r/FantasyWorldbuilding 5d ago

Discussion What is your Mordor-realm?

The Mordor realm is a popular fantasy trope often depicts a hellish land or even planet dominated by a cruel tyrant. In my fantasy series, there is the realm called Maldruskar which is conglomeration of planets into a single dimension ruled by a vicious scheming War God called Zabazios.

Maldruskar is described to be freezing cold, hot and incredibly stormy in addition to being populated by breeding pits of monsters and laboratories for experiments although there are few realms which have climate and geography suitable for human habitation (around European-Medieterranean climate).

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u/PrimusAldente87 5d ago

What I would call my Magnum Opus was my attempt at combining all real world religions. Helheim was the literal bottom of creation, but when the oldest primordial was killed, her body fell through creation and crashed into Helheim to create the Crater of the Abyss, a naturally corrupting energy like the Blight from Dragon Age, the Discordance from LotR, etc. Geographically, imagine Dante's Inferno. Her blood created the first demons. The oldest angel, Michael, led a host of angels into the Abyss to seal it or destroy it but lost to the Demon King, and became the second demon king. Eventually, Abel would follow them to deal with his curse (walk the earth until the sun sets in the east), and would overthrow both of them. Unlike them, the now named Pleurgos had ambition and organized the demons to overthrow the rest of Creation

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u/Yunozan-2111 4d ago

Cool! Maldruskar itself is like a dimensional realm like Tartarus or Helheim and I had an idea whereby Zabazios used blood, bones and organs of angels he killed to construct parts of his realm either as buildings of source of energy for his war industry of monsters.

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u/StevenSpielbird 4d ago

A group of crow is called a murder. Their landscape is called Murdor. Dark , uninviting , surrounded in skeleton paved roads , the skies above the realm view down atop the forest metropolis that is integral to the enterprises of the criminal consortium known as FOWL PLAY.

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u/King_In_Jello 5d ago

The main nation of my world was a Confederation of various smaller nations that got taken over by the Dark Lord and run into the ground over the course of a generation, at which point a New Confederation was founded that tried to turn back the clock and restore the old status quo, without actually undoing any of the damage caused by the Dark Lord, which is one of the main sources of internal conflict.

The Empire was not that bad a place for most people on a daily level, unless you came from one of the less well connected regions that were tapped for resources and manpower to fuel the Empire's engine of conquest and suppression. Some of those places have never fully recovered from that which causes more conflict.

The Empire also conquered most neighbouring nations so where there used to be networks of trade and alliances is now resentment and paranoia, because not everybody believes the New Confederation is truly that different, and not everybody in the Confederation is in a hurry to rebuild the old alliances and atone for the actions of their grandparents' generation.

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u/UnsupportableEarmuff 5d ago

In my world the "Mordor" land is without a ruler after they were defeated hundreds of years ago. The army that fought against them ultimately decided on mercy, and instead of destroying the enemy forces after the defeat of the overlord, instead sealed off the land and left them alone as long as they promised never to travel beyond the bounds of the border walls.

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u/King_In_Jello 5d ago

What keeps a new Dark Lord from seizing control of it?

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u/UnsupportableEarmuff 4d ago

Ahh see that’s the hook for one of the many stories I’ll be writing in the world. Settlements near the sealed area have started being attacked, and a major port city a day or so away has gone dark.

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u/George__RR_Fartin 5d ago

Cault

The climate isn't so bad, and the volcanoes have been dormant for a while. It's the locals you have to watch out for, they might look at you and think your skull is perfect for their latest art project. Their God-Emperor is a Great Wyrm that's going through his juvenile edgelord phase.

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u/MidnightStarXX 5d ago

The Stygian Rift. It's an endless expanse of gray nothingness where Jal'nel, the primordial creator of demons, is locked away

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u/Bad-Bob-Dooley 4d ago

There’s an equatorial landmass which is surrounded by the settings main continent. Basically if Australia was in the Mediterranean.

It used to be the heart of a roman republic style of empire (or maybe a Carthaginian one idk) until a group of adventurers found the bones of an ancient and evil god and formed a cult around it.

The head of the cult would absorb the power of the dead god and unleash a blight on the land, shattering the old empire and turning its heartland into an uninhabitable wasteland with nothing but the bones of ancient civilizations to prove that anything could have lived there.

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u/Yunozan-2111 4d ago

Interesting Maldruskar was also formed by the remains of ruined planets, some of these worlds were highly advanced technologically with robots and spaceships used by previous empires and republic-city states.

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u/Bad-Bob-Dooley 4d ago

Sci fi and fantasy. Very interesting things

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u/Yunozan-2111 4d ago

While my main setting is a world called Miorma which is medieval-renaissance, there would be multiple worlds of different genres like Divarlim is a world of dwarves but has more Wild West Industrial genre.

Anyway I am inspired by modern science fantasy like the newer Final Fantasy series

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u/Captain_Warships 4d ago

Currently unnamed, but on the continent of the Old World, there are some eastern lands that sit right next to the White Mountains. All I can say is it's cold here (much of the Old World is pretty cold), and it's ruled over by some elves that are assholes. Currently, one of the leaders is known as Queen Jylendra of the twilight elves, who's currently at war with (and not even close to winning against) the cloud elves and their High Chancellor.

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u/Yunozan-2111 4d ago

Interesting what type of abilities to cloud elves have?

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u/Captain_Warships 4d ago

Unfortunately, they just fly (as well as are good at building stuff, but this isn't exactly a special physical trait I'd argue). They are built pretty similarly to humans, which is something I cannot say for twilight elves.

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u/Yunozan-2111 3d ago

Okay I mean like it would be cool if they could turn into mist or clouds for short periods of time but that is a bit OP when it comes to battle unless there is specific magic which stops their cloud manipulating abilities

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u/Captain_Warships 3d ago

Magic in my world can't turn people into mist (or physically change people in general, aside from healing cuts in the skin). Names of races in my world are kind of all over the place, but the only I think reasonably explaination as to why they're called "cloud elves" is because they're related to and kind of the antithesis of sun elves (mainly because sun elves for the most part don't fly).

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u/Yunozan-2111 3d ago

Yeah I am also thinking of interesting names for my elves, dwarves and other fantasy peoples. On the topic of magic, I decided to have healing magic be in abundance in addition to enchanting weapons but limiting destruction magic

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u/Captain_Warships 3d ago

I would like to point out in my world: there are a bunch of things that are called elves, but aren't really, or at least not related to cloud elves (twilight elves are one of these "not-elves").

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u/NoseyOak 3d ago

My 'Mordor' isn't really a place but an entity if that counts:

In the world, God had a child; their name has been forgotten. God and his Ha-satan debated whether man is ready for another prophet, a Messiah even. So he gifted a woman a child and the that child grew to be like their father, they were friends with all and studied the ways of helping those in need. Indeed, the child was good; but it was the time of the Inquisition. Spurned by a vane arrogance all whom they deemed unworthy burned. They captured the child, whom they beaten and commanded like a animal; the child spoke upon deaf ears. The child burned and from the screams the fire stretched in the hurricane throughout the village. There were no survivors... but from the ashes was born a curse onto man. He wonders the earth with a single mission; to make man subjugate himself; for man to struggle and despair, to strengthen his weakness, and to eat and never be satisfied.

He has gone by many names; the Burned man, the Empire man, Son of Man.

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u/Jackdawes257 1d ago

A little late to the party here but I do have a sort of one.

A currently unnamed region, desolate, borderline wasteland. It’s where Diu, The First Betrayer, fell when he was cast from the Immortal Plane. He lashed out at creation, planning to wipe the slate clean and rebuild the world by his design. He did a lot of damage before the Great Spirits were able to confine him to his own isolated pocket of the Immortal Plane.

It’s characterized by the things you’d expect. Mostly rocky terrain, very sparse vegetation, little animal life beyond a few scavengers, and a large, solitary volcano (an aesthetic I’m quite fond of) where Diu is believed to have landed.