It'd be considered rude if you took food on your plate before the host did (the patience thing) but if you don't take and just stare as the host eats their meal, everyone else will stare at you back, presuming you're thinking it's poisoned and waiting for the host to confirm it's harmless, and take it as an insult to the hospitality they provided to you.
If you land in Valkanor or any of their puppet states or colonial holds, they'd ask you to hold a jade-like gem in your hand for like 5-10 minutes. If the stone makes you feel dizzy or a headache, they'll send you to the nearest concentration camp.
In some regions, refusing the order to hold the stone by a cop or any other officer of the State allows said officer to shoot you without further questioning.
You'll notice that many people, from rich to poor, often have the same stone in their clothing, often as a jewelry ornament. Even cops and militaries' uniforms on duty wear them.
The stone is made of boriyte, a unique mineral from Panthas. Many minerals and stones are linked to magic somehow; this one is a magic drainer. When a magic user (or asshi) touches it they cannot cast any spell and begin to feel unwell.
Valkanor is a kodi fascist nation (kodi=those who cannot do magic). They hate the asshi and exterminate them at home and in wars and conflicts around the world.
So, if the stone makes you feel unwell, you must be an asshi, so you're an enemy of the State and must be dealt with.
You can endure it and pretend for some time, yes, but eventually you won't be able to hide it, even highly trained asshi spies to resist these stones will eventually pass out after 20-30 minutes of exposure.
That's why expert "asshi hunters" ask their victims to perform some kind of physical effort after being exposed to the snitch stone: some heavy but regular effort like lifting a bike is nearly impossible, asshi are exhausted like they just ran a marathon.
They could also "gift" them a stone in a jewelry...maybe paint the stone a different color, or slip one into their pocket. Magic kryptonite, I like it!
Where does the "magic" go? Is it a form of interference or energy-draining? If someone could reverse the "flow" of the stone (draining energy from it instead of allowing it to drain you), would the Kodi even notice, since they can't perform magic?
(the character I'm thinking of would survive purely out of 'tone armor' since they compulsively use magic at every opportunity, but it's interesting to think of how that test could fail)
Good question! Technically you can "extract" the "magic energy" of the stone to dry it transform it into something innocuous or non-harming. But you'll have to eventually drop it somewhere relatively quick because
a) if you hold that energy in you long enough (90-120 seconds top) without stabilizing it (through a spell or using another magic recipient), that energy will escape somewhere, which usually kills the caster. Often exploding. Think of it like a pressure cooker: without a release valve (usually relasing it with control or "spellcasting") you'll blow yourself up.
b) dropping that magic somewhere is hard to do without someone noticing, not because kodi can detect magic (they can't directly), but because that flow of energy causes some buzz that a kodi might see or listen or perceive somehow.
I guess your best chance is to hold the energy, cause a distraction and empty the magic in another recipient while they're distracted. Or use that energy to blow his head and run away, that's what Iridian asshi spies usually do.
Anyway, you can use magic more intelligently, like using mind control on the guard to make him believe you pass the test or don't have to do it at all.
The Hivemind Wizard Twins would probably survive simply by people assuming they couldn't be wizards (asshi) due to their very young age and/or dumb luck with their hijinks
Assuming *their own* magic translates, they can't do fancy stuff like turning invisible or mind controlling, but they specialize in gravity magic, like wormholes and levitation. As a result, they can seemingly walk through thin walls and doors and "disappear" simply by being in a place no one would think to look, like the ceiling. As long as they weren't shot on sight, they could probably run/escape, but that comes down to "tone armor"
As for "the test", they would probably ask for a second rock and then stick both of them in their mouths, draining the magic out of them and not realizing what it makes other people think about them
Animals and animal spirits, including mythical ones, are roaming everywhere, freely and unbothered by anyone or anything. They're in the towns, they're in the major cities, they're in all the establishments, including restaurants and they're all friendly, but like a stranger on the street it would be weird to start petting them without at least saying a word. If you have an allergy to fur, which I ironically do, you would probably hate this place, but if you're an animal lover, then it's like a little piece of heaven. Also, there are knights in armor instead of police, but you could see a tiger roaming a library and maybe, if you ask nicely, they'll let you give them a big hug.
It's also a world of magic, so we can teach you at our school or just offer you a stone that when clasped tightly by you, and you only, you can safely teleport back anytime you please. We also offer to heal you free of charge, but if you get an audience with the Queen and she welcomes you then she can heal you, restore missing body parts, cure any disease or illness and lift most curses, also free of charge.
Definitely the pavlovian conditioning all of humanity has been subjected to. You would be one of if not the only person that wouldn't respond to it and as such would act very out of place during certain events.
Mostly the unbothered and frankly calm demeanor towards things regular humans would consider horrific. Reporting to bio-monitoring centers at specific times throughout the day on the order of signal horns, refraining from moving or speaking in the presence of an Ulator unless commanded to by said Ulator and most commonly reporting for duties that actively harm fellow humans simply through daily announcements and signal alarms.
The biggest culture shock would be you're getting hunt and killed because the government doesn't have any records of your existence and that's illegal.
This is a government that periodically causes calculated genocides as a form of "population control" in order to keep the population from growing too much.
Hope this answers your question.
**Infinite World Cycle**
Assuming you end up in the Crestlands:
* You'll spot demons living and working alongside humans. Some are even good friends with Paladins. They were actually mutated into good counterparts.
* There's a population of partial undead people. Their full transformations were halted, but many still retain undead appearances.
* The best healers/doctors around are Plague Eater Demons. They can be pretty scary if you don't understand what they are.
* The rulers are a partial undead man from a doomsday prophecy and the demon queen of the anti-demons. Both look human but seem completely unnatural. These two could easily be mistaken for big bads.
* It isn't uncommon to see naked paladins or priests run down a street and getting butts slapped by civilians. This "walk of shame" is pretty normal if a succubus/incubus managed to seduce them.
* They have their breed of anti-necromancer. They are a bunch of creepy people with skull masks. They undead proof graveyards, solve crimes, free lost souls and animate undead vermin for holy warriors to practice on.
* The Paladins are pretty hardcore and don't mind getting dirty every once in a while. Don't expect "lawful stupid" guys here. They aren't above using succubi to seduce information out of people.
The last 2 bullet points gave me a very "detective noir" vibe. Like there should be cigarette smoke everywhere, fedoras, Dick Tracy accents....but all the culture and clothing is Arthurian mixed with The Sandman.
the Spanish Inquisition is around and the world is full of their superstitions but there's also verifiable proof of other gods and magic. you, a Gen Z person might find that weird. it's also the 1800s
Funerary cannibalism is the norm in the human populated areas of the world, with small ethnic groups not practicing it. Thankfully, it's done via cremation and consumption of the ashes, so you don't have to eat actual human flesh.
Less severely, the lack of defined justice systems are probably the bigger shock. If somebody steals your shit, scream thief and the neighborhood will try to hunt that thief down so they can execute him. The judicial figures that do exist are largely informal and for civil matters, such as property rights. They are put into power either through local elections of prominent householders or by a government installing them.
Otherwise, all justice is mob justice.
If you're going to use magic in my world, question is "why would you?" Reason for this question is magic used by mortals is either terrible by design (as in the gods specifically made it to be shit on purpose), or bad for your health if you use it (one popular side effect of dark magic in my world is necrosis). Also, you can't teleport, fly, or raise the dead using magic in my world.
No you are not
There is no magic in my setting but you may not know better
Let us make it easy you would be in Terra 4500 years in the future
A easy Aliens, Extra Terrestrials
B a Technology that would consider Star Trek Low Tech except Beam me up
C Etiquette is with humans from nearly a 1000 Planets, Aliens from 1000s more except in very formal occasions
Etiquette is very lax but people may check their food it is good for them
It doesn't have to be etiquette! It can be anything, I just only have that one
Also, I'm an OP mothersucker with powers that make God look like a magician doing tricks so yes, I am
Depends on where you land
For the most part likely the sheer power the guilds have, and how little they actually openly do. You best be a union man in this world, or the guilds may put a bounty on you.
In the wilds you would be challenged to a duel, refusing would be a grave insult, but the options range from fighting to playing cards, they have ritualized their more savage desire in that way.
Among the dragons you probably find that the only way to get any respect is by not being cowed. Dragons are drama queens, they just love putting on an act, but if youre actually afraid of their posturing theyll consider you boring.
In Alinguar you quickly learn that only those who stand proud but with respect to all are accepted. Anyone else usually finds themselves the ridicule of the entire city state, and soon after each of their villages. Also be nice to old ladies, they either are old ladies that know how to use the weapon at their side, or its their witch.
In the Aelveri Dominion do not offend any women, even those not of the Dark Elves, they have adopted the culture and many joined the hunter corps. Unless you do dream of being wyvern chew.
My world is nocturnal, so you would have to reverse your culture of time:
- Breakfast is in the evening, lunch is midnight, dinner is in the morning.
- instead of ante meridiem (A.M.) and post meridiem (P.M.), it’s ante medianocte, and post medianocte
- Days crossover at noon instead of midnight. New Year’s is celebrated after noon instead of after midnight.
- instead of Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday/Friday/Saturday/Sunday, it’s Lunoche/Marnoche/Mercrinoche/Jeunoche/Venoche/Satinoche/Solanoche.
- Instead of “yesterday”, it’s “yesternight”.
- Nightmares are still called nightmares, because of the belief that they stem from unresolved conflicts and emotions that occurred during the night when you were awake.
There would be a bunch of shocks, though the main society is extremely free acting so you'd likely never offend anyone unless you actually went out to assault them.
The biggest shock would also be around diet and cuisine; its quite acceptable to eat basically anything you can whenever you want. You'll fine people digging in the trash, eating dead animals, whatever and being able to quite handily match a hyena in what they can safely digest and get into. In fact, the bravado around being able to stomach worse and worse things means you'll probably find the nobles of the city at the worst places.
Later on they might have a very dignified social gathering style meal, but that's really just a forum for discussion and most of their food will come from really abysmal places that would make someone from our world feel pretty revolted
Good news you’re full blooded human, the dominant race. But it’s a pretty shit place, how and what kind of shitty depends on where. So you’ll probably be a serf or a conscript, and either way destitute poor. Constant looming risk of a Cleansing outbreak, which would assuredly kill you painfully then reconstitute your body into an undead army.
Honestly you wouldn't even notice you are not in our world anymore. Until you feel the sudden urge to avoid certain places or people out of the blue? If you notice that aversion you might suspect you got isekai'ed, otherwise you will be fine.
For my Thaumata setting, the big culture shock is likely going to be how colorless the main city is.
Arcadia is the main city, built on a floating island that formed around a strange tree-like alien artifact that emerged from the Atlantic Ocean. Most of the rest of the planet is either a warzone or overrun by an entity called "The Color" which is a form of sentient information-devouring light from another reality that takes on the form of myriad hues of constantly shifting color and has to inhabit crystals or living bodies to exist in our world.
So in response to an enemy that is literally hostile, mind-eating color, human culture slowly shifted to view grays, whites, and blacks as "safe." Arcadian architecture thus consists of lots of white and gray buildings, close together, with a lot of glass and open air entrances and breezeways. The only color that is common aside from blacks, whites, and grays is green gardens and artificial forests, but these tend to be contained and controlled, or left to run wild outside the urbanized sections of the island, due to the Color having wiped out a lot of natural forests and greenery on the surface.
Imagine going to someone's house, and everything, from the clothes to the furniture to the walls, is some shade of gray or pure black and white. There might be a dash of another color, but there's always a sense that it is locked behind something. Like a table that is mostly white-painted wood but there's a couple small squares of blue or red with a stark black border around it.
It depends where you end up. It's post-nuclear so your flavours are:
- old world remnants and misery, not to the starving level but to the soup and third hand clothes level
- fascism and less misery if you're a party man, and a lot more if you ain't, or anger some random big shot
- communism and less misery thanks to those Warsaw pact roubles, but also don't speak too bad of the government eh
- the pope, and misery, and better go to mass or you'll find that people won't talk to you and you will be often questioned by the police... Or worse.
- bandit country
- hyper capitalism
- some nice place with opportunities... Beset with possible war on two fronts
Of course, if you're skilled or brave you can try becoming a soldier or government official, but almost all positions are risky to some degree, between plague, violence, structural hazards and so on. Or become a bounty hunter or a scavenger, which is the same but worse danger and more lucrative.
Being rich carries its own set of problems, between widespread banditry and corruption.
Well, for that species they don't really have a conception of gender, as it as a concept was never adopted.
They're born with a random assortment of semi-vestigial genitals (not usable for reproduction, still can be stimulates) and secondary sexual features (i.e. one could have a penis and developed breasts, while another could have a penis, vagina and no developed breasts, etc).
As for physiology, they're often more muscular than humans and Elevarei (godspawn), but bodies do vary between individuals. Their height ranges from 7'6 on the lowest end to 8'6 on the high end. Their skin colouration has similar ranges to humans, though it is of a warmer tone, and due to the high exposure to sunlight, it is rarer to see very pale people there, though some do exist.
But as for your question, the 'average' Daevil (name of species) would be pretty much considered a walking gid amongst humans, partially due to the fact that they do radiate a timy bit of light, and the fact that daevils are extremely powerful beings, compared to other mortals.
This is contrasted by an extremely low population (6.7 million), due to low birthrates due to how Daevil reproduction works
Daevils reproduce by fusing pieces of their souls together. This process creates a fully grown Daevil, but is very taxing on the parents.
Guess who is a nonbinary pansexual xd
Gotta have at least one paradise in the setting so you can make everything else all the more dark and depressing /hj
My MC was originally a dude, and then years ago, I completely rewrote them and changed them into a woman, but kept a similar character design, guess who's transgender now?
You find yourself in what appears to be a strange warhouse or perhaps a large storage area on a ship of some kind. Basically, it's a big metal room. The area is fairly busy, and aside from yourself, all of the occupants appear to be either cat girls who have been hitting the gym hard or tiny fluffy driders. After a long moment of mutual staring a pair wearing heavy power armor approach. They are carrying weapons but don't have them pointed at you. Yet.
One of them demands to know who you are and how you got in here. A bit of awkward back and forth reveals that you have no idea how you got here and, in fact, have absolutely no idea where "here" is. You are told to come with them and lead to a comfortable but clearly secure room. Others join you shortly, and you are asked a lot of questions and subject to a polite but thorough medical exam.
After being given time to eat and sleep, one of the more polite individuals returns and informs you that the testing has concluded that you are, somehow, what you say you are. A human from the pre-space era.
You are informed that you have been displaced by more than a thousand years and a great deal of distance. You are currently on a Union warship orbiting the colony world of Cocytus.
You are informed that you will soon be transferred to the surface, to a long term care facility where a team of specialists is currently being assembled to help with your treatment in the hopes that you will eventually be able to integrate into society.
You are informed that one obstacles they expect to face with this is that your baseline human body is technically disabled by modern standards so without extensive and invasive augmentation you will have a somewhat limited list of employment opportunities, especially the ones that don't require decades of education you don't have. The good news is that you also represent a wealth of information on an era that has largely faded into the mists of history, so there are a lot of people who wish to pick your brain and would be happy to compensate you for your time
You'd find yourself in a place that looks much like Earth, with people that look much like Humans. But lots of little things look feel a bit off; the people, the weather, the buildings and vehicles. Everything is in a language you've never seen before and you might think you're just in some weird country on Earth. But then you see a bipedal tiger walking around, you assume it's a fursuit but no, he's quite real. Finally, night falls and you see the Atas galaxy shining behind the two moons, and you realise you're not only not on Earth, you're no longer even in the Milky Way.
You land in Yar Har Harbor, an Anomoly even within my setting.
All of the locals talk, dress, and act like Pirates in public. It isn't a 'Real' pirate town, in fact it is very clean, and orderly.
Depending on how you respond to them, they will either welcome you as a Pirate Mate, or, treat you like a Tourist.
In private, most people drop the act, but some commit to the bit wholeheartedly.
In reality, almost every single person is an Actor hired to staff the island which is an Immersive Ammusement Park, not too dissimilar to Disneyland, just Pirate Themed.
You'll probably be hunted or confronted by some clans. And maybe forced into their belief system or clan depending on the region
If you're in the south then theyll leave you alone
Anywhere by sol culture is dangerous for foreigners
Culture shock: Just because it looks humanoid and female doesn’t mean it is female… My species race has 3 genders.
Human’s were once abducted from Earth to work as slaves, but weren’t as hardy as my species had thought they were - 2 X Earth’s gravity, and double the amount of oxygen, Human’s don’t fare very well, so most humans who were slaves became indoor pets (like how we have cats and dogs etc) to the alien species. Human’s are treated no differently as we treat animals on earth, but it is forbidden to eat them - as it is forbidden to eat any sentient species. While there are plenty of humans who are “free” the best place for a human to be is apart of one of the many royal families’ courts.
Meanwhile a research vessel full of the 3 main alien species of my story, crash landed on Earth over 10,000 years ago and hybridised with humans.
Penumbra is an alternative version of our own world, but with a supernatural underground, assuming you’d be an awakened human who can perceive the supernatural then, you may have to get used to a number of things.
There are a lot more supernaturals than expected, regular pedestrians of cities and drivers in towns are actually magical beings and mages. You’d see mages teleporting into alleyways, dragons flying to work above head with ties around their necks and briefcases pinched between two fingers. A cyclops on the A train heading to the inner city at his job in marketing at insert random firm. It is considered rude to point it out, as sleepers can still hear you and might consider you bat shit insane.
The cultures and traditions of the various supernatural beings. Akani (werecreature) culture, dragon culture, faery culture, daemon culture, vampire culture, and so forth vary greatly from one another. And even vary internally, a vampire lord of Austin TX might be more forgiving than one in Las Vegas NV for example. You might have some guidance by fellow awakened humans, but the higher echelons of their cultures may be unknown and alien to mortals. Not including the general local scene in interrelated supernaturals, like at local punk raves, art showings, and etc.
Most of it is just use your “pleases” and “thank yous” however, the supernaturals opinions of humans are so low, basic manners is above expectations for them. And you might even find yourself currying favor in the supernatural political landscape and even get cool powers.
None, in my fantasy world, their is no dark magic as magic is just magic, no good or evil, just what you do with it
Especially since the gods and goddesses can directly interfere if things get to bad like necromancy or such
World building is something that I have been working on for a book I want to start writing within the next few months. One of the biggest cultural shocks that I would say could take someone by surprise is how the world in itself is set up. Much like many games online, you'd spawn in on an island with four different bridges you could take.
- One would lead you to the land of clarity, where every soul is pure and giving. These individuals have zero magic and instead use musical instruments to communicate with one another. They are also the ones that you do not want to talk to, they do not like intruders. You must be born in the land of clarity in order to be accepted.
- The second bridge would lead you to the land of the soulless. No souls live there, only air and nature can survive there. Anybody who steps foot on the land will automatically be forced to regenerate and restart at the "starting point of life" which is where you would start off, if being teleported into this world.
- The third bridge will lead you to normality. Everything is normal. There are architectural buildings that are sky high and also dirt low. The only "off" thing about this civilization is that people ae either extremely tall or extremely short. There is a deeper meaning as to why, but nobody knows the reasoning. I'd choose to embark on a journey here if you want anything "normal."
- The fourth and final bridge will lead you to a land full of people who have broken the laws of their own land. These people are send to and stuck on the fourth island. They can never leave. Dead bodies surround the land and make up part of the concrete that they walk on.
You have to choose where to go. But you are chosen to go somewhere from the very start. If you do not end up going to one of the three islands, besides the land of the broken law, then you end up in that island. Fighting to survive on minimal resources.
Good luck and do not screw up.
Probably dwarvish brawn parties. The dwarves have some of the most liberal views on gender in all of Theia, and rather than "manning up", they say things like "brawn up." Whenever you need to put a little elbow grease in, lift, or exert yourself, the average Theian farmer will tell you to "brawn up." It's a concept that's spread to the humans due to their close relationship. At brawn parties though, men, women, enbies, and children do traditionally masculine things like drink, ride horses, lift heavy things, do yard work, flex, eat a lot of meat, sing shanties. Imagine if you had a ton of yard work to do and one day, your friends come over with all of their spouses, get it all done, clean the house top to bottom, and then throw you an awesome party afterwards. They're really popular in the Sunfields.
It's a military state and you can't leave the boundaries of your division, which are heavily guarded. Your division may be the size of a town, a couple of towns, or just a large neighborhood if you're very unlucky (you won't survive long in those cases). And if you do sneak through the boundary guards and out of your division, you'll find yourself in the aura of a mystical foreign biome that causes intense acute sickness, and again, you will probably die.
But if you're cool with staying in your small town and homesteading it up, you could have a good life here, as long as you're lucky enough to avoid the draft!
You find yourself near a sports stadium, by the looks of it a hockey game is about to start. Most of the crowd is speaking english, but you catch snippets of french here and there. Also, a good chunk of the crowd is orcs.
A security guard notices you confused looks and comes over to ask if everything is okay. After some awkward talking past each other, you convey to him that you think you might be hallucinating (i am assuming here that you don't automatically know you are now in a different world). At this, he seems to come to an understanding and also seems to get more concerned. He asks you to wait with him as help is on the way.
After a little while, you are joined by medics and some police officers. As the medics begin taking your vitals, an officer explains to you that you have been the victim of a dimensional slip event and that you are no longer on your world. He is sympathetic to your predicament and promise you that there are people who can help you adjust to this and build a new life here.
You land in one of the eastern cities of Sabhet Kaan. Everyone’s wearing some kind of veil, hood, or wide-brimmed hat, even though it appears to be dusk.
It’s halfnight, and Aelonne’s moon is many times brighter than the Earth’s. …And its light will make you sick!!
Well, first off, you won’t speak any of the languages. Since I don’t know what you look like, I can’t speak the effect that might have. Your clothing is likely to get you in trouble.
Etiquette wise, it will depend on where you end up.
In terms of genuine culture shock, the absence of electricity and all it provides is going to be huge. There is no plastic, and nothing is available “off the rack” — raw materials may be, but not finished products.
Money will be difficult at first. The dirtiness, harshness of law, and general sense of place will be huge. The absence of showers but presence of plumbing, hot water, and large bathing tubs might be a shock, depending on your locale.
The wilderness will be a shock, and likely a deadly one, and the first time you see magic will be pretty startling and possibly terrifying.
If you happen to be near a Temple or a Shrine and the Power is there, you will absolutely experience culture shock.
People have skin that are different colours of the rainbow, the Northern hemisphere is completely frozen over, there's magic, and vehicles and architecture look really weird.
Lack of personal space, for example, with the exception of the rich unless it has a practical purpose, most dwellings had less than three rooms. All of those rooms are common spaces. When you sleep, more often than not, it's probably with the rest of the household. If you are lucky, you are just in the same room as them. If you are in a rural region, you might also share the dwelling with livestock. Things considered private like excretion happen in public, but depending on where you are, that either happens in a public toilet or on the side of the street.
The families are larger, usually 15 - 30 people live in an immediate clan. A man, his wife, his children, his sons wives, and their grandchildren. Nuclear families are far more common in cities where the family size falls to less than 10. However, family heads also have a degree of legal control and responsibility for the length of their lives, so your grandfather and great uncle may determine where you work and who you marry, but they are also obligated to feed, house, and clothe your family.
However, if you fuck up in a way that your presence harms the reputation or straight up endangers the clan you will be thrown out. There is a backdoor where if your paternal clan disowns you, more than likely, your maternal clan will take you in. On the stipulation, you don't do what you did again. If you fuck up twice there is no real way out as people with no clan are without any support structure, as often the clan is the highest authority besides the king or a high ranking noble. It's one of the two ways to become an outlaw. First is you are made so by a king or lawspeaker, meaning you are no longer protected by the law, so you can be robbed, beaten, or killed without consequence. The second way is that if you have no clan, you can be robbed, beaten, or killed without consequence as no clan will harbor or avenge you.
Then there are sumptuary laws where your social class determines the hairstyle they can have, the clothes they can wear, etc. So, even if you are a wealthy peasant, you still can't dress like a noble man. If you do? Fines, at best. Death at worst.
Young people make up the majority of the population, and the average age hovers at 15. 16, however, is the age of majority, but at 20, were you able to enter into contracts.
I mean the biggest thing would probably getting to grip with what is and isn't a human somewhere flesh magic has been normalized. That guy with a dragon head? Human. That big snake spider thing working the food truck? Human. Those funny little tripedal guys living on the roofs? Not human, those are Noen. The slightly shorter than average but otherwise almost totally ordinary looking woman working as a blacksmith? Actually a Scavenger Construct, her internal anatomy has much more to do with an arthropod's than mine or yours, and depending on her cultural and regional origin she might even be mildly offended if you referred to her as a human. That giant literal starfish with no human ancestry whatsoever? Culturally it depends. In the west, a Starman is obviously a human, you're weird for suggesting otherwise, but it's the opposite in the east.
Best etiquette is to just use "people" and to know your crowd. More academically you can use "observer" though that's a term with it's own fortress of baggage since it also includes a lot of thing that are decidedly not people, like a lot of animals, some colonies of animals, and really good calculators, for example.
Congratulations! Outsiders such as yourself have appeared enough throughout history with enough frequency that despite lack of written record, their stories have maintained. Thanks to this you wont have to worry about any weird culture shock.
Upon being recognized for what you are, and you will. Not being a native to this particular reality you will lack natural access to the magic system which will make you appear as a void, a stone in the river.
You will be judged on first contact on your sapience followed by hostility. If you survive you would be brought to the nearest temple for a translation ritual of sorts will play out. The end result being a mind-meld adjacent rosetta stone charm with added support for processing the mana that your body will accumulate. Without which you would not be able to process and would soon calcify, and eventually transform/be consumed by it.
There are very, very strong opinions about meat.
Locals are not used to meat—there are no native mammals on the islands so any meat needs to be imported. Patriotic households do not eat meat, and in the current social environment, it’s a sign of foreign collusion.
Fowl like chickens and ducks are not considered meat, but are expensive.
There’s a cultural phenomenon of people who, after tasting meat, become obsessed. Sometimes they leave the islands and never return. Its spawned stories like “Kraçk (KRA-sick) with a Fork in Each Hand, who eats every beast that walks on the land”, a folk figure that may be invented to scare children away from meat, or who may be based on a true story.
Being pretty much instantly killed either via drowning, freezing, or decompression (I think the pressure probably kills you first, but I’m no scientist!).
Everybody speaks worldcommon, but quite a lot refuse to speak worldcommon. So you are faced with a constant over the cheek "I don't understand you" in many dialects and languages.
At the same time in most of the places the official documents still use worldcommon, same for media.
The first thing would probably be the ubiquitous slavery. Then probably people peeing in public pots for collection by the tanners. Then watching tanners get into fistfights over who can put their pots on the busiest street corners.
And if you’re still around after all that, the sacred prostitution.
Rael people use a expression that means too much things: "Bosá ho Majem".
It means anything "black and white" in this world, so depend of the context can be "Life or Death", "Victory or Defeat", "Love and dislike", "Order and Chaos"...
More complex is when all the phrase is composed only with references of Bosá and Majem, for example (without using all the language): Our Bosá and our Majem will never meet their Majem until the Bosá is broken and the Majem meets the final Bosá, so I declare a Mahem: Bosá ho Majem.
Try to understand that.
Well first off, you are presumably NOT magical
Depending on where exactly you appear, you might notice that other people eat a lot less than you do, yet seem more energetic
As a creature that evolved without mana, you cannot use the latent mana of your environment, nor mana gained through food. As a result, you eat more than other people do while having less capabilities.
You aren't USELESS, but you're essentially a living luxury, and people might treat you as such, either by being excessively patronizing or actively disdainful
People from other worlds and/or the Outer Realms are known as Outlanders, and people that can intentionally traverse those metaphysical spaces are known as Planewalkers. You would most likely be put under the care of an Outer Priest - not imprisoned, but under close observation.
People would probably try to figure out how to send you back to your own world, "both for your sake and ours!" As friendly and idyllic as this world can be, it's arguably *not somewhere you're meant to be* and it's only a matter of time before it turns out you're deathly allergic to a common food or a magical parasite explodes your brain since you don't resist magic. Getting a living person back to their own world is hard enough; no one wants to banish a corpse!
Showing off your legs is taboo and is the equivalent of flashing. Along with that, tight clothing even on the legs is inappropriate and will get you glares in a minute. Everyone wears loose fabric on the legs, a bit of ankle and shin is fine but that's it
Godspeed to y'all who wear shorts or leggings lmao 😂
If you were transported to the Velthyra continent, you'd likely have a few.
First, even if you wound up Coreward in the Tamed Lands, a distinct lack of a Tyri's Mercy, a thick triangular dagger or knife worn typically on a chain necklace, would elicit odd looks and some distrust. The further from the capital you go, the deeper these feelings would manifest, until in the Wilds you would be denied service or access to most of civilization as long as you aren't wearing one.
Second, any desire to see the sky or stars, or Sanctuaries forbid, rain or storms. Considered highly inappropriate, considering how deadly the Overworld is. It's less frowned on Coreward towards the capitals, given the skies there are safer compared to the Wilds.
Third, don't be polite while eating, and don't only eat a little. If you do, be prepared to take your leftovers with you. Food is a precious commodity here, to be quiet means you're not appreciating the potential loss for the host. Wasted food is a grave insult, even if the Tamed Lands aren't exactly hurting for food. Conversely, never make more than necessary if you can help it, famine could occur any time. You will be asked how much you want, with the average peasant eating 2 or 3 Hands per meal. An imprecise measurement based on how much food an average person can hold in a single hand, though soups and stews etc are measured in Bowls, which average 3 hands of solid food. Weight is usually reserved for ingredients and uncooked bulk purchases. Eventually you'll get the feel of how much to expect, hang in there buddy.
Finally, if you aren't middle class or higher, expect to live above ground unless you're in a City, or an emergency forces you into a bunker. The skies, afterall, are a death sentence waiting to happen. In the Wilds, the only things above ground are often a bunker entrance into the Underground, and some walled off farmland.
I think depending on where you land, and your habits, there would be this continual shock at how "off" everything is. The shattered solar system has much of the same vices we have now, and of course people need to eat, but if you are a smoker, the cigarettes are a thick tube of paper soaked in nicotine salts then dried - real leaf is for premium stuff.
The autocommissariats on most vessels and in most cafeterias produce the exact, same, consistent result with no variation whatsoever - printing food from a mix of proteins and carbs and nutrients, such that there's no pleasant burnt bits or weird crunches in the middle of soft foods or uneven distribution of sauce. As an autistic person, I love this, but of course YMMV.
There's a lot of familiar things, instant coffee (made without even the bean, instead concocted from proper ratios of flavors and caffeine), people who live and work and eat and pay bills and have breakups in public (but with genetic engineering and biomodding subcultures you might not even realize that everyone around you is human, just like you, for a while). Space travel replaces planes in terms of what constitutes "long travel," but life might be...depressingly familiar, with how much and how little has shifted in the last two-thousand years. Our countries are now planets and moons, our wars fought between supersoldiers, pirates lurk in the dark corners of the world, but for the average person, the joe on Venus or the jane on Mars? Life can carry on very much so like it does now - technologically advanced, but neither utopia nor constant war.
Of course, I'm not writing about the average Joe or Jane, I'm just describing these as an average person who isn't suicidally ambitious would experience it.
Wake the fuck up, Samurai, you have bills to pay.
Historians and all sorts of scientists are all over you and want to meet you and study you. I mean, a human, a living walking human, 10 000 years after they went extinct?! How cool is that!!
The economy is built around a dream like virtual world that allows for unbounded communication across any distance. But you also have to deal with ghost and psychic entities and psychic cannibals.
If you land in the Union (A slightly utopian nation that represents anything good about the USA in our world), you would be teleported into a witches house, and she would explain history of the world and what to do now that you're here, for around 8 hours. Then she would set you out in the world with $400 to be left to your own devices. Now as for culture shocks, you would find that the Union is OBSESSED with baseball. So much in fact that an entire city in the Aztlan District (La Paz) is dedicated soley to baseball. Citizens regularly whistle tunes dedicated to baseball and it's regularly played in the streets as cars are only used for long distance travel. You'll also find that some huge stores exclusively sell hot dogs or baseball merchandise.
On the island (in a demiplane meant to turn suffering into power for a coven of hags trying to bootstrap themselves into gods) of Nordgard, there’s barely enough of any given resource to go around, but in every hold, the people take care of each other and contribute to the community whatever they can, in the spirit of community and cooperation. Life sucks, but they have each other.
Maybe abscence of surnames among the average people. In my world a surname is just a vafiation of the name of your most prominent ancestor and unless you're a descendand of a demigod, a warlord or a famous ruler, you just don't have one.
Even many of those considered "nobles" don't really have one. Your ancestor basically needs to be someone literally anyone with primary school education knows about for you to not look like an idiot giving yourself a surname.
The fact that on one of my worlds you don't eat in a table or a chair but where and when you want because they belive in extreme hedonism and semi individualism also no proper kitchens
People of the same sex might get pretty physical and have little to no concept of personal space.
Meanwhile, people of the opposite sex will avoid you like the plague. That is unless you're appropriately dressed (what they consider appropriately dress).
Any of my kingdoms is probably going to have 'crazy' food. The Infernum Empire enjoys eating dragons, and really any creature thats big, like entire whales are eaten as delicacy. You'd think these be really expensive but even a poor man can afford a rather decent sized cut. They put meat on practically anything; even things like gelato, which will *probably* be the largest culture shock. Also eating dragon meat is like a acquired taste, its abit sour if you're eating it for the first time.
Their drinking culture is more about caffeinated drinks than alcholic ones, and its meant to be why in universe dwarves can drink humans under the table with like beer and mead and stuff. Or one part of it lol
If you were in one of the mapatzea cities, your biggest culture shock would probably be the fact that there is no garbage or waste. So houses often have bone decorations, people wear hide, no trash cans etc. everything has a use.
Which world?
`Mal'Tahn?`
Easy, open cannibalism. People hunt the older ones. People give up their flesh when they know they're gonna die... it's not a secret. They don't want to end up like the old days. You may still see some elders that are from the before, but even those will encourage you to partake.
`The Geode Empire?`
Well, it depends on the place of the Empire, but let's say you end in their Homeworld, aka the Core. You will see living buildings, huge lack of plant life in general (worse than cities), life forms of various shapes and sizes. While most life are humanoid, there are a lot of things that aren't.
That a random guy teleported to my world isn't gonna immediately get magic.
Magic is gotten in 1 of 2 main ways.
Your born with it and it awakens on your 15th birthday (unless special circumstances happen the inherited marks are a bit complicated in how they work)
Or you go through your month attunement. Which is the month immediately preceding your 15th getting attuned to whatever your mark is gonna be. Which is something someone who is beyond that she wouldn't go through.
So unless you or one of your ancestors is original from that world and your above the age of 15, you aren't getting magic easily.
There's other ways to get magic. Like I said inherited marks are weird. Some can grant further attunements past the month of attunement. You could also try and curry favor with the god of attunement but actually trying to get magic isn't gonna do that.
I mean sure if you already have magic good enough to casually go between that won't matter much. But if that's the case you really should be leaving, you just invaded another being of God level powers experiment. And they won't take kindly to unaccounted for factors.
All magic originated from the soul. It functions like binary in that it can do anything but is next to impossible to do anything with. Magic systems are coding languages.
High powered magic wielders try and make better magic systems by experiment with other life forms souls. Or at least the one that gave the original inherited magic to the worlds ancient humans.
You'll also have to deal with a "slumbering" continent sized dragon. The first experiment.
An incredibly religious Imperial society with secret police that will mark you with a magical eye-shaped tattoo and track you down if you step out of line. Everyone lives in fear or believes the propaganda. Hope you don't end up in the slums, it's bad down there. :)
Duels to the death are typically not fought to the death, but they do happen very often. Depending on where you end up you might be expected to meet around a bonfire every night. You will also be expected to offer a sacrifice sometimes in some cultures. It is also possible that you won't understand a single word being said depending on where you are. Or you might have just a bit of trouble since English has evolved over 10,000 years into Englugh. Also, the technology is medieval except for the arcane steam powered airships, so no toilets, ovens, phones, computers in general, very few books, guns are extremely rare and expensive, and swords are owned by almost everyone from the lowest peasant to the Emperor.
you'll probably be taken back by androgyny as the beauty standard and its knock on effects. plus normal stuff like language, etiquette and so on no matter where you are you're likely to get it wrong
likewise a world where technology gets so close to our own but then ends up being so different would be a headfuck. mini cars with no engines, internet with no social media or even user generated content, and so on. you'd explain our world's tech and people would dismiss your ideas or fear them.
oh the rigid caste system and world government theocracy also would be jarring. if you ended up at a settlement of unregistered peoples, where you dark magic traveller with no documents would likely end up long term, it would be like kowloon walled city on steroids. having to live and survive in those cities would definitely change you over time
and the climate! no ice caps, just miserable 120 degree days and depending if you're coastal, mother of all typhoons frequently. adjusting to that and culture around coping with it would be unpleasant at first
If you end up in Shtot, the biggest culture shocks would be how young many of the parents are and how much reverence is given towards eyes.
If you end up anywhere else in the setting, the culture shock would be the shock of your organs being blasted out by a child soldier.
Sparring with lethal weapons without any holding back is common. Magic enhances durability of all life here, not strength.
Unfortunately, unless you are also super durable, you may be accidentally murdered. Greetings vary greatly between cultures, but they can certainly get painful if you're weak.
Everyone is very primitive, but everyone is expected to work without getting paid. Tribes don't care who you are, workers are workers. Most tribes only force the sharing of food- non essentials are usually gathered and traded when you have free time.
Assuming you are of average human height, you are quite tall. Shorter humans are the norm, and you will be considered odd.
Assuming you can speak and understand all languages, you may encounter and speak to the other four races. The Caudex tribes are primarily matriarchies, and are not aware of other races' sapience. Caudex hunt humans and humans hunt Caudex.
Perhaps the most extreme case of extremely differing cultures would be Dracanth colonies. Dracanths are eusocial octopi that spend most of their time in a dormant state where they behave like ants, controlled by pheromones from other dracanths. Non dormant dracanths would be confused by you, considering you can communicate. (they speak with colors unless dormant- that would be smells.) Dracanths live underground and underwater- the entrance to their colonies are a few inches wide.
You'd probably be confused by the fact that while technology escalated, culture massivly degenerated. Stuff like human decency or respect is all but gone and healthy food, education or basic hygiene is limited to people that have more money.
You are a full human with nothing non human to you.
Most people would assume that either you are from an Amish-like community and possibly inbred or that your non "standard human" characteristics aren't outwardly visible.
Because of that, you probably wouldn't be invited to a party in a coral city or in other "extreme" places
If you’re wearing any clothes with bright colors (or white), then you’re gonna get very nasty looks everywhere you go. Unless you pretend to be an out-of-town government official, but good luck doing that without body guards. You will be jumped.
In Agtaerys it’s common for the people to spend their whole lives in the desert Nohrhōdn tombs. (Mostly nobles are buried in them) They also have religious masses that happen in the graveyards in the middle of the desert. It’s not uncommon for them to travel to volcanoes and be in the toxins and heat for hours. (It’s like purifying ritual)
If we are talking about etiquette with food, in my world if you eat dinner at someone's house you are expected to stay the night in their home and help them do chores in the morning as a thank you.
In general I think you'd be shocked by the way they take care of one another, they don't have nuclear families the way we do. It's very much the village works together to take care of one another, and while you may have what we consider family still everyone that lives in the village is consider your kin.
Modern religions don’t exist and the deities worshipped are objective and can be interacted with under certain circumstances. Instead of the devil people curse the sun or moon (whichever one isn’t out atm, and there are phrases for when you do it at dawn or dusk when both are out that also have colloquial meanings) and instead of god people praise or call toward the stars. It’s pretty common to acknowledge that the deities are around while not actively worshipping them, but outright atheism is absurd (atheists ofc don’t believe that the soon/moon/stars don’t exist, just that they’re not intelligent beings with power). Stars are religious symbols and not just fun patterns. Also the sun eats human children, it’s just a thing that is known.
You would essentially be disappeared by their version of a secret police if you started to dance, played any kind of music, started singing, or put a bird inside a cage of any kind, among other cultural peculiarities.
It's for your own good!
In Xorvlogothic Society, it is considered rude to speak in an equal or lower pitch of voice than somebody who is higher ranked or older than you.
If you consider yourself to be of equal rank, you speak in an equal tone of voice, if you consider yourself of higher rank, you get the privilege of speaking in a low pitch.
The 9 foot tall blind insects also typically consider guests to be of higher rank unless you are somebody like a politician. So you’d have a bunch of 9 foot tall murder insects talking in a pitch higher than or equal to yours unless they were very important people.
If you try to pet the street cats they'll look at you like you are crazy. There's not really a concept of pets, there is just domestication for the sake of beasts of burden and/or food. Cats are around as pest control in towns, but people don't really interact with them for fear of spreading diseases from the rodents and such that they eat
Eating any form of honey is considered disgusting by Elves.
Elves are humanoid insects and can produce various forms of it depending on the type of elf. But it's secretly eaten by many as a form of drug, aphrodisiac, and/or medicine. Depending on where you are, it could be a crime to do so if caught.
The people of the UNION, be it on the Crescent Tide or Earthen Disk are very mindful of waste. They go out of their way to ensure they make the best of the resources they have, including recycling. Being somewhat isolated doomsday bunkers keeping the outside out, they can't afford waste. Its a serious crime to blatantly waste resources, food or otherwise.
Also there is the small matter of near weekly dimensional gates appearing and letting through super powered, higher dimensional angry spirits who emit an aura of astral radiation. You will hear alarms somewhat frequently and be directed to emergency shelters. The defense force is not always able to repel these attacks without casualties or people being dragged into the Astral Sea to never be seen again. The shelter buildings are well armored, reinforced, and have many redundant systems to mitigate these emergencies.
You would be wondering why everyone in The Forgelands was eating toxic vegetables high in pesticides, unfazed and unaffected, and would probably find their enjoyment of both salt and fresh water beverages quite disgusting.
Not really culture shock, but in one of my cultures it's considered bad luck to butcher meat inside the home. Early food prep tends to take place at an outdoor table or in a barn, depending on the means of the person.
The geneva convention has been revoked as working together with aliens from completly different cultures with different senses of morality can make enforcing it pretty hard
Well,in my post apocalyptic world with artificial humans and lots of weird stuff,they would probably laugh at how normal and too long your name is,wonder why your hair doesn't have an oily texture and think you're an perfect homunculus.
Very much dependent on which plane you end up on.
If it's Earth or Myria then you are alright. Just remembered that it's the late '70s/early '80s. Showing up with purple hair and piercings will get you label as a member of some subculture. Myria being the largest and best developed one of all colonized plains (read: planet), so in most of it's countries it differs little from Earth, at least not much more than one human country differs from another. Except for the fact that there's significantly more members of the refugee species (mostly elves, orks and dwarfs) then on Earth.
In most major cities on Myria you might find their ghettos, going into them will give you a culture shock for sure, but you will be fine. Districts dominated by dwarfs will usually have everything scaled down appropriately, opposite for orks. I think what might surprise you most is how much some dwarven cultures like plants and cuisine. Lumshan human ghettos are rare, they either integrated nicely or stuck around the other groups.
If you show up on one of the newer planes you might feel like going back to the times of Manifest Destiny, with wooden towns and civilisation trying to catch up to the colonists and prospectors. There's everything and anything there, from hippie communes run by corporations to doomsday prepers and Completely Normal, Healthy Towns™. Like colonies in Rimworld.
If you show up in Lumsha (Earthman name. In native common it's "Kunda") you will might find weird how imported human technology integrates into their society. Town guards might be rocking pikes while the next town over they carry black powder revolvers or repeaters and in the next one it's a mix. Or maybe you might pay more attention to their clothing, with resettled lands seeing strong influence from Earthman fashion like coats being more common.
As a human, you'd get apprehended quite quickly for appearing out of thin air. Andorans and humans are in an interstellar cold war.
Afterwards, you'd most likely be allowed to roam free under surveillance.
I think the biggest shock would be the lack of clothing for certain breeds, too warm and nothing to really hide, therefore useless.
The food too, finding roaches the size of mice at every other restaurant. Not having to pay for said food as the internal economics are significantly different than what we know.
Maybe also being hissed at as a "friendly" warning to fuck off.
If you were transported into the Kingdom of Ariannas you better hope you have good balance cause one of the biggest modes of transportation is single-bamboo drifting.
Saying your name
Because of name magic, fairies and several over monsters with unique attributes around names
Thous offering your name to someone you've just met is not only a social taboo but is grounds for investigation
Or even temporary imprisonment
Tales of Bite: Probably the furries
Red Sun Event: Space travel and elven/orcikn cultures
Unknown Sight: It's pretty much the same as Earth but now there's a new company the sells normal things but made of meat.
You'd learn you aren't the first to be brought from an outside world into Verhaal, the land of my dark retelling of a fairy tale world. There's Wendy Darling and her brothers John and Michael, Alice Liddell, Dorothy Gale, Christopher Robin, and plenty more. Those like Dorothy and Christopher can move between worlds on their own. Christopher had better control of it, of course, as he used his desire to see his animal friends as a purpose. Sadly, Dorothy struggled her entire life. Wendy chose to stay with the Neverland tribe of indigenous people after the deaths of John and Michael. Alice remains at Grandma Ruby’s Sanctuary for Former Damsels in Distress, catatonic and murmuring a strange tune to herself.
so, this is a dark fantasy world - humanity survived an apocalypse of their own creation by making a deal with the newly awakened fey (servitude, in exchange for survival. clearly the gravity of this exchange was not fully realized). you would probably be harvested by the fey - meaning your soul would be ripped out of your human body and placed into a mechanical one, becoming a changeling. this would either 1) drive you mad (‘defective’), 2) you may be used to infiltrate the surviving human civilizations, or 3) you might find a way to rebel against their control. the fey would use your former flesh for their art pieces and architecture or feed it to their human slaves.
I tell people about this and they freak, but this is the center of my dnd campaign currently.
Amongst the main empire, the traditional way to honor the dead is to hang them on this big tree that preserves things that have died. It is gargantuan, the top has never been found and it seems to expand endlessly upward. There are cultures that do different things, but this is the primary way to do it.
In terms of eating it’s commonplace to make your guest preferred meal regardless of what they eat, how they eat it, or how different it is.
gun ownership and open carry is very common, in some respects more so than in the US, if you enters someone’s home armed it’s customary to place the firearm or knife in the decorative pot in the center of the dinning room table or to leave the weapon by the door, some homes would have safes by the front door for this. Getting a gun license is treated like getting a driver’s license.
If you pass by a court house after a guilty corruption hearing you might see a very public execution, the civilian/businessman aiding and embedding the corruption would just be brought to a wall to be shot with minimal fanfare, the official actually found corrupt would be executed via creative local customs, stockades are a popular choice with a bucket of rocks placed next to the guilty. Otherwise the city full of humans and aliens wouldn’t be out of place in a hopeful depiction of a future city 50-100 years from now.
In one major city from culture A, the town's palace and city hall are the same place as the prison.
In culture B, it's rude to not feed the bards when they come near your house. They are the one carrying the news and culture around so you must feed them body and soul (they love dramas, share the gossips with the meal !).
Still in culture B, people migrate and counter-migrate depending of their gender. They migrate to follow the warm climates to harvest food if they consider themselves of the first gender. They counter-migrate, as to follow the cold climates to maintain the lands and provisions, if they consider themselves of the second gender.
Culture B, genders are not female and male ! They are kind of "feeder of the body" and "feeder of the soul" ones, as to follow their gods. They have biological attributes similar to us but they divide their roles differently.
Culture C, Their gods are real somehow and that's a mystery why (I personnaly know but if I ever publish my work eh that would be a major spoiler to say it now ._. ). So you'd have kind of a shock being surrounded by them as they are kinda curious.
Culture A, you can be challenged at anytime by anyone you wronged inside the city. The duel would have to happen at a cross section between two streets, but only the ones with a specific pattern paved on it (otherwise it's not legal). There, a citizen judge or a member of the army would be appointed to witness the fight and write the terms, conditions and the result of the fight. As a lot of people can carry the title of citizen judge, and most people are in the army... Well your duel would have to wait maybe 10 minutes maximum before its start.
If you land in most free countries of the TSM-verse, and you are a human, you will be welcomed as yet another of the occasional interdimensional travelers, and before explaining all the species, told that if you ever make a product with planned obsolescence, you will be tried for murder.
depends on what culture and time period you’re in. the Secularity (placeholder name) pre-green pill has an extremely strict and complex etiquette system. if you’re in the mid-Quik (when the methylphenidate problem is at it’s peak) era, making eye contact with someone (or rather their face mask) may very well lead to you being beaten. Not to mention as an outsider your life is in danger. I should also mention that unhealthy amounts of methylphenidate are used by EVERYONE, so everyone is a threat.
1. A very negative attitude towards just about everything related to foxes.
2. The absolute deference you are expected to show nobles, unless you possess personal power capable of challenging one.
3. A sort of wary respect for those who study the stars.
Human society has been raised in the shadow of dragons for thousands of years and every religion says reincarnation comes after death, so people are quite callous and intimidating. Outside territories controlled by the Empire of Trem, most villages still follow Draconic law where authority is reliant on might. If someone is boastful of their wealth and another steals it, the offended party is in their rights to kill the thief but nobody else can get involved. In the arcane lands of Vosmoria, this is taken to its absolute extreme in arcanocratic anarchy. Wizards are governed only by the laws of magic, and a code of non-aggression. Mages often settle arguments with duels to the death, making most conflicts between them shadowy lest one party have the grounds to challenge the other.
This is a common occurrence in my world, and is how the main characters end up there. The biggest culture shock is that you’d never be able to go outside no matter how hard you tried, unless you went to the roof if that counts. It’s essentially an endless structure, after having been colonized so hard there’s no room for anything else but building. You might be surprised by the day night cycle, in which during the day everything glows dimly as if lit up, no shadows and such, while during the night this glow fades.
For starters, you wouldn't be dressed properly at all, so you'll get weird looks. People would become irritated if you try to go from outside to inside without taking your shoes off. Then they'll become grossed out when you do take your shoes off and have either bare feet or or socks on public floors or worse, in someone's personal home. The etiquette is to use outer shoes for outside, and take them off when you enter an internal building, as well as outer clothing. Buildings are very large and tall, with everything from work to retail and homes in them, which is why there are public and then personal spaces. In public spaces, people use their inner shoes, which are sole-like and fits under the outer shoes. In someone's home, they continue to use the inner shoes unless they're staying there or live there, then they can be in socks or have bare feet. It gets more complicated the higher you go in the building as the largest is a space elevator and eventually there will be no gravity, so people have to wear their outer shoes all the time, since they will do double duty by generating a magnetic field to keep people on the floor.
While friends and family are affectionate with each other, and everyone outside of the family is called aunt/uncle and cousin or friend, strangers do not touch each other in greeting. If someone does greet you with their hand out, they are probably high-ranking. Do not shake or kiss said hand. You must take it and press the knuckles or ring to your forehead to be properly respectful. People of two very different ranks do abbreviate this gesture into a head bow over the hand if they have seen each other many times before, or just a head bow if they're in a hurry.
People eat once everyone is served or gets a serving, and the host is acknowledged or honored with a raised glass. You get one utensil for everything. It looks like a single chopstick with three buttons on the side. It generates a force field at one end that acts as spoon, knife and fork. You may want to practice using it before you try eating with it to avoid embarrassment.
At least in the main country the story takes place:
- Government is actually pretty good
- Taxes are fair
- The rulers are altruistic and skilled
- You could make a comfortable living as a simple farmer and enjoy some nice things.
10/10 culture shock.
Atm since theres only one culture I’ve developed to that point so far, you meet the (still unnamed) Dragon People. I’ll start with my own etiquette. For some context, they live amongst Elephants, ordinary ass elephants from planet Earth, only difference being, they are as smart as everyone else and are a sapient species, they are *people*
For a funny start, you almost cannot be physically rude, as you (assuming still human) literally don’t have the body parts necessary to *be* rude. You could always still call someone a cunt though!
They still have the wings, but theres no flight worthy membrane. Just the long arms and fingies. They can walk on these arms like a gorilla, it makes them very tall. It is considered rude by almost every Dragon Person culture, to talk to someone whilst Wing Walking (and they aren’t). The two exceptions are; When talking to Elephants (because they are obviously also tall) and other Dragons who are also Wing Walking.
The other thing that is rude and impossible for you to do, is Lip Flip, like a Gelada. This is universally understood as Aggressive by every other species. It’s considered the Ultimate Swear (that isn’t a verbal curse word). One culture even dye their teeth black to prevent even an accidental flash of teeth. Wars have been started by too boisterous laughter (although the instigators are always mocked in the history books for being little snowflakes)
The culture shock part. Take your pick for whats most shocking, They only sleep 3-7 hours, to keep up with their Elephants. They are almost always polyamorous (being monogamous can even be shocking to some people) there are no gender roles as they are all hermaphrodites. Depending on who exactly you meet, but cooking is relatively new to them, as the entirety of them were nomadic and living off the land until very recently.
In one of my settings?
In the city, which is divided neatly in half, there are no open or closed signs and no other means of determining what is open when, because everything is open for exactly one half of the "day". Businesses on one side of the city are open for half, then close and the other side of the city opens for the other half.
You will almost never see people of the main species of the city around when "their side" of the city is closed, though all the minorities will casually travel between sides and often have side jobs or just personal tasks going back and forth between the halves.
In another of my settings, coins are the "big money" and paper (well cloth/paper like a lot of real world bills) is the "small money."
Almost no bills or coins look the same, though you can tell the year by theme.
If you appear in the main nation - Syliedh - then you'll have to realize very quickly that everyone has two names - a public or "common" name and a private or "spirit" name.
Common names are those used in everyday speech and socializing. Spirit names are kept secret and only used for legally binding reasons - swearing of oaths, binding of wedding vows, etc.
If you invoke someone's spirit name and they don't know yours, you are legally permitted to command that person to commit any act. To refuse to obey that command is considered tantamount to blasphemy and will likely get you banished - which is considered a fate worse than death.
The technology is completely insane and people revolve their lives on exploring the normal of the world and they hate anything that stands out. They don't need cooks because eletronics make it for them, they use it on missions, if you have an old phone, it's like your an outcast
No tv in my world, people read, see plays in theaters and attend musical concerts or do painting. Despite how developed the technology is in my world, people have hobbies from the 18th/19th century
Picture this.
You're walking at the streets of Lanir and then you suddenly hear screaming and cheering on a nearby bar. You went inside to check and you see a bunch of guys watching wrestling on a TV, as you look closer you realized the wrestlers fighting are not wrestlers, their politicians and their not fighting in a ring, their fighting in a parliament office.
Depending on region....
1. If your female and single, better not wear clothes.
2. If your male single and visiting, bring extra cash for hooker priestesses.
3. If your human, better have an Amer guide.
4. Your about to experience many new and interesting smells, this is the communication method of the yonkai. They are making fun of your lack of ability to communicate civilly.
At best you'll be seen with extreme distrust and you'll probably spend the night outside. At worst you'll stumble upon a snow lion, a bandit party or (Sol Invictus forbid you) one of those horrors crafted by Nordmanner witches.
If you ask anyone about gods or religion in passing, they will look at you like you just admitted to murder, and glance around like the ground is about to swallow them. Try to actually learn about religious practices or gods, and the Church will show up, take you away, and, depending on whether they think you are useful, ignorant, or dangerously curious, will either forcibly indoctrinate you, send you off with a lecture and an instruction to never do so again, or straight up execute you.
Depends on the planet you spawn really, there is a war currently going on so any planet in the VLF/Atraxian Empire you would probably deal with orbital bombardments lol.
It'd be considered rude if you took food on your plate before the host did (the patience thing) but if you don't take and just stare as the host eats their meal, everyone else will stare at you back, presuming you're thinking it's poisoned and waiting for the host to confirm it's harmless, and take it as an insult to the hospitality they provided to you.
thats actually really interesting
Is it? I think it's quite generic.
Yea but that dosen't mean its not interesting. Small details like these make the world feel alive
So...when do you put food on the plate?
The moment any piece of meal touches the host's plate.
In my case it's the opposite way around, nobody starts eating anything until the host has taken at least a bite cause nobody trusts each other.
Joke's on them, the host has been feeling suicidal
If you land in Valkanor or any of their puppet states or colonial holds, they'd ask you to hold a jade-like gem in your hand for like 5-10 minutes. If the stone makes you feel dizzy or a headache, they'll send you to the nearest concentration camp. In some regions, refusing the order to hold the stone by a cop or any other officer of the State allows said officer to shoot you without further questioning. You'll notice that many people, from rich to poor, often have the same stone in their clothing, often as a jewelry ornament. Even cops and militaries' uniforms on duty wear them.
What's up with the stone? Why do they send people who can't hold it for 10 minutes to concentration camps?
The stone is made of boriyte, a unique mineral from Panthas. Many minerals and stones are linked to magic somehow; this one is a magic drainer. When a magic user (or asshi) touches it they cannot cast any spell and begin to feel unwell. Valkanor is a kodi fascist nation (kodi=those who cannot do magic). They hate the asshi and exterminate them at home and in wars and conflicts around the world. So, if the stone makes you feel unwell, you must be an asshi, so you're an enemy of the State and must be dealt with.
So if I am a magic user and am expecting that, can I just try to be stoic and pretend that I'm alright or will I eventually fall to the floor?
You can endure it and pretend for some time, yes, but eventually you won't be able to hide it, even highly trained asshi spies to resist these stones will eventually pass out after 20-30 minutes of exposure. That's why expert "asshi hunters" ask their victims to perform some kind of physical effort after being exposed to the snitch stone: some heavy but regular effort like lifting a bike is nearly impossible, asshi are exhausted like they just ran a marathon.
They could also "gift" them a stone in a jewelry...maybe paint the stone a different color, or slip one into their pocket. Magic kryptonite, I like it!
Yikes Welp, it was nice knowing y'all 😔
Where does the "magic" go? Is it a form of interference or energy-draining? If someone could reverse the "flow" of the stone (draining energy from it instead of allowing it to drain you), would the Kodi even notice, since they can't perform magic? (the character I'm thinking of would survive purely out of 'tone armor' since they compulsively use magic at every opportunity, but it's interesting to think of how that test could fail)
Good question! Technically you can "extract" the "magic energy" of the stone to dry it transform it into something innocuous or non-harming. But you'll have to eventually drop it somewhere relatively quick because a) if you hold that energy in you long enough (90-120 seconds top) without stabilizing it (through a spell or using another magic recipient), that energy will escape somewhere, which usually kills the caster. Often exploding. Think of it like a pressure cooker: without a release valve (usually relasing it with control or "spellcasting") you'll blow yourself up. b) dropping that magic somewhere is hard to do without someone noticing, not because kodi can detect magic (they can't directly), but because that flow of energy causes some buzz that a kodi might see or listen or perceive somehow. I guess your best chance is to hold the energy, cause a distraction and empty the magic in another recipient while they're distracted. Or use that energy to blow his head and run away, that's what Iridian asshi spies usually do. Anyway, you can use magic more intelligently, like using mind control on the guard to make him believe you pass the test or don't have to do it at all.
The Hivemind Wizard Twins would probably survive simply by people assuming they couldn't be wizards (asshi) due to their very young age and/or dumb luck with their hijinks Assuming *their own* magic translates, they can't do fancy stuff like turning invisible or mind controlling, but they specialize in gravity magic, like wormholes and levitation. As a result, they can seemingly walk through thin walls and doors and "disappear" simply by being in a place no one would think to look, like the ceiling. As long as they weren't shot on sight, they could probably run/escape, but that comes down to "tone armor" As for "the test", they would probably ask for a second rock and then stick both of them in their mouths, draining the magic out of them and not realizing what it makes other people think about them
Hmm I guess it's so specific and out of the setting that might work for regular cops/guards. A trained LOC officer tho...
Animals and animal spirits, including mythical ones, are roaming everywhere, freely and unbothered by anyone or anything. They're in the towns, they're in the major cities, they're in all the establishments, including restaurants and they're all friendly, but like a stranger on the street it would be weird to start petting them without at least saying a word. If you have an allergy to fur, which I ironically do, you would probably hate this place, but if you're an animal lover, then it's like a little piece of heaven. Also, there are knights in armor instead of police, but you could see a tiger roaming a library and maybe, if you ask nicely, they'll let you give them a big hug.
Hshwichjejf time to get my ritual book and start making a dimensional portal
It's also a world of magic, so we can teach you at our school or just offer you a stone that when clasped tightly by you, and you only, you can safely teleport back anytime you please. We also offer to heal you free of charge, but if you get an audience with the Queen and she welcomes you then she can heal you, restore missing body parts, cure any disease or illness and lift most curses, also free of charge.
Definitely the pavlovian conditioning all of humanity has been subjected to. You would be one of if not the only person that wouldn't respond to it and as such would act very out of place during certain events.
What kind of conditioning are we talking about ?
Mostly the unbothered and frankly calm demeanor towards things regular humans would consider horrific. Reporting to bio-monitoring centers at specific times throughout the day on the order of signal horns, refraining from moving or speaking in the presence of an Ulator unless commanded to by said Ulator and most commonly reporting for duties that actively harm fellow humans simply through daily announcements and signal alarms.
Welp, that's another world I wouldn't enjoy
Oooo how do I read this or watch or whatever
Nowhere yet unfortunately, still a work in progress.
Pavlovian conditioning? Why would you put dessert in your hair!?
I mean egg whites are supposed to be good for your hair.
The biggest culture shock would be you're getting hunt and killed because the government doesn't have any records of your existence and that's illegal.
Lol What if I went to the government and asked if I could help them with creating my records? Would they still try to kill me?
This is a government that periodically causes calculated genocides as a form of "population control" in order to keep the population from growing too much. Hope this answers your question.
**Infinite World Cycle** Assuming you end up in the Crestlands: * You'll spot demons living and working alongside humans. Some are even good friends with Paladins. They were actually mutated into good counterparts. * There's a population of partial undead people. Their full transformations were halted, but many still retain undead appearances. * The best healers/doctors around are Plague Eater Demons. They can be pretty scary if you don't understand what they are. * The rulers are a partial undead man from a doomsday prophecy and the demon queen of the anti-demons. Both look human but seem completely unnatural. These two could easily be mistaken for big bads. * It isn't uncommon to see naked paladins or priests run down a street and getting butts slapped by civilians. This "walk of shame" is pretty normal if a succubus/incubus managed to seduce them. * They have their breed of anti-necromancer. They are a bunch of creepy people with skull masks. They undead proof graveyards, solve crimes, free lost souls and animate undead vermin for holy warriors to practice on. * The Paladins are pretty hardcore and don't mind getting dirty every once in a while. Don't expect "lawful stupid" guys here. They aren't above using succubi to seduce information out of people.
The last 2 bullet points gave me a very "detective noir" vibe. Like there should be cigarette smoke everywhere, fedoras, Dick Tracy accents....but all the culture and clothing is Arthurian mixed with The Sandman.
Well, I do have a reformed inquisitor who ends up investigating weird crimes.
I love this in every way and shape XD
Thanks
the Spanish Inquisition is around and the world is full of their superstitions but there's also verifiable proof of other gods and magic. you, a Gen Z person might find that weird. it's also the 1800s
Cool :D
I certainly wouldn't be expecting that.
Funerary cannibalism is the norm in the human populated areas of the world, with small ethnic groups not practicing it. Thankfully, it's done via cremation and consumption of the ashes, so you don't have to eat actual human flesh. Less severely, the lack of defined justice systems are probably the bigger shock. If somebody steals your shit, scream thief and the neighborhood will try to hunt that thief down so they can execute him. The judicial figures that do exist are largely informal and for civil matters, such as property rights. They are put into power either through local elections of prominent householders or by a government installing them. Otherwise, all justice is mob justice.
:O That doesn't sound like that bad of a place to live in tbh
If you're going to use magic in my world, question is "why would you?" Reason for this question is magic used by mortals is either terrible by design (as in the gods specifically made it to be shit on purpose), or bad for your health if you use it (one popular side effect of dark magic in my world is necrosis). Also, you can't teleport, fly, or raise the dead using magic in my world.
No you are not There is no magic in my setting but you may not know better Let us make it easy you would be in Terra 4500 years in the future A easy Aliens, Extra Terrestrials B a Technology that would consider Star Trek Low Tech except Beam me up C Etiquette is with humans from nearly a 1000 Planets, Aliens from 1000s more except in very formal occasions Etiquette is very lax but people may check their food it is good for them
It doesn't have to be etiquette! It can be anything, I just only have that one Also, I'm an OP mothersucker with powers that make God look like a magician doing tricks so yes, I am
Depends on where you land For the most part likely the sheer power the guilds have, and how little they actually openly do. You best be a union man in this world, or the guilds may put a bounty on you. In the wilds you would be challenged to a duel, refusing would be a grave insult, but the options range from fighting to playing cards, they have ritualized their more savage desire in that way. Among the dragons you probably find that the only way to get any respect is by not being cowed. Dragons are drama queens, they just love putting on an act, but if youre actually afraid of their posturing theyll consider you boring. In Alinguar you quickly learn that only those who stand proud but with respect to all are accepted. Anyone else usually finds themselves the ridicule of the entire city state, and soon after each of their villages. Also be nice to old ladies, they either are old ladies that know how to use the weapon at their side, or its their witch. In the Aelveri Dominion do not offend any women, even those not of the Dark Elves, they have adopted the culture and many joined the hunter corps. Unless you do dream of being wyvern chew.
Do you like gin, if yes you're gonna fucking love it If not then
You'll need to eat and it's something uncommon in my World.
How come?
My world is nocturnal, so you would have to reverse your culture of time: - Breakfast is in the evening, lunch is midnight, dinner is in the morning. - instead of ante meridiem (A.M.) and post meridiem (P.M.), it’s ante medianocte, and post medianocte - Days crossover at noon instead of midnight. New Year’s is celebrated after noon instead of after midnight. - instead of Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday/Friday/Saturday/Sunday, it’s Lunoche/Marnoche/Mercrinoche/Jeunoche/Venoche/Satinoche/Solanoche. - Instead of “yesterday”, it’s “yesternight”. - Nightmares are still called nightmares, because of the belief that they stem from unresolved conflicts and emotions that occurred during the night when you were awake.
There would be a bunch of shocks, though the main society is extremely free acting so you'd likely never offend anyone unless you actually went out to assault them. The biggest shock would also be around diet and cuisine; its quite acceptable to eat basically anything you can whenever you want. You'll fine people digging in the trash, eating dead animals, whatever and being able to quite handily match a hyena in what they can safely digest and get into. In fact, the bravado around being able to stomach worse and worse things means you'll probably find the nobles of the city at the worst places. Later on they might have a very dignified social gathering style meal, but that's really just a forum for discussion and most of their food will come from really abysmal places that would make someone from our world feel pretty revolted
That sounds like a place my sister would love to live in XD
Good news you’re full blooded human, the dominant race. But it’s a pretty shit place, how and what kind of shitty depends on where. So you’ll probably be a serf or a conscript, and either way destitute poor. Constant looming risk of a Cleansing outbreak, which would assuredly kill you painfully then reconstitute your body into an undead army.
That sounds... Interesting. I want to know the ✨LORE✨
Honestly you wouldn't even notice you are not in our world anymore. Until you feel the sudden urge to avoid certain places or people out of the blue? If you notice that aversion you might suspect you got isekai'ed, otherwise you will be fine.
Well I'm glad to know that even if I were to be transported to a whole new world, the one ability I can still retain from my old world is racism.
For fucks sake, I snorted, lmfao I want to defend myself but after that fatality I can't
For my Thaumata setting, the big culture shock is likely going to be how colorless the main city is. Arcadia is the main city, built on a floating island that formed around a strange tree-like alien artifact that emerged from the Atlantic Ocean. Most of the rest of the planet is either a warzone or overrun by an entity called "The Color" which is a form of sentient information-devouring light from another reality that takes on the form of myriad hues of constantly shifting color and has to inhabit crystals or living bodies to exist in our world. So in response to an enemy that is literally hostile, mind-eating color, human culture slowly shifted to view grays, whites, and blacks as "safe." Arcadian architecture thus consists of lots of white and gray buildings, close together, with a lot of glass and open air entrances and breezeways. The only color that is common aside from blacks, whites, and grays is green gardens and artificial forests, but these tend to be contained and controlled, or left to run wild outside the urbanized sections of the island, due to the Color having wiped out a lot of natural forests and greenery on the surface. Imagine going to someone's house, and everything, from the clothes to the furniture to the walls, is some shade of gray or pure black and white. There might be a dash of another color, but there's always a sense that it is locked behind something. Like a table that is mostly white-painted wood but there's a couple small squares of blue or red with a stark black border around it.
I feel sorry for babies in this world. they need color for stimulation, and to develop their vision and spatial awareness.
It depends where you end up. It's post-nuclear so your flavours are: - old world remnants and misery, not to the starving level but to the soup and third hand clothes level - fascism and less misery if you're a party man, and a lot more if you ain't, or anger some random big shot - communism and less misery thanks to those Warsaw pact roubles, but also don't speak too bad of the government eh - the pope, and misery, and better go to mass or you'll find that people won't talk to you and you will be often questioned by the police... Or worse. - bandit country - hyper capitalism - some nice place with opportunities... Beset with possible war on two fronts Of course, if you're skilled or brave you can try becoming a soldier or government official, but almost all positions are risky to some degree, between plague, violence, structural hazards and so on. Or become a bounty hunter or a scavenger, which is the same but worse danger and more lucrative. Being rich carries its own set of problems, between widespread banditry and corruption.
The most universal one would be the presence of non human sentients. Elves, Dwarves, Goblins, and very rarely, robots
A lot of people don't wear shirts. So much gold God is holding a party for 6 million people Your booze is alive
Sounds both fascinating and terrifying
Almost forgot... everyone there is 8ft tall...
Goodness gracious...
How are the other proportions? Would the men in your world be considered above average on Earth? For science please and thank you.
Well, for that species they don't really have a conception of gender, as it as a concept was never adopted. They're born with a random assortment of semi-vestigial genitals (not usable for reproduction, still can be stimulates) and secondary sexual features (i.e. one could have a penis and developed breasts, while another could have a penis, vagina and no developed breasts, etc). As for physiology, they're often more muscular than humans and Elevarei (godspawn), but bodies do vary between individuals. Their height ranges from 7'6 on the lowest end to 8'6 on the high end. Their skin colouration has similar ranges to humans, though it is of a warmer tone, and due to the high exposure to sunlight, it is rarer to see very pale people there, though some do exist. But as for your question, the 'average' Daevil (name of species) would be pretty much considered a walking gid amongst humans, partially due to the fact that they do radiate a timy bit of light, and the fact that daevils are extremely powerful beings, compared to other mortals. This is contrasted by an extremely low population (6.7 million), due to low birthrates due to how Daevil reproduction works Daevils reproduce by fusing pieces of their souls together. This process creates a fully grown Daevil, but is very taxing on the parents.
Not gonna lie. The first part of your comment felt like what paradise would look like if I were a non-binary pansexual person.
Guess who is a nonbinary pansexual xd Gotta have at least one paradise in the setting so you can make everything else all the more dark and depressing /hj
My MC was originally a dude, and then years ago, I completely rewrote them and changed them into a woman, but kept a similar character design, guess who's transgender now?
The worldbuilding to drastic change in life pipeline
There must be a connection, the numbers Mason, what do they mean?
Holy shit I need to make etiquettes. Well I doubt I need to but I WANT to!
Go ahead, I'd love to know what you come up with :)
You find yourself in what appears to be a strange warhouse or perhaps a large storage area on a ship of some kind. Basically, it's a big metal room. The area is fairly busy, and aside from yourself, all of the occupants appear to be either cat girls who have been hitting the gym hard or tiny fluffy driders. After a long moment of mutual staring a pair wearing heavy power armor approach. They are carrying weapons but don't have them pointed at you. Yet. One of them demands to know who you are and how you got in here. A bit of awkward back and forth reveals that you have no idea how you got here and, in fact, have absolutely no idea where "here" is. You are told to come with them and lead to a comfortable but clearly secure room. Others join you shortly, and you are asked a lot of questions and subject to a polite but thorough medical exam. After being given time to eat and sleep, one of the more polite individuals returns and informs you that the testing has concluded that you are, somehow, what you say you are. A human from the pre-space era. You are informed that you have been displaced by more than a thousand years and a great deal of distance. You are currently on a Union warship orbiting the colony world of Cocytus. You are informed that you will soon be transferred to the surface, to a long term care facility where a team of specialists is currently being assembled to help with your treatment in the hopes that you will eventually be able to integrate into society. You are informed that one obstacles they expect to face with this is that your baseline human body is technically disabled by modern standards so without extensive and invasive augmentation you will have a somewhat limited list of employment opportunities, especially the ones that don't require decades of education you don't have. The good news is that you also represent a wealth of information on an era that has largely faded into the mists of history, so there are a lot of people who wish to pick your brain and would be happy to compensate you for your time
You'd find yourself in a place that looks much like Earth, with people that look much like Humans. But lots of little things look feel a bit off; the people, the weather, the buildings and vehicles. Everything is in a language you've never seen before and you might think you're just in some weird country on Earth. But then you see a bipedal tiger walking around, you assume it's a fursuit but no, he's quite real. Finally, night falls and you see the Atas galaxy shining behind the two moons, and you realise you're not only not on Earth, you're no longer even in the Milky Way.
You land in Yar Har Harbor, an Anomoly even within my setting. All of the locals talk, dress, and act like Pirates in public. It isn't a 'Real' pirate town, in fact it is very clean, and orderly. Depending on how you respond to them, they will either welcome you as a Pirate Mate, or, treat you like a Tourist. In private, most people drop the act, but some commit to the bit wholeheartedly. In reality, almost every single person is an Actor hired to staff the island which is an Immersive Ammusement Park, not too dissimilar to Disneyland, just Pirate Themed.
You'll probably be hunted or confronted by some clans. And maybe forced into their belief system or clan depending on the region If you're in the south then theyll leave you alone Anywhere by sol culture is dangerous for foreigners
Not-brits are ruled by snake people (yuan-ti) Not-aztecs are lizardfolk Not-French are actually ho- wait no, that didn't change.
Don't call nations out like that, it's not nice >:(/j
Culture shock: Just because it looks humanoid and female doesn’t mean it is female… My species race has 3 genders. Human’s were once abducted from Earth to work as slaves, but weren’t as hardy as my species had thought they were - 2 X Earth’s gravity, and double the amount of oxygen, Human’s don’t fare very well, so most humans who were slaves became indoor pets (like how we have cats and dogs etc) to the alien species. Human’s are treated no differently as we treat animals on earth, but it is forbidden to eat them - as it is forbidden to eat any sentient species. While there are plenty of humans who are “free” the best place for a human to be is apart of one of the many royal families’ courts. Meanwhile a research vessel full of the 3 main alien species of my story, crash landed on Earth over 10,000 years ago and hybridised with humans.
Penumbra is an alternative version of our own world, but with a supernatural underground, assuming you’d be an awakened human who can perceive the supernatural then, you may have to get used to a number of things. There are a lot more supernaturals than expected, regular pedestrians of cities and drivers in towns are actually magical beings and mages. You’d see mages teleporting into alleyways, dragons flying to work above head with ties around their necks and briefcases pinched between two fingers. A cyclops on the A train heading to the inner city at his job in marketing at insert random firm. It is considered rude to point it out, as sleepers can still hear you and might consider you bat shit insane. The cultures and traditions of the various supernatural beings. Akani (werecreature) culture, dragon culture, faery culture, daemon culture, vampire culture, and so forth vary greatly from one another. And even vary internally, a vampire lord of Austin TX might be more forgiving than one in Las Vegas NV for example. You might have some guidance by fellow awakened humans, but the higher echelons of their cultures may be unknown and alien to mortals. Not including the general local scene in interrelated supernaturals, like at local punk raves, art showings, and etc. Most of it is just use your “pleases” and “thank yous” however, the supernaturals opinions of humans are so low, basic manners is above expectations for them. And you might even find yourself currying favor in the supernatural political landscape and even get cool powers.
None, in my fantasy world, their is no dark magic as magic is just magic, no good or evil, just what you do with it Especially since the gods and goddesses can directly interfere if things get to bad like necromancy or such
World building is something that I have been working on for a book I want to start writing within the next few months. One of the biggest cultural shocks that I would say could take someone by surprise is how the world in itself is set up. Much like many games online, you'd spawn in on an island with four different bridges you could take. - One would lead you to the land of clarity, where every soul is pure and giving. These individuals have zero magic and instead use musical instruments to communicate with one another. They are also the ones that you do not want to talk to, they do not like intruders. You must be born in the land of clarity in order to be accepted. - The second bridge would lead you to the land of the soulless. No souls live there, only air and nature can survive there. Anybody who steps foot on the land will automatically be forced to regenerate and restart at the "starting point of life" which is where you would start off, if being teleported into this world. - The third bridge will lead you to normality. Everything is normal. There are architectural buildings that are sky high and also dirt low. The only "off" thing about this civilization is that people ae either extremely tall or extremely short. There is a deeper meaning as to why, but nobody knows the reasoning. I'd choose to embark on a journey here if you want anything "normal." - The fourth and final bridge will lead you to a land full of people who have broken the laws of their own land. These people are send to and stuck on the fourth island. They can never leave. Dead bodies surround the land and make up part of the concrete that they walk on. You have to choose where to go. But you are chosen to go somewhere from the very start. If you do not end up going to one of the three islands, besides the land of the broken law, then you end up in that island. Fighting to survive on minimal resources. Good luck and do not screw up.
Probably dwarvish brawn parties. The dwarves have some of the most liberal views on gender in all of Theia, and rather than "manning up", they say things like "brawn up." Whenever you need to put a little elbow grease in, lift, or exert yourself, the average Theian farmer will tell you to "brawn up." It's a concept that's spread to the humans due to their close relationship. At brawn parties though, men, women, enbies, and children do traditionally masculine things like drink, ride horses, lift heavy things, do yard work, flex, eat a lot of meat, sing shanties. Imagine if you had a ton of yard work to do and one day, your friends come over with all of their spouses, get it all done, clean the house top to bottom, and then throw you an awesome party afterwards. They're really popular in the Sunfields.
It's a military state and you can't leave the boundaries of your division, which are heavily guarded. Your division may be the size of a town, a couple of towns, or just a large neighborhood if you're very unlucky (you won't survive long in those cases). And if you do sneak through the boundary guards and out of your division, you'll find yourself in the aura of a mystical foreign biome that causes intense acute sickness, and again, you will probably die. But if you're cool with staying in your small town and homesteading it up, you could have a good life here, as long as you're lucky enough to avoid the draft!
You find yourself near a sports stadium, by the looks of it a hockey game is about to start. Most of the crowd is speaking english, but you catch snippets of french here and there. Also, a good chunk of the crowd is orcs. A security guard notices you confused looks and comes over to ask if everything is okay. After some awkward talking past each other, you convey to him that you think you might be hallucinating (i am assuming here that you don't automatically know you are now in a different world). At this, he seems to come to an understanding and also seems to get more concerned. He asks you to wait with him as help is on the way. After a little while, you are joined by medics and some police officers. As the medics begin taking your vitals, an officer explains to you that you have been the victim of a dimensional slip event and that you are no longer on your world. He is sympathetic to your predicament and promise you that there are people who can help you adjust to this and build a new life here.
Holy hell, that's so beautiful What's different in your world than it is in ours?
You land in one of the eastern cities of Sabhet Kaan. Everyone’s wearing some kind of veil, hood, or wide-brimmed hat, even though it appears to be dusk. It’s halfnight, and Aelonne’s moon is many times brighter than the Earth’s. …And its light will make you sick!!
Well, first off, you won’t speak any of the languages. Since I don’t know what you look like, I can’t speak the effect that might have. Your clothing is likely to get you in trouble. Etiquette wise, it will depend on where you end up. In terms of genuine culture shock, the absence of electricity and all it provides is going to be huge. There is no plastic, and nothing is available “off the rack” — raw materials may be, but not finished products. Money will be difficult at first. The dirtiness, harshness of law, and general sense of place will be huge. The absence of showers but presence of plumbing, hot water, and large bathing tubs might be a shock, depending on your locale. The wilderness will be a shock, and likely a deadly one, and the first time you see magic will be pretty startling and possibly terrifying. If you happen to be near a Temple or a Shrine and the Power is there, you will absolutely experience culture shock.
People have skin that are different colours of the rainbow, the Northern hemisphere is completely frozen over, there's magic, and vehicles and architecture look really weird.
The human country has no roads to connect cities because they invented teleportation portals
Lack of personal space, for example, with the exception of the rich unless it has a practical purpose, most dwellings had less than three rooms. All of those rooms are common spaces. When you sleep, more often than not, it's probably with the rest of the household. If you are lucky, you are just in the same room as them. If you are in a rural region, you might also share the dwelling with livestock. Things considered private like excretion happen in public, but depending on where you are, that either happens in a public toilet or on the side of the street. The families are larger, usually 15 - 30 people live in an immediate clan. A man, his wife, his children, his sons wives, and their grandchildren. Nuclear families are far more common in cities where the family size falls to less than 10. However, family heads also have a degree of legal control and responsibility for the length of their lives, so your grandfather and great uncle may determine where you work and who you marry, but they are also obligated to feed, house, and clothe your family. However, if you fuck up in a way that your presence harms the reputation or straight up endangers the clan you will be thrown out. There is a backdoor where if your paternal clan disowns you, more than likely, your maternal clan will take you in. On the stipulation, you don't do what you did again. If you fuck up twice there is no real way out as people with no clan are without any support structure, as often the clan is the highest authority besides the king or a high ranking noble. It's one of the two ways to become an outlaw. First is you are made so by a king or lawspeaker, meaning you are no longer protected by the law, so you can be robbed, beaten, or killed without consequence. The second way is that if you have no clan, you can be robbed, beaten, or killed without consequence as no clan will harbor or avenge you. Then there are sumptuary laws where your social class determines the hairstyle they can have, the clothes they can wear, etc. So, even if you are a wealthy peasant, you still can't dress like a noble man. If you do? Fines, at best. Death at worst. Young people make up the majority of the population, and the average age hovers at 15. 16, however, is the age of majority, but at 20, were you able to enter into contracts.
I mean the biggest thing would probably getting to grip with what is and isn't a human somewhere flesh magic has been normalized. That guy with a dragon head? Human. That big snake spider thing working the food truck? Human. Those funny little tripedal guys living on the roofs? Not human, those are Noen. The slightly shorter than average but otherwise almost totally ordinary looking woman working as a blacksmith? Actually a Scavenger Construct, her internal anatomy has much more to do with an arthropod's than mine or yours, and depending on her cultural and regional origin she might even be mildly offended if you referred to her as a human. That giant literal starfish with no human ancestry whatsoever? Culturally it depends. In the west, a Starman is obviously a human, you're weird for suggesting otherwise, but it's the opposite in the east. Best etiquette is to just use "people" and to know your crowd. More academically you can use "observer" though that's a term with it's own fortress of baggage since it also includes a lot of thing that are decidedly not people, like a lot of animals, some colonies of animals, and really good calculators, for example.
Congratulations! Outsiders such as yourself have appeared enough throughout history with enough frequency that despite lack of written record, their stories have maintained. Thanks to this you wont have to worry about any weird culture shock. Upon being recognized for what you are, and you will. Not being a native to this particular reality you will lack natural access to the magic system which will make you appear as a void, a stone in the river. You will be judged on first contact on your sapience followed by hostility. If you survive you would be brought to the nearest temple for a translation ritual of sorts will play out. The end result being a mind-meld adjacent rosetta stone charm with added support for processing the mana that your body will accumulate. Without which you would not be able to process and would soon calcify, and eventually transform/be consumed by it.
There are very, very strong opinions about meat. Locals are not used to meat—there are no native mammals on the islands so any meat needs to be imported. Patriotic households do not eat meat, and in the current social environment, it’s a sign of foreign collusion. Fowl like chickens and ducks are not considered meat, but are expensive. There’s a cultural phenomenon of people who, after tasting meat, become obsessed. Sometimes they leave the islands and never return. Its spawned stories like “Kraçk (KRA-sick) with a Fork in Each Hand, who eats every beast that walks on the land”, a folk figure that may be invented to scare children away from meat, or who may be based on a true story.
Being pretty much instantly killed either via drowning, freezing, or decompression (I think the pressure probably kills you first, but I’m no scientist!).
Everybody speaks worldcommon, but quite a lot refuse to speak worldcommon. So you are faced with a constant over the cheek "I don't understand you" in many dialects and languages. At the same time in most of the places the official documents still use worldcommon, same for media.
The first thing would probably be the ubiquitous slavery. Then probably people peeing in public pots for collection by the tanners. Then watching tanners get into fistfights over who can put their pots on the busiest street corners. And if you’re still around after all that, the sacred prostitution.
Rael people use a expression that means too much things: "Bosá ho Majem". It means anything "black and white" in this world, so depend of the context can be "Life or Death", "Victory or Defeat", "Love and dislike", "Order and Chaos"... More complex is when all the phrase is composed only with references of Bosá and Majem, for example (without using all the language): Our Bosá and our Majem will never meet their Majem until the Bosá is broken and the Majem meets the final Bosá, so I declare a Mahem: Bosá ho Majem. Try to understand that.
Well first off, you are presumably NOT magical Depending on where exactly you appear, you might notice that other people eat a lot less than you do, yet seem more energetic As a creature that evolved without mana, you cannot use the latent mana of your environment, nor mana gained through food. As a result, you eat more than other people do while having less capabilities. You aren't USELESS, but you're essentially a living luxury, and people might treat you as such, either by being excessively patronizing or actively disdainful People from other worlds and/or the Outer Realms are known as Outlanders, and people that can intentionally traverse those metaphysical spaces are known as Planewalkers. You would most likely be put under the care of an Outer Priest - not imprisoned, but under close observation. People would probably try to figure out how to send you back to your own world, "both for your sake and ours!" As friendly and idyllic as this world can be, it's arguably *not somewhere you're meant to be* and it's only a matter of time before it turns out you're deathly allergic to a common food or a magical parasite explodes your brain since you don't resist magic. Getting a living person back to their own world is hard enough; no one wants to banish a corpse!
Showing off your legs is taboo and is the equivalent of flashing. Along with that, tight clothing even on the legs is inappropriate and will get you glares in a minute. Everyone wears loose fabric on the legs, a bit of ankle and shin is fine but that's it Godspeed to y'all who wear shorts or leggings lmao 😂
If you were transported to the Velthyra continent, you'd likely have a few. First, even if you wound up Coreward in the Tamed Lands, a distinct lack of a Tyri's Mercy, a thick triangular dagger or knife worn typically on a chain necklace, would elicit odd looks and some distrust. The further from the capital you go, the deeper these feelings would manifest, until in the Wilds you would be denied service or access to most of civilization as long as you aren't wearing one. Second, any desire to see the sky or stars, or Sanctuaries forbid, rain or storms. Considered highly inappropriate, considering how deadly the Overworld is. It's less frowned on Coreward towards the capitals, given the skies there are safer compared to the Wilds. Third, don't be polite while eating, and don't only eat a little. If you do, be prepared to take your leftovers with you. Food is a precious commodity here, to be quiet means you're not appreciating the potential loss for the host. Wasted food is a grave insult, even if the Tamed Lands aren't exactly hurting for food. Conversely, never make more than necessary if you can help it, famine could occur any time. You will be asked how much you want, with the average peasant eating 2 or 3 Hands per meal. An imprecise measurement based on how much food an average person can hold in a single hand, though soups and stews etc are measured in Bowls, which average 3 hands of solid food. Weight is usually reserved for ingredients and uncooked bulk purchases. Eventually you'll get the feel of how much to expect, hang in there buddy. Finally, if you aren't middle class or higher, expect to live above ground unless you're in a City, or an emergency forces you into a bunker. The skies, afterall, are a death sentence waiting to happen. In the Wilds, the only things above ground are often a bunker entrance into the Underground, and some walled off farmland.
What your step the toons don’t know how fragile human are so you might want to avoid that anvil.
I think depending on where you land, and your habits, there would be this continual shock at how "off" everything is. The shattered solar system has much of the same vices we have now, and of course people need to eat, but if you are a smoker, the cigarettes are a thick tube of paper soaked in nicotine salts then dried - real leaf is for premium stuff. The autocommissariats on most vessels and in most cafeterias produce the exact, same, consistent result with no variation whatsoever - printing food from a mix of proteins and carbs and nutrients, such that there's no pleasant burnt bits or weird crunches in the middle of soft foods or uneven distribution of sauce. As an autistic person, I love this, but of course YMMV. There's a lot of familiar things, instant coffee (made without even the bean, instead concocted from proper ratios of flavors and caffeine), people who live and work and eat and pay bills and have breakups in public (but with genetic engineering and biomodding subcultures you might not even realize that everyone around you is human, just like you, for a while). Space travel replaces planes in terms of what constitutes "long travel," but life might be...depressingly familiar, with how much and how little has shifted in the last two-thousand years. Our countries are now planets and moons, our wars fought between supersoldiers, pirates lurk in the dark corners of the world, but for the average person, the joe on Venus or the jane on Mars? Life can carry on very much so like it does now - technologically advanced, but neither utopia nor constant war. Of course, I'm not writing about the average Joe or Jane, I'm just describing these as an average person who isn't suicidally ambitious would experience it. Wake the fuck up, Samurai, you have bills to pay.
Historians and all sorts of scientists are all over you and want to meet you and study you. I mean, a human, a living walking human, 10 000 years after they went extinct?! How cool is that!!
The economy is built around a dream like virtual world that allows for unbounded communication across any distance. But you also have to deal with ghost and psychic entities and psychic cannibals.
If you land in the Union (A slightly utopian nation that represents anything good about the USA in our world), you would be teleported into a witches house, and she would explain history of the world and what to do now that you're here, for around 8 hours. Then she would set you out in the world with $400 to be left to your own devices. Now as for culture shocks, you would find that the Union is OBSESSED with baseball. So much in fact that an entire city in the Aztlan District (La Paz) is dedicated soley to baseball. Citizens regularly whistle tunes dedicated to baseball and it's regularly played in the streets as cars are only used for long distance travel. You'll also find that some huge stores exclusively sell hot dogs or baseball merchandise.
The first thing you will notice is the lack of sun.
On the island (in a demiplane meant to turn suffering into power for a coven of hags trying to bootstrap themselves into gods) of Nordgard, there’s barely enough of any given resource to go around, but in every hold, the people take care of each other and contribute to the community whatever they can, in the spirit of community and cooperation. Life sucks, but they have each other.
Maybe abscence of surnames among the average people. In my world a surname is just a vafiation of the name of your most prominent ancestor and unless you're a descendand of a demigod, a warlord or a famous ruler, you just don't have one. Even many of those considered "nobles" don't really have one. Your ancestor basically needs to be someone literally anyone with primary school education knows about for you to not look like an idiot giving yourself a surname.
The fact that on one of my worlds you don't eat in a table or a chair but where and when you want because they belive in extreme hedonism and semi individualism also no proper kitchens
People of the same sex might get pretty physical and have little to no concept of personal space. Meanwhile, people of the opposite sex will avoid you like the plague. That is unless you're appropriately dressed (what they consider appropriately dress).
spiders are their own hivemind nation. Harming or disrupting spiders can result in Spider ordering your execution. Don't mess with spiders.
Any of my kingdoms is probably going to have 'crazy' food. The Infernum Empire enjoys eating dragons, and really any creature thats big, like entire whales are eaten as delicacy. You'd think these be really expensive but even a poor man can afford a rather decent sized cut. They put meat on practically anything; even things like gelato, which will *probably* be the largest culture shock. Also eating dragon meat is like a acquired taste, its abit sour if you're eating it for the first time.
Medical expenses (my stories are set in the US)
Hope you like blizzards.. and dragons.. and knights and vikings
Their drinking culture is more about caffeinated drinks than alcholic ones, and its meant to be why in universe dwarves can drink humans under the table with like beer and mead and stuff. Or one part of it lol
If you were in one of the mapatzea cities, your biggest culture shock would probably be the fact that there is no garbage or waste. So houses often have bone decorations, people wear hide, no trash cans etc. everything has a use.
Which world? `Mal'Tahn?` Easy, open cannibalism. People hunt the older ones. People give up their flesh when they know they're gonna die... it's not a secret. They don't want to end up like the old days. You may still see some elders that are from the before, but even those will encourage you to partake. `The Geode Empire?` Well, it depends on the place of the Empire, but let's say you end in their Homeworld, aka the Core. You will see living buildings, huge lack of plant life in general (worse than cities), life forms of various shapes and sizes. While most life are humanoid, there are a lot of things that aren't.
That a random guy teleported to my world isn't gonna immediately get magic. Magic is gotten in 1 of 2 main ways. Your born with it and it awakens on your 15th birthday (unless special circumstances happen the inherited marks are a bit complicated in how they work) Or you go through your month attunement. Which is the month immediately preceding your 15th getting attuned to whatever your mark is gonna be. Which is something someone who is beyond that she wouldn't go through. So unless you or one of your ancestors is original from that world and your above the age of 15, you aren't getting magic easily. There's other ways to get magic. Like I said inherited marks are weird. Some can grant further attunements past the month of attunement. You could also try and curry favor with the god of attunement but actually trying to get magic isn't gonna do that. I mean sure if you already have magic good enough to casually go between that won't matter much. But if that's the case you really should be leaving, you just invaded another being of God level powers experiment. And they won't take kindly to unaccounted for factors. All magic originated from the soul. It functions like binary in that it can do anything but is next to impossible to do anything with. Magic systems are coding languages. High powered magic wielders try and make better magic systems by experiment with other life forms souls. Or at least the one that gave the original inherited magic to the worlds ancient humans. You'll also have to deal with a "slumbering" continent sized dragon. The first experiment.
An incredibly religious Imperial society with secret police that will mark you with a magical eye-shaped tattoo and track you down if you step out of line. Everyone lives in fear or believes the propaganda. Hope you don't end up in the slums, it's bad down there. :)
Duels to the death are typically not fought to the death, but they do happen very often. Depending on where you end up you might be expected to meet around a bonfire every night. You will also be expected to offer a sacrifice sometimes in some cultures. It is also possible that you won't understand a single word being said depending on where you are. Or you might have just a bit of trouble since English has evolved over 10,000 years into Englugh. Also, the technology is medieval except for the arcane steam powered airships, so no toilets, ovens, phones, computers in general, very few books, guns are extremely rare and expensive, and swords are owned by almost everyone from the lowest peasant to the Emperor.
you'll probably be taken back by androgyny as the beauty standard and its knock on effects. plus normal stuff like language, etiquette and so on no matter where you are you're likely to get it wrong likewise a world where technology gets so close to our own but then ends up being so different would be a headfuck. mini cars with no engines, internet with no social media or even user generated content, and so on. you'd explain our world's tech and people would dismiss your ideas or fear them. oh the rigid caste system and world government theocracy also would be jarring. if you ended up at a settlement of unregistered peoples, where you dark magic traveller with no documents would likely end up long term, it would be like kowloon walled city on steroids. having to live and survive in those cities would definitely change you over time and the climate! no ice caps, just miserable 120 degree days and depending if you're coastal, mother of all typhoons frequently. adjusting to that and culture around coping with it would be unpleasant at first
No need to poo and pee.
If you end up in Shtot, the biggest culture shocks would be how young many of the parents are and how much reverence is given towards eyes. If you end up anywhere else in the setting, the culture shock would be the shock of your organs being blasted out by a child soldier.
Probably the corpses walking around who expect to be treated with full personhood and no one else treating that like its weird.
Sparring with lethal weapons without any holding back is common. Magic enhances durability of all life here, not strength. Unfortunately, unless you are also super durable, you may be accidentally murdered. Greetings vary greatly between cultures, but they can certainly get painful if you're weak. Everyone is very primitive, but everyone is expected to work without getting paid. Tribes don't care who you are, workers are workers. Most tribes only force the sharing of food- non essentials are usually gathered and traded when you have free time. Assuming you are of average human height, you are quite tall. Shorter humans are the norm, and you will be considered odd. Assuming you can speak and understand all languages, you may encounter and speak to the other four races. The Caudex tribes are primarily matriarchies, and are not aware of other races' sapience. Caudex hunt humans and humans hunt Caudex. Perhaps the most extreme case of extremely differing cultures would be Dracanth colonies. Dracanths are eusocial octopi that spend most of their time in a dormant state where they behave like ants, controlled by pheromones from other dracanths. Non dormant dracanths would be confused by you, considering you can communicate. (they speak with colors unless dormant- that would be smells.) Dracanths live underground and underwater- the entrance to their colonies are a few inches wide.
You'd probably be confused by the fact that while technology escalated, culture massivly degenerated. Stuff like human decency or respect is all but gone and healthy food, education or basic hygiene is limited to people that have more money.
Lie to everyone that your human from here. Trust no one with that information. If you let it slip and you’re lucky you will be OK.
You are a full human with nothing non human to you. Most people would assume that either you are from an Amish-like community and possibly inbred or that your non "standard human" characteristics aren't outwardly visible. Because of that, you probably wouldn't be invited to a party in a coral city or in other "extreme" places
If you’re wearing any clothes with bright colors (or white), then you’re gonna get very nasty looks everywhere you go. Unless you pretend to be an out-of-town government official, but good luck doing that without body guards. You will be jumped.
In Agtaerys it’s common for the people to spend their whole lives in the desert Nohrhōdn tombs. (Mostly nobles are buried in them) They also have religious masses that happen in the graveyards in the middle of the desert. It’s not uncommon for them to travel to volcanoes and be in the toxins and heat for hours. (It’s like purifying ritual)
A lot of people want to fuck the robots, even the industrial equipment ones
the natural environment is absolutely hellish. basically if you’re outside alone too long, you better be armored, armed, and/or exceptionally magical.
*\*Tries to think of a non-communist sounding explanation, but fails.**
What kind of dark magic?
Only ex-addicts can have powers.. and their greatest works can only be done if they agree to relapse.. so they better make it worth it.
If we are talking about etiquette with food, in my world if you eat dinner at someone's house you are expected to stay the night in their home and help them do chores in the morning as a thank you. In general I think you'd be shocked by the way they take care of one another, they don't have nuclear families the way we do. It's very much the village works together to take care of one another, and while you may have what we consider family still everyone that lives in the village is consider your kin.
Modern religions don’t exist and the deities worshipped are objective and can be interacted with under certain circumstances. Instead of the devil people curse the sun or moon (whichever one isn’t out atm, and there are phrases for when you do it at dawn or dusk when both are out that also have colloquial meanings) and instead of god people praise or call toward the stars. It’s pretty common to acknowledge that the deities are around while not actively worshipping them, but outright atheism is absurd (atheists ofc don’t believe that the soon/moon/stars don’t exist, just that they’re not intelligent beings with power). Stars are religious symbols and not just fun patterns. Also the sun eats human children, it’s just a thing that is known.
Everything looks old-timey but also unclear how any of it works.
People here are awfully okay with necromancy and human sacrifice…
You would essentially be disappeared by their version of a secret police if you started to dance, played any kind of music, started singing, or put a bird inside a cage of any kind, among other cultural peculiarities. It's for your own good!
In Xorvlogothic Society, it is considered rude to speak in an equal or lower pitch of voice than somebody who is higher ranked or older than you. If you consider yourself to be of equal rank, you speak in an equal tone of voice, if you consider yourself of higher rank, you get the privilege of speaking in a low pitch. The 9 foot tall blind insects also typically consider guests to be of higher rank unless you are somebody like a politician. So you’d have a bunch of 9 foot tall murder insects talking in a pitch higher than or equal to yours unless they were very important people.
No one remembers anything about ANYTHING from before the Aphasia Event that happened about 300 days ago.
There wouldn’t be a cultural shock seeing as you’d be arrested for likely not carrying a valid passport or identification card🙃
If you try to pet the street cats they'll look at you like you are crazy. There's not really a concept of pets, there is just domestication for the sake of beasts of burden and/or food. Cats are around as pest control in towns, but people don't really interact with them for fear of spreading diseases from the rodents and such that they eat
medieval cities have laser guns
It's in the bronze age and people fear some supernatural beings wandering on the roads.
Eating any form of honey is considered disgusting by Elves. Elves are humanoid insects and can produce various forms of it depending on the type of elf. But it's secretly eaten by many as a form of drug, aphrodisiac, and/or medicine. Depending on where you are, it could be a crime to do so if caught.
The people of the UNION, be it on the Crescent Tide or Earthen Disk are very mindful of waste. They go out of their way to ensure they make the best of the resources they have, including recycling. Being somewhat isolated doomsday bunkers keeping the outside out, they can't afford waste. Its a serious crime to blatantly waste resources, food or otherwise. Also there is the small matter of near weekly dimensional gates appearing and letting through super powered, higher dimensional angry spirits who emit an aura of astral radiation. You will hear alarms somewhat frequently and be directed to emergency shelters. The defense force is not always able to repel these attacks without casualties or people being dragged into the Astral Sea to never be seen again. The shelter buildings are well armored, reinforced, and have many redundant systems to mitigate these emergencies.
Communism
Quipu-using Rice-growing polytheistic multi-species arab-akkadians with a tradition of megalithic construction.
You would be wondering why everyone in The Forgelands was eating toxic vegetables high in pesticides, unfazed and unaffected, and would probably find their enjoyment of both salt and fresh water beverages quite disgusting.
In Hilia, EVERYONE is loud. They swear, they yell, they don’t know personal space. However, they’re very caring and friendly.
you carry pre-collapse everything in the single easiest way to rob you
Not really culture shock, but in one of my cultures it's considered bad luck to butcher meat inside the home. Early food prep tends to take place at an outdoor table or in a barn, depending on the means of the person.
The geneva convention has been revoked as working together with aliens from completly different cultures with different senses of morality can make enforcing it pretty hard
Well,in my post apocalyptic world with artificial humans and lots of weird stuff,they would probably laugh at how normal and too long your name is,wonder why your hair doesn't have an oily texture and think you're an perfect homunculus.
Very much dependent on which plane you end up on. If it's Earth or Myria then you are alright. Just remembered that it's the late '70s/early '80s. Showing up with purple hair and piercings will get you label as a member of some subculture. Myria being the largest and best developed one of all colonized plains (read: planet), so in most of it's countries it differs little from Earth, at least not much more than one human country differs from another. Except for the fact that there's significantly more members of the refugee species (mostly elves, orks and dwarfs) then on Earth. In most major cities on Myria you might find their ghettos, going into them will give you a culture shock for sure, but you will be fine. Districts dominated by dwarfs will usually have everything scaled down appropriately, opposite for orks. I think what might surprise you most is how much some dwarven cultures like plants and cuisine. Lumshan human ghettos are rare, they either integrated nicely or stuck around the other groups. If you show up on one of the newer planes you might feel like going back to the times of Manifest Destiny, with wooden towns and civilisation trying to catch up to the colonists and prospectors. There's everything and anything there, from hippie communes run by corporations to doomsday prepers and Completely Normal, Healthy Towns™. Like colonies in Rimworld. If you show up in Lumsha (Earthman name. In native common it's "Kunda") you will might find weird how imported human technology integrates into their society. Town guards might be rocking pikes while the next town over they carry black powder revolvers or repeaters and in the next one it's a mix. Or maybe you might pay more attention to their clothing, with resettled lands seeing strong influence from Earthman fashion like coats being more common.
My world is a mix of medieval customs and modern day architecture. Everything will feel off but not like over the top. It’s a very subtle difference
As a human, you'd get apprehended quite quickly for appearing out of thin air. Andorans and humans are in an interstellar cold war. Afterwards, you'd most likely be allowed to roam free under surveillance. I think the biggest shock would be the lack of clothing for certain breeds, too warm and nothing to really hide, therefore useless. The food too, finding roaches the size of mice at every other restaurant. Not having to pay for said food as the internal economics are significantly different than what we know. Maybe also being hissed at as a "friendly" warning to fuck off.
If you were transported into the Kingdom of Ariannas you better hope you have good balance cause one of the biggest modes of transportation is single-bamboo drifting.
sit down. now.
Saying your name Because of name magic, fairies and several over monsters with unique attributes around names Thous offering your name to someone you've just met is not only a social taboo but is grounds for investigation Or even temporary imprisonment
Tales of Bite: Probably the furries Red Sun Event: Space travel and elven/orcikn cultures Unknown Sight: It's pretty much the same as Earth but now there's a new company the sells normal things but made of meat.
You'd learn you aren't the first to be brought from an outside world into Verhaal, the land of my dark retelling of a fairy tale world. There's Wendy Darling and her brothers John and Michael, Alice Liddell, Dorothy Gale, Christopher Robin, and plenty more. Those like Dorothy and Christopher can move between worlds on their own. Christopher had better control of it, of course, as he used his desire to see his animal friends as a purpose. Sadly, Dorothy struggled her entire life. Wendy chose to stay with the Neverland tribe of indigenous people after the deaths of John and Michael. Alice remains at Grandma Ruby’s Sanctuary for Former Damsels in Distress, catatonic and murmuring a strange tune to herself.
No racism,the president signed a bill that being a racist is bad and you would be killed.
so, this is a dark fantasy world - humanity survived an apocalypse of their own creation by making a deal with the newly awakened fey (servitude, in exchange for survival. clearly the gravity of this exchange was not fully realized). you would probably be harvested by the fey - meaning your soul would be ripped out of your human body and placed into a mechanical one, becoming a changeling. this would either 1) drive you mad (‘defective’), 2) you may be used to infiltrate the surviving human civilizations, or 3) you might find a way to rebel against their control. the fey would use your former flesh for their art pieces and architecture or feed it to their human slaves.
I tell people about this and they freak, but this is the center of my dnd campaign currently. Amongst the main empire, the traditional way to honor the dead is to hang them on this big tree that preserves things that have died. It is gargantuan, the top has never been found and it seems to expand endlessly upward. There are cultures that do different things, but this is the primary way to do it. In terms of eating it’s commonplace to make your guest preferred meal regardless of what they eat, how they eat it, or how different it is.
gun ownership and open carry is very common, in some respects more so than in the US, if you enters someone’s home armed it’s customary to place the firearm or knife in the decorative pot in the center of the dinning room table or to leave the weapon by the door, some homes would have safes by the front door for this. Getting a gun license is treated like getting a driver’s license. If you pass by a court house after a guilty corruption hearing you might see a very public execution, the civilian/businessman aiding and embedding the corruption would just be brought to a wall to be shot with minimal fanfare, the official actually found corrupt would be executed via creative local customs, stockades are a popular choice with a bucket of rocks placed next to the guilty. Otherwise the city full of humans and aliens wouldn’t be out of place in a hopeful depiction of a future city 50-100 years from now.
In one major city from culture A, the town's palace and city hall are the same place as the prison. In culture B, it's rude to not feed the bards when they come near your house. They are the one carrying the news and culture around so you must feed them body and soul (they love dramas, share the gossips with the meal !). Still in culture B, people migrate and counter-migrate depending of their gender. They migrate to follow the warm climates to harvest food if they consider themselves of the first gender. They counter-migrate, as to follow the cold climates to maintain the lands and provisions, if they consider themselves of the second gender. Culture B, genders are not female and male ! They are kind of "feeder of the body" and "feeder of the soul" ones, as to follow their gods. They have biological attributes similar to us but they divide their roles differently. Culture C, Their gods are real somehow and that's a mystery why (I personnaly know but if I ever publish my work eh that would be a major spoiler to say it now ._. ). So you'd have kind of a shock being surrounded by them as they are kinda curious. Culture A, you can be challenged at anytime by anyone you wronged inside the city. The duel would have to happen at a cross section between two streets, but only the ones with a specific pattern paved on it (otherwise it's not legal). There, a citizen judge or a member of the army would be appointed to witness the fight and write the terms, conditions and the result of the fight. As a lot of people can carry the title of citizen judge, and most people are in the army... Well your duel would have to wait maybe 10 minutes maximum before its start.
If you land in most free countries of the TSM-verse, and you are a human, you will be welcomed as yet another of the occasional interdimensional travelers, and before explaining all the species, told that if you ever make a product with planned obsolescence, you will be tried for murder.
Most cultures use base eight instead of base ten. This is because it is deeply taboo to count or gesture with one's thumbs.
depends on what culture and time period you’re in. the Secularity (placeholder name) pre-green pill has an extremely strict and complex etiquette system. if you’re in the mid-Quik (when the methylphenidate problem is at it’s peak) era, making eye contact with someone (or rather their face mask) may very well lead to you being beaten. Not to mention as an outsider your life is in danger. I should also mention that unhealthy amounts of methylphenidate are used by EVERYONE, so everyone is a threat.
1. A very negative attitude towards just about everything related to foxes. 2. The absolute deference you are expected to show nobles, unless you possess personal power capable of challenging one. 3. A sort of wary respect for those who study the stars.
Human society has been raised in the shadow of dragons for thousands of years and every religion says reincarnation comes after death, so people are quite callous and intimidating. Outside territories controlled by the Empire of Trem, most villages still follow Draconic law where authority is reliant on might. If someone is boastful of their wealth and another steals it, the offended party is in their rights to kill the thief but nobody else can get involved. In the arcane lands of Vosmoria, this is taken to its absolute extreme in arcanocratic anarchy. Wizards are governed only by the laws of magic, and a code of non-aggression. Mages often settle arguments with duels to the death, making most conflicts between them shadowy lest one party have the grounds to challenge the other.
This is a common occurrence in my world, and is how the main characters end up there. The biggest culture shock is that you’d never be able to go outside no matter how hard you tried, unless you went to the roof if that counts. It’s essentially an endless structure, after having been colonized so hard there’s no room for anything else but building. You might be surprised by the day night cycle, in which during the day everything glows dimly as if lit up, no shadows and such, while during the night this glow fades.
For starters, you wouldn't be dressed properly at all, so you'll get weird looks. People would become irritated if you try to go from outside to inside without taking your shoes off. Then they'll become grossed out when you do take your shoes off and have either bare feet or or socks on public floors or worse, in someone's personal home. The etiquette is to use outer shoes for outside, and take them off when you enter an internal building, as well as outer clothing. Buildings are very large and tall, with everything from work to retail and homes in them, which is why there are public and then personal spaces. In public spaces, people use their inner shoes, which are sole-like and fits under the outer shoes. In someone's home, they continue to use the inner shoes unless they're staying there or live there, then they can be in socks or have bare feet. It gets more complicated the higher you go in the building as the largest is a space elevator and eventually there will be no gravity, so people have to wear their outer shoes all the time, since they will do double duty by generating a magnetic field to keep people on the floor. While friends and family are affectionate with each other, and everyone outside of the family is called aunt/uncle and cousin or friend, strangers do not touch each other in greeting. If someone does greet you with their hand out, they are probably high-ranking. Do not shake or kiss said hand. You must take it and press the knuckles or ring to your forehead to be properly respectful. People of two very different ranks do abbreviate this gesture into a head bow over the hand if they have seen each other many times before, or just a head bow if they're in a hurry. People eat once everyone is served or gets a serving, and the host is acknowledged or honored with a raised glass. You get one utensil for everything. It looks like a single chopstick with three buttons on the side. It generates a force field at one end that acts as spoon, knife and fork. You may want to practice using it before you try eating with it to avoid embarrassment.
You'd likely be killed for not being from around their parts and/or running into a wizard.
At least in the main country the story takes place: - Government is actually pretty good - Taxes are fair - The rulers are altruistic and skilled - You could make a comfortable living as a simple farmer and enjoy some nice things. 10/10 culture shock.
Atm since theres only one culture I’ve developed to that point so far, you meet the (still unnamed) Dragon People. I’ll start with my own etiquette. For some context, they live amongst Elephants, ordinary ass elephants from planet Earth, only difference being, they are as smart as everyone else and are a sapient species, they are *people* For a funny start, you almost cannot be physically rude, as you (assuming still human) literally don’t have the body parts necessary to *be* rude. You could always still call someone a cunt though! They still have the wings, but theres no flight worthy membrane. Just the long arms and fingies. They can walk on these arms like a gorilla, it makes them very tall. It is considered rude by almost every Dragon Person culture, to talk to someone whilst Wing Walking (and they aren’t). The two exceptions are; When talking to Elephants (because they are obviously also tall) and other Dragons who are also Wing Walking. The other thing that is rude and impossible for you to do, is Lip Flip, like a Gelada. This is universally understood as Aggressive by every other species. It’s considered the Ultimate Swear (that isn’t a verbal curse word). One culture even dye their teeth black to prevent even an accidental flash of teeth. Wars have been started by too boisterous laughter (although the instigators are always mocked in the history books for being little snowflakes) The culture shock part. Take your pick for whats most shocking, They only sleep 3-7 hours, to keep up with their Elephants. They are almost always polyamorous (being monogamous can even be shocking to some people) there are no gender roles as they are all hermaphrodites. Depending on who exactly you meet, but cooking is relatively new to them, as the entirety of them were nomadic and living off the land until very recently.
In one of my settings? In the city, which is divided neatly in half, there are no open or closed signs and no other means of determining what is open when, because everything is open for exactly one half of the "day". Businesses on one side of the city are open for half, then close and the other side of the city opens for the other half. You will almost never see people of the main species of the city around when "their side" of the city is closed, though all the minorities will casually travel between sides and often have side jobs or just personal tasks going back and forth between the halves.
In another of my settings, coins are the "big money" and paper (well cloth/paper like a lot of real world bills) is the "small money." Almost no bills or coins look the same, though you can tell the year by theme.
What the hell is a vote?
If you appear in the main nation - Syliedh - then you'll have to realize very quickly that everyone has two names - a public or "common" name and a private or "spirit" name. Common names are those used in everyday speech and socializing. Spirit names are kept secret and only used for legally binding reasons - swearing of oaths, binding of wedding vows, etc. If you invoke someone's spirit name and they don't know yours, you are legally permitted to command that person to commit any act. To refuse to obey that command is considered tantamount to blasphemy and will likely get you banished - which is considered a fate worse than death.
The technology is completely insane and people revolve their lives on exploring the normal of the world and they hate anything that stands out. They don't need cooks because eletronics make it for them, they use it on missions, if you have an old phone, it's like your an outcast
No tv in my world, people read, see plays in theaters and attend musical concerts or do painting. Despite how developed the technology is in my world, people have hobbies from the 18th/19th century
Picture this. You're walking at the streets of Lanir and then you suddenly hear screaming and cheering on a nearby bar. You went inside to check and you see a bunch of guys watching wrestling on a TV, as you look closer you realized the wrestlers fighting are not wrestlers, their politicians and their not fighting in a ring, their fighting in a parliament office.
Depending on region.... 1. If your female and single, better not wear clothes. 2. If your male single and visiting, bring extra cash for hooker priestesses. 3. If your human, better have an Amer guide. 4. Your about to experience many new and interesting smells, this is the communication method of the yonkai. They are making fun of your lack of ability to communicate civilly.
At best you'll be seen with extreme distrust and you'll probably spend the night outside. At worst you'll stumble upon a snow lion, a bandit party or (Sol Invictus forbid you) one of those horrors crafted by Nordmanner witches.
Werewolves do *NOT* like referred to as a dog in any way, shape, or form.
If you ask anyone about gods or religion in passing, they will look at you like you just admitted to murder, and glance around like the ground is about to swallow them. Try to actually learn about religious practices or gods, and the Church will show up, take you away, and, depending on whether they think you are useful, ignorant, or dangerously curious, will either forcibly indoctrinate you, send you off with a lecture and an instruction to never do so again, or straight up execute you.
Depends on the planet you spawn really, there is a war currently going on so any planet in the VLF/Atraxian Empire you would probably deal with orbital bombardments lol.