Originally posted on Patreon in June 2018 and part of the Great Patreon Crossposting to WordPress.

It’s World-Building June!  So I’m building Worlds! Here on Patreon, I’m building “Aerax”, the world of Expectant Woods. Over on WordPress, I’m working on Bear Empire, the world of the so-named story, and a new thing called United Space. 

And it’s also June World-Building!  So I’m shifting over to Inspector Caracal’s questions, but as I already had a few (a week) written on the first set, there’s some overlap.

🌋

3. Who lives in your world?

There are several groups just in the small region covered by the Expectant Woods. 

The Sky Islands themselves are a loose confederacy of people.  Only the central three largest were originally urban, and they have a certain feel to them that is different from the two ends; those nearest the ocean are inhabited almost entirely by people who came there from the cities or the further-into-the-mountains islands (although there is a legend of one warship of people that was risen up with one of the smaller islands).  The mountain-ward are more independent people, not hearkening much to the laws of the central islands.  And the first mountain-ward island after the three central is almost entirely devoted to academic pursuits.

Below there are the groups that those above call the tribes.

One of those tribes consists mostly of small family groups who are semi-nomadic, following prey through the forests and plains.  Another one has several cities deep in the mountains (the Hechinger); they have a government, their own civilization, and many developments and inventions that the people above would be surprised to learn about.

And the Aulerions have their own city, deep in the forest, where they keep ancient laws and new biology and oversee things that our protagonist doesn’t know about yet.

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Cal Questions

ENVIRONMENT

1- what type of setting is it? a part of a continent, a planet, a star system?

Expectant Woods is a part of a continent!

It spans from the mountains on the south east to the ocean in the north to the river cutting from northwest towards the south.  It’s a small cut-out that was once a nation, and within its borders it has, depending on how you count, between four and eight sovereign nations.

2- What are its notable geographical or astronomical characteristics?

Well, the massive islands hanging in the sky are the first thing.

And each island has a “bump” in the center, which on the larger islands looks like a mountain and on the smaller ones is closer to a molehill.

I mentioned the river, the ocean, and the mountains before.  Between them, there are mostly trees, many of them very tall, and deep undergrowth.

The ocean itself is seemingly boundless, stretching on forever to the east and west and north.

And the mountains seem passless, while the river is definitely passless.  The one place that may have been passaible has been made into a wide, wicked lake full of lake monsters.

3- What type of climate does it have? Wet or dry, hot or cold?

The area as a whole ranges, seasonally, from temperate to tropical.  It can grow very hot indeed in midsummer while the winters are pleasant and comfortable.  Sometimes the nights can grow chilly, but it never snows.

It is very damp, too, except high in the mountains; rivers run off the edges of the sky islands, filling the air with falling mist, and several rivers run through the foothills and down to the ocean, although none as large as the monster to the west.