How to make a warlike kingdom seem eerie without resorting to necromancy or demon worship? Make them forcefully turn captured people into some sort of technomagical battle servitor but with them being still fully aware and retaining their memories so they will see them killing their former comrades and burning their own towns and there's nothing they can do about it?
>>44757144
Aztecs.
>warlike kingdom
>eerie
I'm not sure that's the word you're looking for. Eerie is a special kind of creepy. Eerie is going through cities and towns where everything is perfectly intact, fires are still going in forges and everything is clear and not even dusty, but there's no living thing around, not even birds or burgs. Eerie is everyone you meet giving big toothy smiles all the time for no reason.
What you're looking for might be "creepy" or "evil".
>>44757144
Warlike and eerie are concepts that really mesh well anon.
>>44757249
This guy has it pretty spot on what eerie is, and warlike isn't that. Even being creepy I don't think is a good match up with warlike.
Bot eerie and creepy imply something hidden and sinister. Being warlike means being pretty openly aggressive.
I think your best bet, instead of trying to find something other than eerie is to find something other than warlike. Maye oppressive or isolationist and aggressive so that they do conquer areas from time to time, but you never hear anything about them or the area they took over afterwards.
>>44757249
You could use something like that. You'd hear tales of their ferocity and barbaric war actions, but when you actually visit their newly-conquered lands, everything seems too clean, too neat. The residents know nothing of a war or occupation - they've always been ruled by their fair and just king, for as long as they can remember.
Hell, extend that even to their military. The soldiers are quiet and orderly when in their camps, barely speaking to one another. And then when they fight, they're tearing limbs off and feasting on them mid-battle, etc.
>>44757144
Their foes suffer great and unexplained losses outside of battle.
Supplies vanish. Messengers vanish without a trace. Spies never report back. Could be sabotage or guerrilla warfare. Could be. But unlikely. It's too consistent. There are never any signs of a struggle, be it from a messenger or an entire reserve battalion.
They leave the capital of their own country and no one ever arrives in the next town over. You can see their footsteps up until a certain point. And at that point they suddenly stop. Any magical tracers just stop transmitting as well. As if they just suddenly stopped existing.
>>44757661
That seems more like eerie country territory.
Like reading it doesn't make me think spooky people, i reminds me of stories from around where i live and lake superior. Actually it specifically reminds me of how an ocean going warship, in a three ship close convoy sailing across lake superior just up and disappeared.
>>44757144
>How to make a warlike kingdom seem eerie
Pic related.
>>44758158
could you give some brief summary of his life? Or do you mean how he looks like?
They wage a war for the god of suffering. Everyone they kill is denied their rightful afterlife, whether good or evil, and instead are hurtled into the vortex of pain.
They focus the same pain on themselves, and scarring their bodies as part of their shamanistic rites. Their high priests are all but skinless.
Their goal is not to conquer or plunder, but merely to hurt.
Basically, make them behave inhumanly. Their goals are not human. Their means are not human.
>>44757869
Sort of, except it's not THEIR territory where it happens. It happens inside the territory of all their enemies. So all the armies opposing them end up being groups of under-equipped, starving soldiers with no real intel that get utterly slaughtered.
>>44758242
He was a nobleman of Prussian ancestry who served with the Czar's army in the early 20th century. During WWI, he was disciplined for excessive brutality and sent to command a garrison in the east. During this period, he became increasingly insane and violent. When the Russian revolution broke out, he took his whole force south into the Asian steppes and became a travelling warlord. In the mountains of Central Asia, he became obsessed with eastern mysticism and the occult. His army grew ever more brutal and recruited wandering bandits, deserters from other armies, and so forth.
He attacked Mongolia in force, destroying the Chinese northern army and massacring them. He sacked the Mongol capital and allowed his men to pillage and murder for three days, according to ancient traditions. He then set up a nightmarish theocracy under a puppet ruler, while he was worshiped as the reincarnated Genghis Khan. He surrounded himself with sorcerers and mad holy men, forming a bizarre syncretic faith blending Orthodoxy and a violent sect of Buddhism.
In the end, he lead an invasion of Siberia and was betrayed to the Soviets by his own men, even the most loyal of which now feared him. He was executed by his captors, and apparently his last words were a vow that he would return.
>>44757144
Ever been to a Baptist church, anon? Go to one next on Sunday and come back.
>>44758455
Ah I see. That's kinda neat. Not sure how eerie it is on a scale, but it is neat.
>>44758404
That's more creepy than eerie.
>>44757517
I like this
>>44757144
Make their tech level obscenely high compared to other factions in the setting, as some kind of science/occult hybrid. Their leader is a time displaced Isaac Newton who utilities some kind of casaulity controlling machine.
>>44758785
>Their leader is a time displaced Isaac Newton who utilities some kind of casaulity controlling machine.
I saw that anime.
>>44758612
so he had real life chaos warband?
>>44758689
>That's more creepy than eerie.
... there's a difference? I thought those were synonyms.
>>44759073
Creepy is more scary, eerie is more mysterious.
>>44759034
Yes. But what made him spooky was that he was not the classic screaming and covered in spiky armor kind of warlord.
He supposedly seldom spoke, seldom slept, did not join his men in the rape and pillage, never showed any signs of joy or anger or fear, and when on campaign would even forget to change his clothing until it became tattered and literally fell apart.
The only time he showed any humanity was when he was with his wife, a Manchu princess he acquired in the year before his death, with whom he conversed only in English so none of his men could know what they said to one another.
>>44757171
Came here to suggest this. It's pretty much the easiest way to do this without being too edgy about it.
>>44759459
>4chan autist conquers Asia
There's hope for us yet, right?
>>44759542
The edgy meme is starting to get annoying.
Everything is edgy now.
It's like people have no appreciation for apocalyptic bad guys, believable sociopaths, or.... basically villains in general anymore. Not every murderous cunt is a 4chan tough guy wannabe.
>>44759073
I think there is less words that are synonyms than ones that are just similiar
>>44760063
Blame bad thesauruses and generally bad teaching of the english language for the misunderstanding.
Synonyms are actually pretty rare. While we do tend to use words interchangeably, usually we do so incorrectly. Most words have a reason for existing, and that is they describe some concept nothing else does.
>>44760163
Hardly. English has many perfect synonyms because english is a language with some of the most grotesque hodgepodge morphology in existence. Happens when you're the bastard child of all romantic and germanic languages.
>>44757517
Stepford Conquest?
Sounds cool. Army sweeps across the land. Rounds up the population into camps... Then the people come back out again and resume life like nothing was wrong, with big, happy, plastic smiles on their faces that never come off.
>>44760223
Naw, they often have slightly different meanings. Or slightly different secondary meanings or uses. Or so on and so forth.
A good example of this is how many words we have for snow. We have more than eskimos do, and they all describe different types and forms of precipitous frozen water.
>>44760295
What? English only has one word for snow, and that's "snow". The hell are you on about?
>>44760335
sleet, hail, slush, flurries, powder.
>>44760426
>sleet
Mixed rain and snow.
>hail
Another meteorological phenomenon entirely.
>slush
Melted ice.
>flurries
A description for a swirling mass.
>powder
A collection of fine particles.
Only one of those involves snow at all, and it is "snow and not-snow together".
>>44760466
No, they all describe differing wetness of snow when talking about snow.
Also if I wanted to say something was snowy, but sound wordy would say it is niveous.
I live in a country where discussing snow makes up 90% of the small talk for half the year anon.
>Sleet
yes
>hail
actual hailstone or very dense cold snow
>slush
melted or melting snow actually. If it's slushing outside it's snowing but the snow melts on contact with the ground
>flurries
Thick wet snow
>powder
fine dry snow.
>>44760565
>actual hailstone or very dense cold snow
No, hail is hail, and it is very distinct from snow. It is unrelated to snow. It is falling ice balls.
>melted or melting snow actually
Partially melted snow forms a slush, but slush is a greater term that applies to any partially melted ice.
>Thick wet snow
No, flurries is just a movement pattern. Like a "flurry of leaves" or "flurry of dust". Snow just happens to move in flurries often.
>fine dry snow.
Powder is a far, far, far wider reaching word than that.
You're using your own shorthand terms to try and apply them to the language. Nobody in the south would assume you're talking about snow if you say "gee that was some powder last night".
>>44757517
This.
They fight hard to take control of territory, and the natives fight back. But as soon as they move in, there is no more resistance. Like a switch being flipped, there is suddenly just peace. An unnatural peace, so deep and comforting, it is like... the dark.
This would actually present and incredibly difficult problem for murderhobos to deal with. How do you kill a warlord when going anywhere near him saps your will to fight until you no longer want to kill him at all?
For bonus points, his army is similarly serene until sent out into battle, at which point the switch gets unflipped and all of their repressed rage explodes to the surface and fills them with a blinding fury that they vent on those not under his spell. Berserker rage with friend-or-foe engaged.
>>44760657
But anybody In canada would.
Real not slang terms though
Graupel: snow pellets, thick round and opaque, not technically hail
Dendrites: six pointed snow flake
Coloumn: Six sided but not pointed snowflakes
Firn: snow that has not turned into ice
The list goes on.
