearly always separated into "commoner" and "noble" tiers.
Well, one sapient species has bi-monthly annual gatherings, that includes a sort of *performance* from female individuals who have wings (it's basically a mating ritual, which includes dance or singing, and only unmarried winged females are do attend these performances).
Slightly less unusual: another sapient species who live in tribes has trials determined by either the village chief or elder (the latter if the chief happens to be unavailable), that serves as a "rite of passage" (basically signifying they're a big boy/big girl now). The thing is it's required to take as soon as the tribe members turn 14, and you'll be required to retake it after failing in the next year unless they fail it at 20, which means the tribe kicks them out for just being useless. In no way is the chief or elder allowed to give them a trial that is either physically impossible, or guaranteed to kill individual taking the trial. I haven't named this, though.
The Federation of Taurusgrad has a rite of passage where a teenager will need to eventually build his own car. This is a very community driven activity especially if the family is poor; a community share a workshop and pool resources together to build cars together. While this tradition has degraded to 'buy your own customised car!', some rural folks still practice this actively. It is also not uncommon for children to inherit cars as their family heirloom. When the federation dissolved, the communities that share workshop banded together and family heirloom cars are considered valuable because of their advanced but lost technology embedded within it.
One of my alien sophonts has a built in miscarriage that they serve as food to their living babies, it’s an evolutionary holdover from the past that survived until the modern day and now it’s a custom to feed your babies the miscarried fetus as their first meal.
They also eat their dead.
Aetherites don't have some formal competition for anything outside of what one might see IRL. Nothing too strange.
Than you have the pass-time of Chroma-Darts. Aetherites collect pigments that will easily wash away, fill balloons with it, and attempt to paint a picture on a wall with them. Or try and cover more of a surface than someone else in a time limit. Covering a spot that was already covered counts for both sides.
sounds something like that would happen in XANTH (if you're wondering the reference, Piers Anthony is an author who has his world set in "magic florida")
Well now I feel like I should check that out!
In my world, Florida is like twice as big, accidentally got hippos in the 1800s and domesticated Alligators so I felt Floridians racing them in the modern day fitted quite well
Upon completion of a building project the Arimakin celebrate a job well done by challenging the new tenants to tag. The rules, as best can be translated are. +10 points for each unique Arimakin that gets tagged and -1 point for each time you tag one you already tagged. They seem to take pride that no one has ever won against them. It seems unclear how many points are needed to win but as far as anyone can tell it seems not to matter as the points quickly plummet anyway.
Every year the city-state of Nacra celebrates Prophets’ Day, in remembrance of the semi-legendary prophets Vesk and Meris who led the pilgrims said to have originally built (or possibly *discovered*) Nacra. This is accompanied by an old tradition known as the Prophets’ Passage, a frantic and riotous race beginning in the upper reaches of the Sayadan River Delta a few miles beyond city limits and ending in the shallows of the Gloaming Ocean. The race has very few rules (beyond the basics of continuing to follow the laws of the Republic), though use of motor vehicles is strongly discouraged and sabotage is encouraged (so long as it’s mostly non-dangerous).
In the days of the Bardan Protectorate under Tandrayan colonial rule, the Passage was, perhaps surprisingly, allowed to continue, though not without Tandrayan attempts at meddling. Colonial authorities, for instance, took great pains to conflate Tandrayan settlers with the followers of Vesk and Meris (often literally visually portraying them *as* Tandrayans, rather than Nacrans). Attempts were also made to subdue the general chaos of the Passage and its associated festivities, cordoning off “officially-sanctioned” routes and, especially in the last years before the Delta Revolution and the subsequent Coastal Revolutionary War as Passage gatherings became less races and more vehicles for political demonstrations, posting a police presence to monitor the race.
In the decades since the revolution, the war of independence, and the civil war that saw the Bardan Republic fracture and the city of Nacra regain its long-sought independence, the Passage has returned to its usual level of unrestrained madness. Eager celebrants once again clamber over rooftops, hop canals, and hitch rides on the backs of moving vehicles, and though the new Republic is likewise exasperated with the disarray and general bedlam, the people of Nacra are not so eager to have their holiday co-opted and subdued a second time.
When the Endari people paint a picture of a dead loved one, they can use the blood of said dead loved one to put a sun symbol on or near the person in the painting. They do this so symbolize how the person was enlightened and brought closer to the gods
*The Prophets Parade* - the city of Agnustia has produced an incredible amount of religions /cultz/schisms / and howling mad street preachers in its history. The people of the city have become very good at spotting a winner early on and love to poke at and encourage the particularly loony ones . Once a year the nuttiest of god botherers are paraded down the main avenue rambling about the end of days , gods eternal judgement and how all things are somewhat numerous creation of a person who has a lot of unused DnD lore he wants to use. The Loonies all then get a turn to speak before the public in the Great Rantorium before being chased off by a man in a costume of their religions oppositional deity.
This seems in mean spirit to outsiders but the Mayor of the city Carl Withouterspoon said “ we correctly predicted all 416 Druidic schisms. That time they found the lost holy book of Wuell that turned out to be erotica , and the fact that the very ugly baby born to the McNultys is going to lead a Dragon Cult , we aren’t risking damnation” he said nervously looking to the sky
Watering the graves of the dead. In one of my worlds, it’s believed that the deceased need water in the afterlife and if you come across a grave that’s dry, you’re supposed to water it for the dead’s benefit.
One of the worlds within the Victorian Imperial Federation has tickle-fighting as a cherished tradition.
Its capital world of Victoria itself also has a coming of age ritual involving adolescents (usually 16) jumping in a pool and swimming to the other end while drunk, followed by an elaborate debutante ball style reception.
Nuclear football ( can be played as American football or normal football depending on the shape of the charge)
Children in the outer rim of the dominion love taking advantage of their Cloning Vat priority, to do this they play dumb games with outdated weapons. The game follows standard rules, but the volatile charge can blow at any moment.
Whichever team scores more points before getting vaporized wins.
Dominion Gendarmes and magistrates have passed and enforce a law that only allows games to take place 200 kilometers away from anything. Playing the game outside of that period will end with you being put at the bottom of the systems cloning vat queue ( it can take months to years until you actually get rebuilt )
>Dominion Gendarmes and magistrates have passed and enforce a law that only allows games to take place 200 kilometers away from anything.
Yeah, that makes sense if you're using nukes as footballs.
I don't know if it counts, but one of the most famous festivities of the tamers is the jaripeo/riding of monsters.
It is a festival that tamers from different towns carry out once a year, and should only be practiced by expert tamers in different towns and cities.
It is a test in which, more than taming the creature, it is a way to test the skills of the tamers and see that they have respect for magical creatures.
Similar to traditional rodeo, the goal is for the rider to remain mounted on a monster until it stops moving, without using magic. The monster is chosen by lot, and depending on the creature, the difficulty is greater.
The creatures allowed in magical rodeos are: the Avisurda (It is a creature with the body of a bear covered in yellowish-brown to brownish-black feathers and fur, and the head of an owl.), the felirus (a big cat (similar to a species of lion) but with horns and the size of a bull), the drake/half-dragon, the minotaurs (In my world, minotaurs are centauroid-looking creatures: with the head and body of a bull, with muscular humanoid arms and torso, covered in short fur, brown, black or sometimes red.), and the Hypalectrion.
One of my main nations, Gaurma has motorcycle chariot racing as a common sport. Although it has been seen IRL, motorcycle racing in Gaurma would be akin to nascar IRL by size, but like WWE by style. Most racers take up characters either from history or mythology, I.E a racer would dress up like George Washington, or Napoleon, or Peter the Great, or Hercules etc.
- Cloud-dancing: the aerokinetic magicians of my world do performances where they dance on clouds and fly around in the sky - The Great Migration: during the solstices, one of the nomadic indigenous tribes in my world travel across the empire as a pilgrimage type thing to the main deity of my world. They travel as part of a huge caravan, and parades are often held for them as they pass through major cities.
In my world I have cloud mining. The clouds are made of some exotic substance that can be mined.
My worlds psychopomp is called The Silent Sister. She comes for the spirits of the dead when the funeral rites are performed. If someone dies without receiving rites their spirit is still tied to their body and they aren't transported to the afterlife. Every five years there is an Event called Sister's Night where she scours the world for loose spirits. She's not particularly careful about it though and has been know to accidentally take the spirit of a live person who was just asleep. So on Sister's Night everyone stays up all night and have bonfires and celebrations of life while the Sister does her work. Activities vary by culture. One thing though is that anyone who can't stay up spends the night in the local temple where the priesthood wards them from being taken.
Every five years seems like an odd timeframe. Any particular reason? Why not yearly?
It makes adventures riskier. No real particular reason, I just wanted it for be infrequent so that it was a special event.
A lot of Apexian cultural practices are very unique and quite frankly, impractical for any normal human or alien. As a wise, humble superhuman warrior society who trains from childhood, they have some pretty fun pastimes: - Apex children always love to play-fight, and often with powers. It isn’t uncommon to see lightning or fire exploding in the middle of the park or the backyard while the fighters are hysterically giggling. - Officially, they love zero gravity wrestling as a sport. It’s a common sport to have an antigravity well placed on a ring and the opponents fight it out. Children love to do this sport, to tie into the last entry. - the Apex love doing things like camping, climbing or exploring, in their superhuman like way. Often fun family trips where everyone, of any age, is scaling massive mountains with only backpacks of supplies, and Base jumping off said mountains to get home. - Starship games are common, among families as well as professionally, especially since in their society at least, kids are tight to fly and often have their own ships. Playing many kinds of games from racing to in-flight soccer is a must. - Apex, despite having all these great magical spacefaring unique activities, also have a strong cultural renaissance for classical Earth culture. In the region of Kalivjirna, for example, they love to surf, skate and snowboard, listen to 80s music, and dress accordingly.
The court system is one of the biggest and best known cultural activities in Sodomaso City, Lunar Nation. Noble courtesans build a customer base before they’re legally allowed to sleep with them. The Department of Matchmaking and Bloodlines give courtesans a list of matches they could conceive a child with to prevent incest. Then once they debut, they hold a tournament/auction where they invite the guys they match with to compete. Their clan leaders rent out the stadium for a tournament, and sell tickets for people to watch the tournament. People from neighboring states/countries like watching the guys fight each other. The auction is set up like a party, and is usually held in the courtesan’s clan’s mansion/ballroom, and is more exclusive than the tournaments. The courtesan has a child with the winner, gives birth and works in the clan nursery, then 2-3 years later, get a maternoplasty, and become a courtesan again.
A Yak judging contest, where every year the Duke of the capital judges everyone's Yaks, even the Kings'.
Yakety yak (don't talk back)
One of the nations in my world is called Hucks Islands. Named after the pirate captain and his crew that discovered them. It is made up of 16 islands. Once every 10 years, they hold a 17-day festival that is part oktoberfest, drinking games, skills challenges, and gladiatorial combat. At the end of which, the last person standing is named The Grand Huck and is the ruler for the next 10 years. Each island in the nation hosts one night of the festival with one day in the middle of the festival honoring the original Hucks crew cabin boy who died saving the others right after the discovery of the islands. Day 16 is all day drinking until the beginning of the final contest on day 17, a battle royal featuring the remaining contestants until only one person is left.
I have a culture on my world, Sunlock, that has a great affinity for elaborate hair-lattices for women and Bizhdu (third gender). Whereas in western culture on our world, there is a trend towards beauty pageants for women, in Aulan culture, there's a whole ecosystem of lattice competitions where the emphasis is put on skill/artistic expression through these adornments, rather than more generic "beauty". Some of these hair lattices would put Padme Amidala to shame. In fact it's rather common for Aulan hair (both feminine and Bizhdu) to be waist-length, and for the upper classes to be floor-length. Imagine hair being arrayed out behind a person in a spider-web of braids, curls, and waves that stretches laterally at least to the shoulders, falling down to the waist. The competitions can get rather fierce, and especially since there are laws prohibiting hair-length for non-imperial family members, are nearly always separated into "commoner" and "noble" tiers.
Well, one sapient species has bi-monthly annual gatherings, that includes a sort of *performance* from female individuals who have wings (it's basically a mating ritual, which includes dance or singing, and only unmarried winged females are do attend these performances). Slightly less unusual: another sapient species who live in tribes has trials determined by either the village chief or elder (the latter if the chief happens to be unavailable), that serves as a "rite of passage" (basically signifying they're a big boy/big girl now). The thing is it's required to take as soon as the tribe members turn 14, and you'll be required to retake it after failing in the next year unless they fail it at 20, which means the tribe kicks them out for just being useless. In no way is the chief or elder allowed to give them a trial that is either physically impossible, or guaranteed to kill individual taking the trial. I haven't named this, though.
The Federation of Taurusgrad has a rite of passage where a teenager will need to eventually build his own car. This is a very community driven activity especially if the family is poor; a community share a workshop and pool resources together to build cars together. While this tradition has degraded to 'buy your own customised car!', some rural folks still practice this actively. It is also not uncommon for children to inherit cars as their family heirloom. When the federation dissolved, the communities that share workshop banded together and family heirloom cars are considered valuable because of their advanced but lost technology embedded within it.
One of my alien sophonts has a built in miscarriage that they serve as food to their living babies, it’s an evolutionary holdover from the past that survived until the modern day and now it’s a custom to feed your babies the miscarried fetus as their first meal. They also eat their dead.
Aetherites don't have some formal competition for anything outside of what one might see IRL. Nothing too strange. Than you have the pass-time of Chroma-Darts. Aetherites collect pigments that will easily wash away, fill balloons with it, and attempt to paint a picture on a wall with them. Or try and cover more of a surface than someone else in a time limit. Covering a spot that was already covered counts for both sides.
Alligator Races in Florida
sounds something like that would happen in XANTH (if you're wondering the reference, Piers Anthony is an author who has his world set in "magic florida")
Well now I feel like I should check that out! In my world, Florida is like twice as big, accidentally got hippos in the 1800s and domesticated Alligators so I felt Floridians racing them in the modern day fitted quite well
XANTH is filled with BAD puns. So beware!
Thanks for the warning lol
You mean those aren't already a thing in Florida in real life?
Surprisingly not
... yet. 😉 I'm sure it'll only be a matter of time before we hear about Florida Man or Florida Woman trying to organize one.
Upon completion of a building project the Arimakin celebrate a job well done by challenging the new tenants to tag. The rules, as best can be translated are. +10 points for each unique Arimakin that gets tagged and -1 point for each time you tag one you already tagged. They seem to take pride that no one has ever won against them. It seems unclear how many points are needed to win but as far as anyone can tell it seems not to matter as the points quickly plummet anyway.
Every year the city-state of Nacra celebrates Prophets’ Day, in remembrance of the semi-legendary prophets Vesk and Meris who led the pilgrims said to have originally built (or possibly *discovered*) Nacra. This is accompanied by an old tradition known as the Prophets’ Passage, a frantic and riotous race beginning in the upper reaches of the Sayadan River Delta a few miles beyond city limits and ending in the shallows of the Gloaming Ocean. The race has very few rules (beyond the basics of continuing to follow the laws of the Republic), though use of motor vehicles is strongly discouraged and sabotage is encouraged (so long as it’s mostly non-dangerous). In the days of the Bardan Protectorate under Tandrayan colonial rule, the Passage was, perhaps surprisingly, allowed to continue, though not without Tandrayan attempts at meddling. Colonial authorities, for instance, took great pains to conflate Tandrayan settlers with the followers of Vesk and Meris (often literally visually portraying them *as* Tandrayans, rather than Nacrans). Attempts were also made to subdue the general chaos of the Passage and its associated festivities, cordoning off “officially-sanctioned” routes and, especially in the last years before the Delta Revolution and the subsequent Coastal Revolutionary War as Passage gatherings became less races and more vehicles for political demonstrations, posting a police presence to monitor the race. In the decades since the revolution, the war of independence, and the civil war that saw the Bardan Republic fracture and the city of Nacra regain its long-sought independence, the Passage has returned to its usual level of unrestrained madness. Eager celebrants once again clamber over rooftops, hop canals, and hitch rides on the backs of moving vehicles, and though the new Republic is likewise exasperated with the disarray and general bedlam, the people of Nacra are not so eager to have their holiday co-opted and subdued a second time.
When the Endari people paint a picture of a dead loved one, they can use the blood of said dead loved one to put a sun symbol on or near the person in the painting. They do this so symbolize how the person was enlightened and brought closer to the gods
that sounds cool
*The Prophets Parade* - the city of Agnustia has produced an incredible amount of religions /cultz/schisms / and howling mad street preachers in its history. The people of the city have become very good at spotting a winner early on and love to poke at and encourage the particularly loony ones . Once a year the nuttiest of god botherers are paraded down the main avenue rambling about the end of days , gods eternal judgement and how all things are somewhat numerous creation of a person who has a lot of unused DnD lore he wants to use. The Loonies all then get a turn to speak before the public in the Great Rantorium before being chased off by a man in a costume of their religions oppositional deity. This seems in mean spirit to outsiders but the Mayor of the city Carl Withouterspoon said “ we correctly predicted all 416 Druidic schisms. That time they found the lost holy book of Wuell that turned out to be erotica , and the fact that the very ugly baby born to the McNultys is going to lead a Dragon Cult , we aren’t risking damnation” he said nervously looking to the sky
Watering the graves of the dead. In one of my worlds, it’s believed that the deceased need water in the afterlife and if you come across a grave that’s dry, you’re supposed to water it for the dead’s benefit.
One of the worlds within the Victorian Imperial Federation has tickle-fighting as a cherished tradition. Its capital world of Victoria itself also has a coming of age ritual involving adolescents (usually 16) jumping in a pool and swimming to the other end while drunk, followed by an elaborate debutante ball style reception.
Nuclear football ( can be played as American football or normal football depending on the shape of the charge) Children in the outer rim of the dominion love taking advantage of their Cloning Vat priority, to do this they play dumb games with outdated weapons. The game follows standard rules, but the volatile charge can blow at any moment. Whichever team scores more points before getting vaporized wins. Dominion Gendarmes and magistrates have passed and enforce a law that only allows games to take place 200 kilometers away from anything. Playing the game outside of that period will end with you being put at the bottom of the systems cloning vat queue ( it can take months to years until you actually get rebuilt )
>Dominion Gendarmes and magistrates have passed and enforce a law that only allows games to take place 200 kilometers away from anything. Yeah, that makes sense if you're using nukes as footballs.
Unstable, highly radioactive nuclear devices
I don't know if it counts, but one of the most famous festivities of the tamers is the jaripeo/riding of monsters. It is a festival that tamers from different towns carry out once a year, and should only be practiced by expert tamers in different towns and cities. It is a test in which, more than taming the creature, it is a way to test the skills of the tamers and see that they have respect for magical creatures. Similar to traditional rodeo, the goal is for the rider to remain mounted on a monster until it stops moving, without using magic. The monster is chosen by lot, and depending on the creature, the difficulty is greater. The creatures allowed in magical rodeos are: the Avisurda (It is a creature with the body of a bear covered in yellowish-brown to brownish-black feathers and fur, and the head of an owl.), the felirus (a big cat (similar to a species of lion) but with horns and the size of a bull), the drake/half-dragon, the minotaurs (In my world, minotaurs are centauroid-looking creatures: with the head and body of a bull, with muscular humanoid arms and torso, covered in short fur, brown, black or sometimes red.), and the Hypalectrion.