#my worldbuilding
I keep looking through the tags on that post about self-taught wizards, seeing things people say about the little thing I wrote, and I’m really blown away by how enthusiastic and positive many of the responses are. It’s making me really feel encouraged to write stuff finally, when I’ve spent so long feeling like few people would care about my writing
@blackrabbitrun I don’t talk very much about it on here, but I am working on a book. :3
Technically the current WIP I’ve been working on since I was 16, but the current draft has little to do with the version that existed then. I’ve had at least 4 or 5 major “drafts” but some individual chapters have just been rewritten over and over, so it’s hard to describe just how much work has gone into it
It’s a Biopunk sci-fi novel in a post-apocalyptic setting, about a girl who is reconstructed into a super-human killing machine after an accident.
It’s complicated because when I was 16 I just kinda took the concept of an “assassin school” and ran with it, and a couple years later I started realizing that no, I didn’t actually want to write Stabby Harry Potter, but the “being trained to kill people” thread was still there
so I ended up having her be reconstructed using technology into a human weapon, and explore the idea of a group of scientists experimenting on people in exchange for their projects being used by the authoritarian government to keep the nobility in line. I also added two other POVs which finally unlocked how to move forward with the larger arc of the storyline
The worldbuilding was sparse at the beginning but now it’s grown into a very detailed world that i’m REALLY excited about. Basically this is a post-apocalyptic world that developed into a network of city-states similar to ancient Mesopotamia, but then rediscovered messages from the previous civilization and speedran the industrial revolution and then some in like 200 years. as of the present in the story it’s united into a very fragile empire, but any surviving noble families still hold sway as potential usurpers.
so you have this irregularly industrialized society that is fringed by basically nomadic tribes, not unlike the Scary Guys On Horses that took down many ancient and medieval era empires (but the nomads ride gigantic domestic dogs instead of horses).
But the main form of technology in this world is biotechnology, so you have like, fucked up breeds of cats that glow or grow feathers and stuff, corvid-based birds being used to send voice mails, noble families patenting genes to put in their kids so people of a certain family line have like, distinctive green hair or something, meaning all the older noble families look like NFT’s. Lighting is mostly bioluminescence. The Empire has monopolized working on new biotech but a lot of raw genetic information and genetic engineering work was left over from pre-apocalypse, and individual city states used to compete with each other to develop or discover more, and there’s a LOT of lost/unknown creatures and tech.
So it’s mostly hard scifi but the vibe is very different. There’s a LOT of religion and spirituality and most of it is based on like…shamanism? That’s maybe not the most respectful term? Much of the religion/spirituality is not based on texts or specific prophets or gods, or a “church” it’s centered around spiritual leaders in communities that use visions and transcendent/out of body experiences to access spiritual guidance, that kind of thing. I’m being REALLY intentional about obscuring details and giving seemingly contradictory understandings of this because an outsider wouldn’t Get It, though. The other main religious group is centered around prophets, mainly a figure called the Abyssal Prophet, who supposedly descended into the “abyss” where the dead are and returned with teachings
There are a lot of things going on here that will remove your brain from your body and put it back in backwards if you are dismissive of the spirituality aspect. Tl;dr the Prophet’s experiences are loosely based on people opening a vault ~1500 years earlier that contained recorded messages from the previous civilizations, addressed to survivors. You know, like the nuclear waste warning messages.
So the prophet’s teachings are like. wash your hands when doing surgery, don’t forcibly sterilize people, don’t make species extinct. Everything the composers of the message could think of that was important to tell other humans ~2,000 years in the future.
But it’s hard to see this coming, bcuz you don’t KNOW for sure that this is a post apocalyptic world unless you’ve been paying very close attention. The folklore of the world is really complex and developed on-page and it includes the idea of these creator-beings descending to earth to re-create it after their creations destroyed themselves, possibly over and over again—giving humankind a second chance. But it’s all very “mythological” yknow.
There’s a lot of playing with the interaction between Myth and Rational Fact, and between Narrative and History.
One of my favorite tidbits is that wolves are mythological. like, wild wolves don’t still exist in at least this region of the world, so the memory of them has been expanded into this legend of them as mythical creatures that symbolize death, in particular death as justice or as a “good” natural process. Also the concept of werewolves has been kind of blended with wolves generally
But one of the main characters is Educated and they know that wolves were a real thing so they keep trying to correct everybody else on it and it’s driving them crazy it’s so funny
Procrastination Thoughts: or are they?
There are 6 kingdoms in The Royal Clusterfuck, the fic I’m making. When I think of their names these are the colors that I imagine them having.
- Luxanna - Kingdom of Light
The kingdom that stood the test of time, it has a long history, existing during the time when dragons still roamed the land.
- Celeste - Kingdom of Trade
The trade center of the continent where most of the goods get routed to their destination. But beneath the cobblestones of the kingdom lies a dangerous secret.
- Sylvene - The Fey Kingdom
Its people are the guardians of the forests. They walk on the line between the unknown and human civilization. This is where creatures of myth reside within the deep recesses of the Feywilds.
- Astarion- The Old Kingdom, (the continent’s name)
The oldest kingdom that used to rule the whole continent. It has already been demolished, but still people from the old kingdom walk among them. Those who have magic in their bones, cursed by tampering with forbidden magicks and forever forgotten…until now.
- Kalista - The Kingdom of Knights
A kingdom that prides itself in its military prowess, with generations of knights residing in it, who used to serve Luxanna a century ago. Currently recovering from a war caused by an unnamed force.
- Ernest - Fighters Realm
The slave kingdom, was predominantly occupied by slaves from all over and controlled by rich patrons who run the Merchant’s guild. A place of corruption, located in the desserts of Astarion.
