Tag Archive | worldbuilding

Worldbuilding Month Day 4: Powers in the Stranded World

March is Worldbuilding Month! Leave me a question about any of my worlds, and I will do my best to answer it!
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This Fourth one is from inventrix:
Stranded: are there styles of strand-working that are not represented by the Seasonal Siblings?

Yes!

Next question?

Ahem.

Let’s see. Autumn is reading the connections, Winter is smoothing them, Spring is tangling things, and Summer does… little charms, which are really either smoothing, tangling, or making a connection.

In addition, we’ve seen a star mapper – who honestly is a combination of reading connections and interpreting potential connections. Like a life adviser with cheat codes.

There’s also Severers, snippers. Those are – well, they might not be bad people, but it’s a bad power. It eliminates connections, as the name would suggest, cutting them off.

There’s Binders. That’s different from what Autumn does; it’s the power to actually tie a connection where one wasn’t before. (Autumn can strengthen a connection with the right ritual). Tattercoats is a type of binder, knotting people to his will.

There are people who do many variations on the powers of the seasonal siblings as well – a psychic is a star mapper, a curse is what Summer does, and so on.

There are people who can bend the Strands to provide them with energy – not a good idea in the long run – to hide themselves from view by moving sight along other paths, to protect places or people by charming them with a smoother path or a firmer roof.

And there are people out there who can just grasp the edges of what the Strand-workers are doing, but can’t do any of it.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1267669.html. You can comment here or there.

Worldbuilding Month Day 3: The Roots of the Aunt Tree

Mar8

March is Worldbuilding Month! Leave me a question about any of my worlds, and I will do my best to answer it!
🌏
This third one is from rix_scaedu:
If the Family in the Aunt Family occasionally splits off anew Family with a new Aunt, where was the original Family? Is it still there? Is there some Family version of “the old country”?

That’s complicated!

Because sometimes branches die out. It requires at least two sisters, after all (or sometimes in rare occasions, brothers, but that’s, as said, rare, and very frowned on, and such), one of which (again, in most cases), remained unmarried, childless, and near her sister’s family. It requires that unmarried sister to at least have the strength to carry the power, and the family branch to have enough power to invest in her.

Sometimes branches are actually wiped out, but that is a rare occurrence in the modern day.

Let’s see.

The original Family came out of England and Germany, and for a long time (legends notwithstanding) was not nearly as formalized an arrangement as it is in the modern day. When the family that believed itself to be the root family moved to the US, they left behind no other sibling groups, but there were several members of the family who were related, carried the spark, and eventually had children of their own.

Note: Not everyone who has power is related to the Family, but they are a broad and deep family-grove with many scions over, by the point, most of the world.

The “original” family at this point would be considered the one that can trace its ancestry back in an unbroken line of Aunts to the first Aunt in America. That actually is Evangaline’s line. It was an aunt of her line who came up with the ritual that collects the power of an already-psychically-skilled family and concentrates the larger portion of it into one person, allowing the family as a whole to have more power than they would otherwise, and allowing the power to be used and directed for bigger and bigger uses.

That happened prior to coming to the U.S., but it was believed, when they moved, that they had brought their entire family and thus their entire power structure with them.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1266361.html. You can comment here or there.

Worldbuilding Month Day 2: Words in Fae Apoc

Mar7

March is Worldbuilding Month! Leave me a question about any of my worlds, and I will do my best to answer it!
🌏
This second one is from sauergeek:
Is there any rhyme or reason behind who gets what Words (and how well various people do with those) in Fae Apocalypse?

Oh yay! I know this one!

Words in Faerie Apocalypse are a matter of a combination of genetics and Change. Of course, Change itself is a matter of some pretty complex and confusing genetics…

That is: Someone with a water Change (mermaid, kelpie, octopus) is likely to be very good with Yaku, water. They’re also likely to have been descended from a line of people with water Changes, although in some cases the interpretations are a little strange.

Someone whose parents are very good at, say, Unutu (Worked objects) and Eperu (earth) and are both awful with Meentik (create) is likely to have those Words as their good and bad Words, respectively. If the parents have widely varied Words, well (for instance: Leo is good at Hugr; Cya can’t say it at all), some of their kids may have Hugr while some might not be able to say it at all.

That’s a complex way of saying “it’s genetics,” I suppose.

Of course, there are innate powers that do not come anywhere close to Words, things that can’t be done with Workings at all. Folding space or time, for instance (well, can’t be done with currently known Words…); seeing the future…

(I keep coming up with examples of innate powers, and LOTS of them can be done with combinations of Workings. Which I didn’t plan, but is kind of neat. Even (most of) Cya’s Finding could be done with enough Words… some of which, I might add, she doesnt’ have).

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1265404.html. You can comment here or there.

Worldbuilding Month Day 1: Folding Universes

Mar3

March is Worldbuilding Month! Leave me a question about any of my worlds, and I will do my best to answer it!
🌏
This first one is from sauergeek:
Which pairs (or more) of these various universes could potentially be folded into one?

That’s a good question! Let’s see.

I’m not going to count, for the moment, the fact that 2/3 of my space stuff seems like it’s in the same world. (Foedus is not). That’s not really an established universe.

There’s been some speculation/fanfic about Addergoole/Tír na Cali, but that’s primarily because Tír na Cali was the parent setting for Addergoole; they don’t actually exist in the same place.

Facets can exist in almost any of them! That’s because it’s a portal fantasy.

I’m not really getting into the spirit of this question, am I?

Okaaaay.

Science! and Modern Superheroes could and might exist in the same world.

I’ve speculated about the Aunt Family and either Fairy Town or Stranded World before.

To be honest, I think that’s about it. Expectant Wood/Aerax COULD be part of Things Unspoken, but I don’t think it is. Oh, and Cracks is probably part of Fairy Town.

I think everything that COULD be folded together already was, back in the dawn of the settings.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1262285.html. You can comment here or there.

March is World-Building Month this Year

Feb27

…because why not?
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here’s a landing page with most of my universes on it.

Here is the 2014 World-Building post

here’s the 2015 post.
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I’ll answer 23 questions – hopefully one/weekday but we’ll see – so ask away. Anything world-building, any of my worlds, ask as many questions as you want. (if, by some amazing luck, I have more than 23 questions, I’ll either choose what to answer or overflow into April).

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1259430.html. You can comment here or there.

January by the Numbers 21: Ambiguity (worldbuilding babble)

Jan26

January by the numbers continues (now FIVE days off but still going strong).

From clare_dragonfly‘s prompt “ambiguity;” worldbuilding for a world I’ve just barely started. It’s a little unclear… but that suits the prompt.
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The world known as Calepurn has many nations, sprawling across the mainland, the islands, and the connected piece of land known, for no good reason, as the Appendix.

Many of these nations have their own languages, and all of them have their own dialects, but almost everyone who travels between nations can speak Lengraffa, the language of Firrset.

Lengraffa is a language evolved from many different tongues over thousands of years, and while it has a root here or there in English, it bears even less resemblance to Modern English than Modern English does to Old English.

(Spaston, a language spoken almost solely in a tiny mountain nation on the Eastern coast, is much closer to Modern English, with many loan-words from Spanish. But that is a story for another day.)

Lengraffa is a language drenched in ambiguity. Like Modern English, it drips with homophones. Words sometimes wander the continent, only to come back wearing a similar-looking coat but having an entirely different purpose. Casual usage changes words, until the same word can mean both a thing and its opposite.

Now into this language of uncertainty, where a simple sentence can be as clear as mud, throw a magic system which required precise geometry and very clear intention.

Magic was found in Firrset, they say, but nobody outside of Firrset truly believe that — and neither do many within Firrset. In a system of magic where the faintest ambiguity in phrasing can ruin an incantation, how could magic have ever risen in a place that speaks Lengraffa?

As further proof, many non-Firrsets point out that when an incantation goes wrong, the magic leaks into the environment, causing occasional eruptions of strangeness. And in Firrset, there is more strangeness than there is anywhere else on Calepurn.
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Want More?

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1242759.html. You can comment here or there.

Worldbuilding for Preptober… Laws and Rules

Oct31

First, a link: http://www.robinlafevers.com/2016/10/30/managing-a-cast-of-thousands/

I found this quite interesting, and actually useful in working on the cast for my Nano project.

Now, a completely different topic: Rules, laws, and Taboo, or You Can’t Do That on Television (for a totally outdated pop-culture reference).

This comes down to some pretty basic questions:

* what are important rules in your society/country/world?

* how are they (are they?) enforced?

* how are they codified?

* how are transgressions punished?

Rules themselves divide up further: social mores, institutional rules, laws, natural laws*.

And, of course, you don’t have to figure them all out, but it might help to consider where your characters are going to be and what level of freedom they will have:

* do people of your protagonist’s age and gender wander freely? If not, what restrictions are on their movement?

* What about speech? To what level is free expression censured?

* Physical contact? Is it okay for a woman to touch an unmarried man? If not, why not?

These may be simply unwritten rules – good girls or boys just “don’t do” certain things, and to do so risks shunning or social disgrace. They may be laws, with commensurate punishments. They could be natural laws*, incapable of being broken.

For instance: In 4th Husband, unmarried men do not speak to women outside of their families. This is a social more, and their sisters and mothers will enforce it, often with “grounding” or spankings.

In Edally/Reiassan, casual touch between strangers is taboo. Again, a social more, one that tends to be self-enforced.

However, in Fae Apoc, if a fae has made a promise, they are bound by it. They cannot break that promise without risking their own mind shattering, and many people are not strong enough to even attempt it.

What about your worlds? What things just Don’t Happen? Contrariwise, what things Must Happen?

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1193551.html. You can comment here or there.

Worldbuilding for Preptober… Working out an Antagonist

Oct28

First, a link – How To Vividly Describe a Setting That You’ve Never Visited: http://romanceuniversity.org/2016/07/22/how-to-vividly-describe-a-setting-that-youve-never-visited-by-angela-ackerman/

Okay, I have my character dressed (or I will as soon as I figure it out); I know where she starts out the story (with her mother, fathers, siblings, aunts, uncles, grandmother, nieces, and nephews), what sort of schooling (loosely) she’s had, and what sort of technology the world has. I know it’s a totalitarian govern without the technological control to be as invasive as it could be. I know it’s a poor nation, with far too much of its resources going towards war.

…Crap, I need a bad guy.

My preferred sort of antagonist, as many of you have noticed over the years, is the Setting Is the Problem: Tír na Cali, Addergoole, Unicorn/Factory, probably Things Unspoken. I mean, in The Tod’cxeckz’ri Paper, the main antagonist, technically, is a collar.

I should probably branch out a bit.

And yet, because I decided I was using some parody twitter accounts as the launching point for this series/world, I have a dystopian world. I have an oppressive government, in part because I wanted to play with some elements from some of the best-known dystopian worlds. Also, the idea of having the protagonist be “Chosen” reminded me of some real-world totalitarian governments, so…

The world itself is creating problems for my protagonist. She doesn’t want to be Disappeared. She doesn’t want to live the life the government has picked out for her. Yes, I’m running on tropes for that part; that’s the whole idea of the series. 🙂

But the world doesn’t actually act on its own.

For instance, in Addergoole, there’s a lot of elements that are setting-creating-problems, but some of those were caused by the gods – they could make some awesome antagonists for something a bit more high-powered… – right, back on track. There are elements which relate to the school, but those are caused by students (Ardell, for instance, Baram, Rozen) or by the staff – especially Regine, who created this little corner of hell intentionally and caused it to be as bad as it is through a combination of mindful goals and failure to understand certain parts of human nature. In Tír na Cali, slavery is part of the world, but the abuses of such are caused by specific people and institutions.

Bear with me; I’m talking through this as I go.

Cal got me thinking the other day about antagonists being people – okay, yeah, it’s a little late for that – but with mutually exclusive goals to the protagonist. So I’m going to think about that for a bit.
If your protagonist wants to overthrow the government, why does their antagonist want to keep the government intact?

If your protagonist doesn’t want to be Disappeared, why does the antagonist want to Disappear her?

My protagonist wants to make her own choices about her life. She wants to find a niche that makes her happy.

The government wants to make her choices for her, based on her skillset. This is supposed to also make her happy; indeed, a lot is put into propaganda about how being properly chosen for your ideal job should make you thrilled. “A well-placed nation is a happy nation.”

The agents of the government going against her plans will be working within the government’s goals (stability of the nation, success and victory in war, the power remaining in the hands of the powerful). (Note that these are the goals of people, too; government does not have its own thoughts or plans…)
(That would be a good idea for a novel, although Person of Interest might have covered some of that…)

(Anyway!)

Government doesn’t have its own thoughts or plans. That’s all people.

There’s a person in charge of the military/government. Are they good? Evil? Neutral? Okay, that’s not very nuanced. What are their goals?

There’s a person who acts out the will of the military on my protag. What about them? Do they enjoy being mean, or are they pressed by orders? By the will of the greater good?

And then there’s the antagonist for the book: someone in the government, acting out the government’s will while also having their own agenda.

I keep picturing him as President Snow. I’ve really got to work on that. I mean, I don’t even know he’s a he.

The theme of the novel is recruited. It’s even the title. Thus, it would help if the antagonist had something to do with recruiting.

So: Avo had skills that will allow the Governor to achieve their goals. They have been relegated to the back-office job of teaching/monitoring upstarts, abnormals, and rebels because they were themselves an upstart of some kind. They might have a bit of a superiority complex, and they definitely want to get out of running the School for Misfits and climb to what they think is their true position.

If Avo (protagonist) is cautious of the propaganda and learning how many layers deep it has gone, Governor both believes in it whole-heartedly and uses it to their own means.

How does the Governor want to use Avo’s skills to achieve their own means? How will that go against Avo’s goals and wishes?

I still have a lot of work to do on this!

What about you? What do you know about your antagonists? What are their goals, and how to those goals put them at odds with the protagonist(s)?

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1192985.html. You can comment here or there.

Random Conlang: “Thanks” in Calenyen

Oct19

Okay, so, because of reasons, I want to have an idiomatic “thank you” for Calenyen.

And, because thank you is such a loaded concept, I wanted it to mean, essentially, “good shot.”

Like, the thing you say when your buddy just caught the enemy/the giant cat that was about to kill you with a well-aimed spear. It’s a thanks for assistance, without acknowledging debt owed.

So we have “shot” in the sense of an aimed attack with a distance weapon: vettu

And then we have good, a modifier meaning skilled and accurate: -one (like the end of loan)

Vettutone, “good shot”: “Thanks for the assist.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1189408.html. You can comment here or there.

Worldbuilding Bingo – ‘Verse now called Arlend, Card 2

Oct18

To fill a bingo on card one of my Worldbuilding Bingo Card: Culturebuilding. Fashion – Body Types, Housing Arrangements, Fashion – Clothes, Entertainment

In my new world for my YA paro-drama, different characters (although my protag appears in discussion)

“Come on, Shekie, you’re going to be late.” Miagreth burst into the older-girls’ bedroom, her Daybreak-finest twirling as she did a couple pirouettes. For a couple years, it had looked like Miggie was going to be in the Home Office dance corps, but she’d been shoved out in favor of a General’s daughter and a Corporal’s niece. Their family line was not military-oriented, so Miggie was left dancing for fun and entering reports for a cigarette manufacturer for her vocation. She tugged on her cousin’s arm. “You look fine. The dress is beautiful. Come on.”

“I don’t know.” Shekleen twirled around three times in front of the mirror, frowning. “I think it makes me look flat.”

“Oh, nonsense.” Miagreth squeezed Shekleen’s small breasts. “You have plenty, and you’ll grow into the rest. Just wear something really tight at the waist like this and poof the shirt up a little more, like that. There.” She moved around Shekleen, tugging and fussing and arranging. “You look beautiful. Just because Peyy Redhouse has,” her hands described round in the front and round in the hips with hourglass like-gestures, “and she’s sticking them in everyone’s face like she’s been..”

“It’s not Peyy,” Shekleen demurred. She adjusted a few of Miagreth’s changes and looked at herself again. “It’s Onnal. He’s…”

“Tch. You don’t want to end up with an entertainer, anyway. A boxer? They don’t last past their thirties, Shekie. Sure, he’s handsome right now and he looks like he could pick up a cow, but think about after someone breaks that nose… or he gets hit in the head too hard… or he breaks a leg and can’t run those miles every day. And if he’s telling you that you need to rounden up, well, he needs to ante up, doesn’t he? First baby will get those things nice and round.”

“He’s waiting till he has a good run of fights,” Shekleen offered weakly. “But I think he’s going to start going after Avy from the mill-run anyway. He’s been eyeing after her for a while.”

“Well, then what do you care if he thinks you need more rounding? It’s Daybreak. We’re going to go eat until we want to puke, and then we’re going to wait twenty minutes and eat some more. Come on.” Miagreth grabbed Shekleen’s hand and dragged her outside. “The dancers are just about to start, and the drummers are already going.”

The Square was crowded cheek-to-jowl, everyone in their Daybreak Specials. Shekleen looked around for Onnel, but there would be boxing demonstrations, so he’d be preparing for that.

There was Avy, of course, prepping with the dancers. Their little town wasn’t big enough for one of the professional troupes, but their amateur, second-hobby dancers were pretty impressive. Shekleen couldn’t dance. She hadn’t managed to pass even the hobbyist test. Miagreth had, but then she’d had a bad fall during combat training, and that had been it for her dancing.

Avy had the sort of chest and hips Shekleen wanted, wide in the stance, round in the bottom, and with plenty of breast over impressive pectoral muscles. Of course, she spent her days hauling grain and tinkering with the mill for her family’s business. Shekie’s family ran the local fabric mill, which meant a lot of fine work leaning over a loom and less heavy lifting at all.

“There he is!” Shekleen grabbed Miagreth’s arm and tugged. “Come on, I see Onnel.”

“You don’t really want to go after Onnel right now, do you?” Miagreth dragged her feet. “For one, I see Tibor over there, and I’ve been meaning to talk to him for ages. Look at that hair.” She made a soft noise of approval.

Shekleen shook her head. “Come on, Miggie, Tibor, really?” She might have unreasonable taste in men, but Miagreth’s was no better. “Where would you live? He lives in this little apartment over the grocery shop with his mother and his mother’s mother. You don’t want to try to raise a family in that. And you’re not going to get a three or a four and live with their family, not with… well.” Miagreth really did like Tibor, but…

“It’s not like he’s ugly,” Miagreth countered, a little too loudly. She dropped her voice. “And nobody really knows why his father Disappeared. And you know full well that’s why his mother didn’t remarry, and why she doesn’t live with her other family. And why they only have one kid.”

“I know. You know. But how does any of that help you?” Shekleen moved through the crowd to the demonstration rings. In the first one, two boys they knew from school were oiled up and ready to show off their wrestling skills. “Your family’s place doesn’t have room for anyone else, and there’s no place left to build on.” Miagreth was the baby of her family, and three of her older brothers had moved their spouses into the family house already. “His family place doesn’t have any room… and neither of you are in one of those really money-making careers.”

Miagreth frowned. “We could do an apartment, you know. A little place, just until we had a bit more money.”

“Babies cost money, Miggie.” Shekleen sighed. Her friend wanted to dream of happiness, that was all. “I bet the two of you could pull it off, though. It would be hard work, but Tibor does work hard.”

“He does. He really is trying to fix the mess his father got them in.” Miagreth sighed deeply and melodramatically. “Getting himself vanished like that. I mean, it’s just inconsiderate to the family.” She shook her head, in a perfect if unconscious imitation of her maternal grandmother.

“And to you, of course,” Shekleen teased, although it was unkind. “Oh, there’s the boxing ring. Let’s go see what On… oh.”

“Oh?” Miagreth pushed up behind her. “…Oh.”

It wasn’t Ava, and Shekleen wondered if, somewhere, Ava was making the same frustrated trying-not-to-cry face that she herself was making right now. Ava, she could have stood; Ava had the same carefully-patched hand-me-downs as Shekleen, and though she had more curves, she had the same slightly pinched look they all got in a lean year. Ava was someone she knew, someone she’d grown up with, someone she could compete with fair and square.

This girl had the Main-Office look, her dress cut in the latest fashion, the skirt long, full in the back and over ample, well-fed hips, the jacket tight in the waist and open over her broad chest. She’d had her hair curled and twisted up into an elaborate up-do with ribbons of cloth woven through it, and the dyes in the whole thing were bright, vibrant, standing out against the faded look of the rest of the town. “She’s beautiful,” Shekleen muttered jealously.

“And rich,” Miagreth agreed quietly. “Look at that. I saw it in the latest Conscientious Citizen Monthly, well, a smaller version of it. That extra fold of cloth at the back, think of how much fabric that uses.”

“I could make those ribbons. I could take some of my spare pay and buy the materials from the mill, and make myself something like that. Do you think my hair would look nice, curled up like that?”

“I think,” Miagreth offered, in a voice that suggested she was trying to be kind, “that without changing the dress, too, it’s going to be like hanging ribbons on a goat, Shekie. The goat will look fancy, but it’s still going to look like a goat.”

Shekleen couldn’t even bring herself to be offended. “It’s not fair.”

“It’s not.” Miagreth stood up a little straighter. “You’ve given Onnel so much attention, and look at him, ignoring you for some silly Main-Office sort of lady. Come on.” She tugged on Sheckleen’s arm. “I’ve got someone I want you to meet, He’s a troubadour, Shekie, an honest-to-goodness singer, and we got him here, in our little town, for Daybreak. And you know what? Troubadours can keep singing as long as they live, they don’t have to worry about broken bones or twisted ankles. And they take their family travelling with them sometimes, all over the country. Come on, Shekie,” she tugged again. “This one won’t care about Main-office ribbons or how much fabric’s in your skirt. Come onnnn!”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1188156.html. You can comment here or there.

Alder's Grove Fiction

The Worlds of Lyn Thorne-Alder