# My unnamed setting worldbuilding thread



## vaiyt (Dec 10, 2015)

Been working on a map to house a bunch of fantasy ideas. The details, history and whatnot will come shortly, but for now take a look at these incomplete continent shapes.


----------



## trentonian7 (Dec 11, 2015)

They seem very.. vertical? That's just my perception


----------



## Ban (Dec 11, 2015)

I like the middle continents a lot.

 The left continent reminds me a little too much of Westeros in its current state, but that can easily be changed once you add some territorial and natural boundaries to the map.


----------



## vaiyt (Dec 11, 2015)

Banten said:


> The left continent reminds me a little too much of Westeros in its current state


I swear it's coincidence. I shape the landmasses by splicing real-world maps together, starting with a single one then fractalizing at smaller sizes for the coastlines. IIRC the middle continent started with a map of Iraq and the small one to the right was once Puerto Rico.


----------



## trentonian7 (Dec 11, 2015)

Maybe add some arhicplaego or islands in your big empty ocean spots. Islands are always cool.


----------



## Miskatonic (Dec 12, 2015)

Banten said:


> I like the middle continents a lot.
> 
> The left continent reminds me a little too much of Westeros in its current state, but that can easily be changed once you add some territorial and natural boundaries to the map.



Westeros is basically Britain flipped upside down and placed on top of Ireland.


----------



## vaiyt (Dec 12, 2015)

It's cosmology time!

This is the real high level stuff. Most of it won't even come up for characters except highly filtered.

This world is centered on the equilibrium between three forces: *Chaos*, *Order* and *Nothingness.* They relate to each other in that *Chaos begets Order begets Nothingness begets Chaos*, and *Nothingness displaces Order displaces Chaos displaces Nothingness.*

*Chaos* is everything and nothing at the same time. It is the sum total of all possibility, an ever-changing cauldron of all that could ever be. However, as much as it is infinite, it's also indistinct, impossible to define or understand (individuality is orderly). It naturally creates *Order* from itself because, being infinite, *Chaos* naturally contains orderly elements within its own essence. Being more stable, they displace and contain the chaotic mass around them.

*Order* is the realm of finite reality, of rules and objects. Anything that can actually be defined as a thing contains some orderly nature. Practically all life and significant objects in this world belong to the realm of *Order,* like for example the world whose map I posted above. Being where the fun things happen, it's the most important aspect to talk about, and the other two will mostly be referred when they affect it.

*Nothingness* is the principle of non-existence. Using terms like "is" and "something" ends up misleading, because the defining aspect of Nothingness (if one could call it that) is that it _isn't_. It's not possible to see or grasp except for the gaps it leaves in the comprehension of things that actually are. It always follows from *Order* because in order for things to define themselves they have to separate from what they aren't. It's the void that eats away worlds mired in entropy, and generates *Chaos* from itself, renewing the cycle.

Next: the intermediary realms.


----------



## Codey Amprim (Dec 12, 2015)

The shorelines looks very natural, and the continents also have nice, natural (as natural seeming as a fantasy world can be, I suppose) appearance to them. I agree about the Westeros resemblance, but that's not too big of an issue - you still have plenty of space to flesh the world out and fine tune it to your likings.  I'm not crazy about the continent placement, the oceans seem a little odd to me, but it's fantasy. Anything is possible.

One idea I keep in mind when messing with cartography is that I try to place the important features first, like major cities, settlements,  and gateways to Hell. I try not to add a lot of extra land that isn't used in the story.

 What I'm guessing from looking at it, is that each one of the forces of being you've described have a stronger hold on certain pieces of the map. The parts of the land masses that look torn and frayed would be under the strains of Chaos. The linear coastlines are a foothold for Order. Nothingness could be the cold expanse at the Northern pole of your world.  

Or maybe my imagination is getting the better of me, haha!


----------



## vaiyt (Dec 13, 2015)

Time for some more immediately useful cosmology: the intermediate realms. In the boundary where the realms of Chaos, Order and Nothingness meet, there exist places with the properties of both.

Between the realms of Chaos and Order lies the realm of *Magic*. It's the place where infinite possibility meets finite realization, where imagination can acquire form. Life in this realm is possible, but fickle and insubstantial. The two worlds are coterminous, and seep into each other naturally, both letting the inhabitants of the world of matter use magic to reshape reality, and letting the denizens of the magic world acquire substance and individuality. In places where the boundary is thin, it's possible to cross over without noticing, as the difference between the two sides dimnishes.

Between Order and Nothingness lies the realm of *Oblivion*, a place where echoes of things that ceased to exist dwell. It's a realm that material things can't cross over without losing their essence, and things from there can't cross back without acquiring a new nature. Many cultures in-universe have come to regard it as the realm of the dead, or their version of Hell.

There is also a realm between Chaos and Nothingness (the realm of Anti-Order or Negative Matter), but its impact on the stories of actual living beings (the ones who interest us here) is nil. It can be left alone.


----------



## mecg_romancer (Dec 16, 2015)

As soon as you said Oblivion I thought elder scrolls :L Oblivion being their version of hell too with deamons trying cross over and what not. I'm not sure how many others might see it the same way though, but I just thought I'd let you know .

Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk


----------



## NerdyCavegirl (Dec 16, 2015)

Well at least Oblivion is less used then Hell or Underworld. xD


----------



## Codey Amprim (Dec 16, 2015)

NerdyCavegirl said:


> Well at least Oblivion is less used then Hell or Underworld. xD


  True. Besides, TES can't hog that sweet namesake all to itself!

If it fits the world/universe, then why not use it? 

Also, OP, I'm a little lost. Did you need help with naming certain areas, or were you testing to see if your setting sounds good? Not sure how to contribute to the issue.


----------



## DeathtoTrite (Dec 16, 2015)

Miskatonic said:


> Westeros is basically Britain flipped upside down and placed on top of Ireland.



Thank god I'm not the only one!


----------



## Ban (Dec 17, 2015)

Westeros resembles Britain in many other ways as well. The wall was based on Hadrian's wall. The andal invasion on the anglo-saxon invasions. Aegon "the conqueror" on William of the same nickname. 
Just food for thought.


----------



## Mythopoet (Dec 17, 2015)

vaiyt, I love your cosmology! This is exactly the kind of metaphysical worldbuilding that I like to do myself. Everything is explained very clearly. I can't wait to learn more about your world.


----------



## Miskatonic (Dec 17, 2015)

Banten said:


> Westeros resembles Britain in many other ways as well. The wall was based on Hadrian's wall. The andal invasion on the anglo-saxon invasions. Aegon "the conqueror" on William of the same nickname.
> Just food for thought.



The sheer scale of Westeros is absurdly big. The wall is supposed to be 300 miles across, so you can use it as a measuring guide to see just how far it is from top to bottom.


----------



## vaiyt (Dec 17, 2015)

> Also, OP, I'm a little lost. Did you need help with naming certain areas, or were you testing to see if your setting sounds good? Not sure how to contribute to the issue.


I want to know if it sounds good to you. I'm also getting you up to speed on the basics so I don't need to backtrack later.


> The sheer scale of Westeros is absurdly big. The wall is supposed to be 300 miles across, so you can use it as a measuring guide to see just how far it is from top to bottom.


That continent in my map is significantly bigger than Westeros. I've compared the maps.

Here's a bit where things are a bit experimental. Time to try and put my magic system into words.

Chaos is infinite but unrealized possibility, while Order is as concrete as it gets but limited. Magic is the stuff that bridges the gap. It seeps from the magical realm into the world of Order and acquires substance and reality by reacting to the psychic emanations existing there. That happens whether those emanations are intentional or not - anything can acquire a magical nature in this world with the right conditions.

What causes the process is *meaning.* Any concrete object that conveys a message is potentially magical. In this world, ideas and stories have power, but not in the literal, Discworldian "consensus becomes reality" sense. First, because even widely held beliefs are believed in a different way by each person, and all those disparate imaginations acting together have unpredictable effects in the final result. Second, because the closer magic gets to manifesting in the real world, the less moldable it is: sufficiently powerful ideas might just acquire a life of their own, resist further change, and even develop in new ways not bound by anyone's imagination.

Many magic schools cohexist in this world, but all of them involve *rituals.* The ritual is a gesture, action, object or rule that the caster imbues with meaning in order to mold magical matter towards a specific goal. It can be something like crafting a wand out of certain materials and waving it in a certain way, speaking a special language, painting stuff on one's body, making an effigy of the thing one wants to affect, and many others.
Rituals are more powerful the more meaningful, consistent and specific they are. Vague goals and arbitrary, lazy rituals are weak and unlikely to produce the wanted results, if any.
There's several ways a ritual can be made more meaningful:
- Including objects that relate to the goal in some way.
- Sacrificing something; the more meaningful the better. A single penny in a fortune is easily replaceable. The first penny you ever earned which you have treasured since you were a kid? Now we're talking.
- Rules turn the caster themself into a vessel as long as they uphold the prescribed behavior. The rule gets even more powerful if it's a _geas_, or something that prescribes a penalty if broken. The rule itself has to be established by a ritual.
-Rituals that have been done before or follow from pre-existing rules already have extra meaning attached and become more reliable.
-(still coming up with more)

Any meaningful activity is a potential ritual, even if not intended to be so. The more consistent the action and the more focused the mind of the person, the greater the chance for it to happen. People who are really good at an activity or train hard enough may inadvertently turn their practice into a ritual and start channeling magical properties. Even non-sentient creatures and inanimate objects may also trigger ritual-like connections unconsciously. These are really weak, but build up over time as they bounce off of each other in a positive feedback loop.

I guess that's enough. I'll leave the other important aspects of magic - soul, genii loci and religion - to the next post.


----------



## Creed (Dec 19, 2015)

vaiyt said:


> Any meaningful activity is a potential ritual, even if not intended to be so.



Interesting. So what might this mean for profane archetypes, like saying grace before eating dinner, or even more interesting, the Maori invocation of the Haka before battle? In fact, the Maori considered all dance to be sacred, so what might occur if these beliefs were translated into your world?

Or maybe a weekly visit to a grave site? Could it raise the "spirit"?


----------



## vaiyt (Dec 19, 2015)

Creed said:


> Interesting. So what might this mean for profane archetypes, like saying grace before eating dinner, or even more interesting, the Maori invocation of the Haka before battle? In fact, the Maori considered all dance to be sacred, so what might occur if these beliefs were translated into your world?
> 
> Or maybe a weekly visit to a grave site? Could it raise the "spirit"?


All those things will carry some magical effect. Acts of little consequence like saying grace before dinner would be more subtle in their effects, while a sacred dance could be more powerful, especially something like the haka which fits the criteria for a full magical ritual in my world.


----------



## vaiyt (Dec 20, 2015)

Here I expand the explanation of magic with three particular cases that are very important to understand the specific part of the setting the map is about.

Pure belief lacks the real-world connection to produce noticeable effects, but *religion* has the potential to turn belief into a powerful magical force. What distinguishes religion from other kinds of magical ritual is that it's not designed to manifest specific things in the material world, but to curry favor with supernatural beings. They can be pre-existing or not, but that organized belief around them has the effect of one big slow magical ritual that slowly makes them match the worshipped form.

Vague, broad ideas are magically weak, but religion attains its specificity from its pantheon. As rites develop, the rules that govern the gods and its actions become more consistent, giving more substance to them. A cascade effect starts, where the budding gods gain more and more independence, and begin to affect the development of the religion itself.

If that religion is allowed to reach full maturity, eventually it culminates in an event that embodies its essence. It may be the birth of a prophet under all the auspicious signs, it may be a catastrophe where the gods' powers are unleashed, it may be the realization of the long held wishes of a people. It depends on the nature of the gods themselves. That event marks the birth of a new pantheon, beings fully independent of their followers. 

They don't need worship to exist, but are quite likely to keep requesting it, since it does make them immortal. Killing a god whose worship is active will lead to them being revived over time. Gods whose religions have died in the past might find their way into a new pantheon, antagonize more successful gods and be seen as demonic figures, or go find some other way to influence things.


----------



## vaiyt (Dec 20, 2015)

The *soul* is the seat of a being's individuality and will. 

Now, it's important to distinguish a *true soul* from the *astral body*, since the characters will often equate the two in-universe. The true soul is generally restricted to sentient beings, because a soul is formed when a being acquires a concept of itself. It's the being's essence, isolated from the outside world by a bubble that rejects anything that's not part of it. 
It's extremely resistant to direct tampering, as it's like a self-contained pocket dimension. If destroyed or separated from the body, it usually causes the death of the owner's physical form in short order; on the other hand, the soul itself can linger long after the death of the physical body, and even continue acting on its own if a strong enough will drives it. 
Souls are nexuses of meaning that draw in magical power; as such, they can be valued as resources, but most sentient creatures have taboos about messing with souls. After all, nobody wants THEIR very essence to be mucked with.

The astral body is the magical reflection of the physical body; it's what is referred to when characters speak of a "soul" of an inanimate object. The death of the physical body usually means destruction of the astral body as well, but the astral body can be tampered with, separated or destroyed without necessarily causing lasting harm (the opposite relationship to the true soul).
One's own astral body is the only source of magic that does not require an external ritual to manipulate, as it already comes with its vessel attached, the physical body itself. It's usually a limited source that requires special discipline to tap into, as it follows the pre-existing rules of the physical body.

A *genius loci* is the astral body of a place. They're the result of a location becoming meaningful enough to develop its own magical properties. The most important genius loci of the setting is the *world* itself, that is, the astral body of the entire planet, a force powerful enough to shape history through its actions.


----------



## vaiyt (Jan 4, 2016)

A couple more concepts necessary to understand this world.

*Crystals* have a powerfully orderly nature, so they're able to "trap" the chaotic flow of magic and force it to be more stable. That makes good quality crystalline minerals highly sought after for the crafting of magitek items. They also make great focuses for rituals in general.

*Soulstone* (wish I had a better name) is a special type of crystal and the most mysterious resource of this world. It's a stone with the power to channel imagination into reality. It can induce dreams, awaken new senses and uplift minds. Soulstone is involved on the origins of several of the setting's sentient races.

*Monsters* appear where reality has thinned itself and raw magic leaks out into the world of order. That produces a rapid feedback loop where evolution is accelerated in crazy directions. Monsters are different from normal animals in that they continually grow stronger by struggling to survive, acquiring more positive traits via magic (but over time they can breed back into regular animals if the flow of magic shuts off). A monster that's grown strong enough to prevail against all rivals and dominate an entire ecosystem is a *Monster King.* When this process happens across an entire world without interruption, monsters are said to grow even stronger... but that's for another post.

*Dragons* are the universe's oldest extant monsters. Extremely powerful and adaptable, they've outgrown whatever their origin world was many eons ago, and spread through the universe like a scourge. They're much more common in the realm of magic, where mana is abundant and they can easily grow more powerful - the reason being that they feed on magic sources, their bodies being little more than shells surrounding a living tempest of power. The biggest among them are known as *World-Eaters*, beings capable of devouring the core of an entire planet - though theoretically nothing keeps them from growing even bigger...


----------



## vaiyt (Feb 16, 2016)

And here's the current iteration of the map. Colors unrelated.


----------



## vaiyt (Feb 19, 2016)

*Celestials* are Monster Kings that have come to rule over an entire planet. They're invariably frighteningly powerful and possess, if not advanced intelligence, at least a level of cunning surpassing any normal intelligent being. A Celestial-dominated planet usually ends up reality-thin and highly warped by their presence alone, being fully visible from both the realms of order and magic. World-Eaters and Celestials are often at odds throughout the cosmos, as the former threaten the 
livelihood of the latter with their hunger for magic-rich planetary cores.

*Fey* are native intelligent denizens of the magical plane. Their form is unstable, and therefore they vary wildly in appearance and character. Creatures that would normally be called fairies, elves, trolls, gnomes, pixies, tommyknockers, kobolds, yokai, ogres, and many others are all subtypes of the same species. All of them have magic as second nature, and behave/think in ways alien to orderly species.

*Chaotic beings* are an apparent oxymoron. The plane of Chaos should not be able to harbor life, but inside of it, some type of free-willed things appeared, as shifty and unknowable as the swirling mass of possibility around them. They are, by essence (if "essence" even applies to them), utterly incomprehensible, and only truly perceived by the severe reality-warping effects they have when approaching more orderly areas. Usually, when that happens, one or more eldritch abominations are "born" as the chaotic being's form stabilizes.

*Giants* are the last remnants of immensely powerful *Titans* that once ruled the world for millions of years. Titans were spawned by the spirit of the world (see genius loci above) to combat a threat to its existence, and after that they just hung around for a while. They, in turn created intelligent races to watch over, which in the beginning worshipped the titans themselves, before they grew proud and began to see nature's wrath as constraining their existence. They started believing in gods who would protect them from nature. Eventually, these gods took the fight to the titans, imprisoned or killed them and cursed their progeny. Giants are severely dimnished versions of their forefathers, but are still hugely powerful beings that harbor a deep-seated bitter rage against the other denizens of the world. In every culture, they're reviled as savage at best, and representations of primordial evil at worst.


----------



## vaiyt (Mar 3, 2016)

I totally should have put this in the brainstorming forum ):


----------

