prokopetz:

Alternative to the tired old wizard-with-a-sugar-daddy interpretation of the patron/warlock relationship in Dungeons & Dragons:

• Clueless boss and long-suffering employee, whose powers are basically the magical equivalent of pilfering office supplies for personal use
• Scheming master and duplicitous apprentice who are totally open about their loathing for each other and are keen to see who betrays whom first
• Bureaucratic devil and soul-peddling diabolist with a contract a mile long, each honestly believing they’re getting the better of the other
• Glowering quartermaster and loose-cannon operative, whose record for getting results just barely justifies the expense of employing them
• Indifferent parent who pays their estranged offspring’s allowance like clockwork but otherwise prefers to deal with them as little as possible
• Vast, slumbering god-monster and amoral parabiologist who knows which spots to poke with a stick to provoke particular autonomic responses

savefrog:

savefrog:

Ok so imagine your fantasy setting with your typical giant spiders.

Ok, now imagine that these spiders have largely been domesticated for their incredibly valuable silk. They help make clothes, rope, textiles, even ARMOR. They’re almost treated like carnivorous cows in the regions that can support them. They might even name these girls the classic names like “Bessie”. They’re great mothers and produce many young; useful for trade and… even food if you like The Crunch.

People in this world are hardly afraid of big spiders the same as we’re hardly afraid of big dogs. Wary of wild ones, but not scream and cry terrified. Smaller spiders…it depends. Would you be scared if you suddenly saw a tiny cow crawling on your wall? The only type of spider people collectively fear are the hunting types: the ones that don’t spin webs, and instead attack their prey with brute force and a much stronger venom.

These large domestic spiders are incredibly lazy. They’ll sit in their webs and wait for their handlers to put their food on the web. Unless you get tangled, they don’t see you as food. This makes them great guards as well. They build traps for you. The venom isn’t deadly to humans…but can still be used as a weapon or in medicine. They’re just so damn useful that millennia ago, people put aside their instinctual fear just to get those sweet benefits.

Thank you for attending my TedTalk.

All of y’all replying to this like “UMM DROW” “what about DROW” are missing the point

Of course I thought of Drow, but I don’t want giant spiders reserved for a society of (generally) evil edgy elves living a spider themed life.

I want giant spiders to be COMMON domestic creatures, as much as they are a common fantasy monster. A case in which giant spiders are just so useful to have around that they are kept by dwarves/humans/elves/whomever you want this flavor to go to, and they cease being this creepy thing because at the end of the day they’re still just animals…but big.

((Also just to clarify; I would actually find a tiny cow crawling along my wall to be unsettling.))

trinket-the-bear:

wild-west-wind:

wild-west-wind:

You know what fantasy writing needs? Working class wizards.

• A crew of enchanters maintaining the perpetual flames that run the turbines that generate electricity, covered in ash and grime and stinking of hot chilies and rare mushrooms used for the enchantments
• A wizard specializing in construction, casting feather fall on every worker, and enchanting every hammer to drive nails in straight, animating the living clay that makes up the core of the crane
• An elderly wizard and her apprentice who transmute fragile broken objects. From furniture, to rotten wood beams, to delicate jewelry
• A battle magician, trained with only a few rudimentary spells to solve a shortage of trained wizards on the front who uses his healing spells to help folks around town
• Wizarding shops where cheery little mages enchant wooden blocks to be hammered into the sides of homes. Hammer this into the attic and it will scare off termites, toss this in the fire and clean your chimney, throw this in the air and all dust in the room gets sucked up
• Wizard loggers who transmute cut trees into solid, square beams, reducing waste, and casting spells to speed up regrowth. The forest, they know, will not be too harsh on them if the lost tree’s children may grow in its place
• Wizard farmers who grow their crops in arcane sigils to increase yield, or produce healthier fruit
• Factory wizards who control a dozen little constructs that keep machines cleaned and operational, who cast armor to protect the hands of workers, and who, when the factory strikes for better wages, freeze the machines in place to ensure their bosses can’t bring anyone new in.

Anyway, think about it.

• Construction wizards to turn back time to root out wood worm and strengthen old buildings.
• A wizard tailors who transmutes cloth into fully made clothes without seems and leaving behind no scraps
• A wizard who works in public transit, timing out teleports with detailed schedules, time magic, and enchanted communications, sending dozens of people to far away cities for a day or work or leisure
• A team of wizard gardeners tend to trees grown far outside their native range, and ideal climate, encircled with runes and fed potions to grow none the less
• A wizard sits in their office in the aqueduct, re-casting the spells that allow its precious water to flow to the city uphill
• A wizard fisher casts water repelling spells on the sailors and the stairs, keeps the hoist on the anchor from rusting, casts balls of heat that keep everyone warm below decks. Their real job is to herd fish together so they can be caught in single huge nets, and keep them cold as the boat returns to land.

There are so many possibilities outside of “stodgy academic who wears ugly robes” and “Very good holy man who helps everyone and the fact they’ve never had a job is never brought up” and “evil wizard toiling away on great evils in his evil tower in the evil country.”

• Wizards who come out and ward your home for you, like the magical equivalent of a home security system.