Ideas for a World.

[Forsta-Phoenix]

Hey there,

I'm pretty new here (first thread) and am attempting to write a peice of fantasy fiction over the summer. I have a general plan for the narrative and some of the main characters, but am looking for feedback on some ideas and concepts behind the story. I understand this is a large amount of text to read so I give you thanks beforehand and I'll write a summary of points at the end of the post!

I have the geography sorted, with the story mainly occuring on a continent about 1 and a half times the size of europe, with a narrow passage to a much larger continent (of undecided size because who doesn't love mystery?) to the east and a large tropical continent to the north (even less defined because MOAR mystery!). I have a map on paper, but am currently editing it to look nicer before posting it here!

The general state of affairs is that the main continent is roughly at early renaissance levels of technological development, with traces of magic which has faded from prominence as engineering becomes more popular (for the novel value rather than any inherent superiority and more importantly accessibility to the common man). So we have people developing the first firearms that can feasible be used by a single man, however armies are yet to really fully grasp this new technology with even the most developed countries only fielding a few cannons (referred to as bombards in universe) for prestige as opposed to actual practicality, these are supported by infantry and cavalry and the occasional war machine/beastie. By beastie I mean things like war elephants/mastadons/rhinos other large megafauna, or smaller creatures such as dogs, pigs etc. Although the majority of animals are similar to ones we are familiar with there is a simply stunning natural diversity of creatures around the place, from large cats taking the niche of wolves in the north to red-panda-esque creatures replacing raccoons and foxes in the west (my main reasoning for this diversity is more for rule of cool and aestetics than anything else, but also wanting to steer clear of more cliched high/epic fantasy creature conventions).

The political background of the continent is there are 10-15 main countries, with many smaller city states, republics, duchies, confederations, leagues or you-name-its scattered across the map all with a fairly homogenous background and similar ethno-linguistic histories but with enough differences and shoulder-chips for the area to always have a good war or three occuring at once. The event that is on most kings/princes/leaders minds right now is an imminent invasion from the east by a large horde of steppe people, with the easternmost kingdom already experiencing probing raids and attacks. These eastern hordes are obvious mongol analogues but with an even crueler bent, and also a profound love of rockets (fireworks really but morale busting none-the-less) and to a lesser extent early cannons tooled for grapeshot (instead of a cannon ball a bunch of shrapnel is placed in the barrel, think giant shotgun) and pulled by horses, needless to say invasion policies from this group are very brutal and a successful invasion may plunge the continent into a dark age from which a return is unlikely. Most Kings, eastern and western, have heard stories from far away tradeposts of the horrors that these people bring and provides a pretty large incentive for these invaders to be repelled (or diverted/appeased) pretty darn quick.

This invasion whilst pressing for the westernmost nations is not a prime priority as the time necessary to cross the continent and destroy all the intervening nations could take years, besides there will be larger and better bombards by then (or so the yesmen are whispering into kings ears) even more there are a large chain of mountains and forests dividing the continent in the middle, sure to keep back any horse mounted army! But there is a powerful political movement to work together and repel the invaders before they can even set foot on these dividing mountains, the only problem is that each king sees himself as the best candidate to lead a force and negotiations are getting grim, with various blocs forming and each beleiving they should lead the rest to salvation. So typical of people to turn on each other than the real threat at hand hey?

The other major event to happen to these people during the novel is a first contact scenario with a group of overly diplomatic humans (if they are really human or mere avatars I am yet to decide) who claim to be from a large vessel in orbit and wish to trade with the inhabitants of the planet. Although any POV characters have no actual way of confirming whether this is true or not, the fact is that these visitors have technology advanced enough to be indistinguishable from magic (but importantly not magic!) so it is taken as truth. At the time of the novel these Visitors have contacted most nations on the continent (maybe the world, they are very tight lipped about these things) but have decided to focus most relations with a medium/large island nation lying off the west of the continent. For some reason the Visitors seem uninterested with maintaining anything more than one advisor or two in most other big countries, which has alienated the Island Nation from the rest of the continent. A double blow as the king was head of the most powerful bloc and one of the greatest proponents of stopping the Steppe Hordes before they became a problem and he is, understandably, miffed at this. Also each trade that takes place between the Visitors and the Island Nation requires the King to allow more and more social freedom to his people, which he is getting more and more aggravated over but ultimately the deals the Visitors offer are far too good to reject over something as trivial as a duchess's right to a voice in parliament or increasing literacy from 1-2% to 10% in 5 years.

Now one of the major problems I have come up with is that I want these Visitors to want something far less than altruistic in return but I am struggling to think what a star faring race could want from a world as developed as 15th century europe. The best reason (i.e. most logical and one that doesn't require too much suspension of disbelief) that I can come up with is that these Visitors are grooming the island nation to become very loyal to them, and thus create a base from which to control the rest of the continent and thus keep a captive market for the Visitors (Much like the British in India in our history, just with a more pronounced tech difference!). However that reason is ultimately unsatisfying to me, could you imagine the reveal?:

The Visitor turned to face the King and after a brief pause to twiddle his waxed mustache whispered "Aye my good Lord King I do want something from you, which you have just delivered to me: TOTAL ECONOMIC DOMINATION MUAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA *cough* hurk *cough*".

Whilst that might be an over-satirization of the situation, it fails to really take me as a consequence the King and his people would be able to get emotional about let alone actually do anything about! I wouldn't want to change it to just a "them aliens wants our lands/resources/tangible objects" because that's what the Steppe Hordes are meant to convey. But I am really drawing a blank on what the Visitors could realistic want in return for their services! So any suggestions there would make me very happy!

I've just realised that this is now turning into a massive wall of text so I'll leave the explanation here for now and ask these questions:
Are there any works of fiction that sound similar to this?
Are there any tropes or cliches that I have unwittingly stumbled into?
Do you like the setting?/Do you think it is interesting?
What do you think of the set up? (Hordes from the east, Subject in the middle, Aliens in the west)
Can you think of any reasons a space faring race would want to trade with a renessiance era world?

Again thank you very much for reading this! And I look forward to any constructive criticism or feedback!

 

[Amanita]

Hello,

I do like your setting but I'm not sure how I feel about the whoe "alien invasion" thing. To me, it sounds as if your fantasy world by itself has more than enough material for possible conflicts, do you really need the visitors there?
If you want to keep the space travelling people, do you have any explanations for their superior technology? "Lost planets" that have been discovered by space travellers and than abandoned developing a fantasy culture of their own are a fairly common theme in some science fiction/fantasy mix-stories, Darkover by Marion Zimmer-Bradley is the example I'm most familiar with.

The invading eastern people could pose plenty of conflict by themselves even though I always tend to be a bit wary about evil human races, especially if they come from the east which is not exactly uncommon. Giving them some "human" streaks and reasons for their behaviour would certainly be a good idea.

 

[Forsta-Phoenix]

Cheers for reading through all that!

Firstly I'll answer about the eastern invaders, they are human and not a 'faceless evil race', even if my breif description didn't really show that! They're taking cues from other steppe invaders such as the Mongols, Huns or Timurids from our history, so their motivation for continued conquest is that an army of size that has been ammassed can't just be left around to dawdle without serious problems in structure and desertion quickly becoming prominent, so the ruler of these people really is trying to project his power here as a last ditch attempt to keep a hold of the loyalty of his people. I guess I just wanted to accenuate unpleasant attributes to try impart a sense of urgency to preventing the conquest upon the characters and reader! Also I understand that 'the east' is an overly used direction for invading hordes, I just drew the map that way and never really thought of it!

As for the visitors, I haven't set too much in stone about their actual background but I do know that the world on which the story takes place is just one of many habitable planets in one star system and this planet was engineered by something (but not the visitors) most probably to just see what would happen. The reason I want to include the visitors is that this whole idea stems from a vision for a scene I had a while back, basically the plot has advanced to a point where the King is comfortable enough with the visitors to start acting indignant, put out upon, angry and all the rest at them but the threat from the east is yet to really invade. The Island Nation has just been 'excommunicated' from the continent and the remaining countries have formed an alliance to deal with the incoming threat, but instead of taking the fight to the Steppe Hordes they decide to fortify and create defences which is not going to work in the long run. Due to all of this the King of the Island Nation is begging the visitors for 'the use of one of your star-bombards!' so he can decapitate the continental leadership and take control himself and the visitors are trying to squirm their way out of granting this request but even they see that the continent is doomed in its current mix up.

I want to avoid the concept of a "lost planet" and keep these visitors to just that, visitors instead of a returning force so they have little vested interest in the place other than for what it can offer. The only explanation I can offer for superior technology is time, as in these people are from another planet in the same system (so no FTL) and had no influence of magic on their world and were lucky in that their timeline had relatively short 'stagnant eras' a la the european dark age, leading to a much more rapid progression to space.

Hopefully those explanations cleared up a bit, they've certainly got me thinking so thanks for your reply!

 

[Forsta-Phoenix]

Bit of a bump here but with a map showing the different countries on this continent! The actual names are few and far between at the moment, purely because I have a thing with names in that they have to be just right but I have created history, rivalries etc for most nations, admittedly the more important nations have got a bit more fleshing out than the rest but meh!

Behold the continent of <Alionius>, name is a working title and very subject to change!



Each seperate sovereign nation has a seperate colour, however there are a few exceptions:

Exception 1, with the grey nation in the north the darker grey nation directly to its east is an autonomous state in personal union with the grey nation, but is de facto controlled like a part of the larger grey nation, think viceroyalty of new spain. The same with the pink island nation, the two darker areas on the island are autonomous in but in union but in this case think more Scotland or Wales.

Exception 2, with the gold and blue nations in the west the lighter gold/blue nations surrounding them denote protectorates of the gold/blue nation respectively.

The nation that the visitors have focused on the most is the pink nation lying off the west coast of the continent, although not physically connected to the mainland this nation is very much intwined with the games and wars played across the continent. The king was recently campaigning for a unified military with the other nations in order to strike a death blow to the amassing hordes to the east, but has been shunned and cast out after the other rulers became jealous of the exculsive dealings with the visitors. Although technically one nation, the western peninsulars are technically independant, but through various marriages over 200 years ago they have now been bought into a very close union, so much so that it now they are considered one nation, coliquially if not legally. To the west lies a vast ocean lined with archipelagos of various exotic items and more importantly the grand banks. The grand banks are a huge swathe of ocean that for some reason, some say magical, has an over abundance of fish, seals, whales and other nautical delights making any nation with access to it excrutiatingly wealthy

The gold nation is a large wealthy state that benefits from being a cutural 'hub' as in the past it was the focal point of a continent spanning empire, which has crumbled to leave just the gold nation in very dire economic straights, but thankfully innovation! The golden nation has set aside a rivalry with the southern blue nation in order to purvey the "riches and trade!" of the grand banks and anything further afield, but to do that they have started to construct a portage system to carry trade ships and goods across the 80 mile strip of land connecting the two nations, when completed this will allow them unprecedented access to the eastern nations and will very likely bankrupt the northwestern nations. After the pink nation has been cast out the gold nation is now heading a defense minded initiative to stop the hordes on the door instead, success is questionable...

The blue nation directly to the south of the gold has enjoyed a recent expansion after the ambassador from the lime green nation to the east made a very costly social faux pas at a coming of age ceremony for the blue nations prince, whilst not able to annex the whole nation the blue nation took all of the southern coastline and released various parts as protectorates to emasculate the lime greens even further.

The grey nation in the north is a constitutional monarchy that is remarkably progressive compared to the rest of the continent, sure there is a bit of forced indentured servitude and the king has a passion for gladiatorial combat and other such blood sports, but it is still a lovely place! Women can even vote in elections, provided they can buy a seat that is...

There is of course more where that came from but now after all of this world building I am actually going to try my hand at writing a few bits to have something actually interesting for you guys to read. I know that maps are more eye candy than anything but please feel free to criticise, and most importantly if you have anything to say please say it! I'd love to get some more feedback!

 

[Kaellpae]

Maybe the aliens wish to trade for skills in the creative fields? I could see an alien race that are geniuses in science and math, yet they have no art in their world. Maybe when they started surveying your world they saw great works of art and were so moved that they would trade whatever they could to either get the works of art or to learn how to make them?

Can you imagine if we didn't have music, poetry, or paintings? The first time we heard/read/saw them we would probably be confused, but then fall in love with the beauty of it.

What do you think?

 

[Draconian]

Have you thought about this? Maybe the aliens didn^t come from another planet but another dimension. They could be trapped here or need something from this planet like a unique resource. Have you thought about how many visiters their are? Maybe they lack manpower so they are trying to build an army in that country or a labor force.

 

[Forsta-Phoenix]

@Kaellpae, that is a brilliant idea! I have been toying with the thought of making one of the main characters a musician, but have been stumped as to how to express music well in written form. (I wouldn't want to put too much in the way of lyrics or anything in because I hated all of the songs in LotR and before halfway through the fellowship was skipping any parts that were remotely related to song lyrics, Tom Bombadil I'm looking at you!) So maybe they'd see an intangible thing such as a new form of music as a worthy trade/reason to cultivate a trade relation.

@Draconian, I have a really bad habit of overthinking things and after many hours of mind wandering and day dreaming I've realised that invading an inhabited planet for resources (even water) is massively more expensive than just mining asteroids or moons for the same elements/resources.

The visitors themselves are not numerous in number, I'm thinking a ship with maybe less than 100 people on it, but they are just one exploration/merchant/privateer vessel of this species. I was planning on having them still be in contact with their home but now you mention it maybe having them cut off from resupply could make it more interesting and.... DONE! A motivation of just plain getting home by any means necessary allows for more moral scope and is a more relatable ambition than economic dominance but still allows us to explore exploitation etc etc! So thank you both very much for your posts! I'm genuinely excited about some of the ideas you guys are giving me, so please MOAR!

 

[Chinaren]

Woah, complex background!

I'm not a big planner and all this strikes me as overly complex, but that's just me. Hey, it worked for Tolkien! I tend to start writing first with a general idea of what the world is like and develop things as I go. Everyone has their own style.

The problem I find with so much prep is that it gets in the way of actual writing. By the look of things you could have written half the book in the time it's taken to do this map. Do you really need the map with all those countries? Why not just work on a couple of places then add more as they are needed?

As for the alien issue, this is a problem I have with so many 'alien invasion' films. eg: Battle for LA. The aliens want water. Really? They can travel interstellar distances but they can't find water in space? Bollox.

So maybe they're just a trading species and they want resources but don't want to mine them themselves? Again, weak. There's plenty of stuff in space that would be easier to get to. Otherwise maybe they want to explore and meet different cultures?

 

[Kaellpae]

The map looks a lot like a flooded Europe/Africa to me. Just the general shape/coastlines.
Also, thanks for liking my idea. It was my pleasure giving it to you.

 

[Forsta-Phoenix]

@Chinaren, I agree I have put far too much effort into creating a general world plan that chances are will get chopped and changed quite regularly to service the plot, but I absolutely LOVE creating worlds with little bits and bobs of lore and backstory and general stuff I just can't help myself. But I have taken a step back from fleshing out too much more stuff to do with the actual world and have started to flesh out characters and actual scenes, which to me whilst not difficult is a more time consuming process than world creation. Mostly because I am dogged by thoughts of 'is this similar to something else that I haven't read or don't remember?!' or 'oh god, this isn't too cliche is it?!' but I am perservering, I have plans for 2 POV characters and their general plot arcs, with a massive timeline of events sprawled across my desk that becomes more illegible every day!

And the map only took me about 3.5 hours to make from sketch to what is uploaded there, bar 5 or 6 (which are somewhat important to the plot) most of the other countries where just there to fill space and look pretty and as with everything here those borders and coastlines (maybe even the colours) will all be changed at some point. I just like to have a lay of the land nice and neat for me to look at so I can make some decisions.

And 100% agree with you about aliens invading for resources, but for the moment I want the visitors there to provide a higher technological influence in stark contrast to some of the more fantastical elements that will be included, so hence all the troubles trying to figure their motives out. But it's coming along and rest assured it is not for tangible resources!

@Kaellpae, I was going for something similar looking to europe but changed a bit. Now you mention it I can see the resemblance between the southern landmass and the african north coast, but believe it or not I was actually basing it off europe but upside down! With the grey nation controlling the straights to the north paralleling the pillars of hercules/gibraltar and the brown nation to the north east is admittedly a bit lame, as it is supposed to look similar to a hand holding an axe, well in the same kind of way Italy looks like a foot! And the pink nation, hopefully not too much so, obviously being an analogue for the UK. So yeah there's quite a bit of resemblance between europe and this continent, but that's what happens when you base something on something else! Hopefully there'll be some interesting bits of history floating around in there!

Also as a general question is it possible to move this to the brain storming section of showcase? I'm not sure but I think that might possibly be a more suitable place for this kind of thread, but correct me if I'm wrong!