So my main story takes place on a continent (call it Heartlands) which is inhabited by several species. Nothing massively original. I am just thinking how do you approach writing other species.
These are all relatively “young” nations or tribes, with some races occupying the continent only for about, let’s say a thousand years, though the exact time frame may change. Most of the history from before has been lost. There was a lot of migration and resettlement going on prior to that.
Takes about 40-50 days by horse to travel South to North, 60 or so days from East to West, at their tallest and widest distances - I'm not talking galloping but normal horse speed, I guesstimated at 25 miles a day to travel that far. That's how far my geographical planning went.
So we have:
- One very prosperous kingdom (Seleiro) to the south east, founded by elves who are rapidly going extinct and form a fraction of the population, with the rest predominantly humans;
- Dwarven mountain holds - living above and under the mountains, the dwarves hold and control a huge % of the market on mining all throughout the continent. They are currently highly unoriginal and very formulaic dwarves. My apologies . They live largely south, but dwarven miners are sought after and are everywhere;
- Forest tribes - humans with shamanistic powers living off the wild in a large sprawling forest encompassing a lot of the east of the continent. Many tribes, lots of in-fighting within and raiding outside the forests;
- Vanami - amphibious creatures living predominantly underwater off the north of the Heartlands, but maintaining outposts and towns above water for trade. Will quite happily eat other races;
- Plaeri - basically lizardmen, living in the deserts in the west; quite barbaric and rarely stray outside of their desert;
- Veks - white furry humanoid creatures, tall, long, thin, living mostly isolated far to the north west, highly mysterious.
Notes:
- A large proportion of the “unclaimed territories” is taken by cities and towns and villages and hamlets and crossroads inns, predominantly settled by humans;
- Seleiro has also established several trading posts in some areas where these villages are, slowly bit by bit extending themselves through all of the Heartlands, allowing trade to smoothly flow through the continent;
- There is strong trade going on between the dwarves and Seleiro, they are very amicable neighbours;
- Seleiro and the dwarves are the only ones who actually have seafaring capabilities to engage in any kind of trade.
The conflicts inherent to the setting are:
- Vanami regarding all other species as meat;
- Plaeri and Veks fighting for reasons unknown, so far not involving other species;
- Elves being mistrusted, as one way they’ve been battling complete extinction is to mate with other races
- Raiders from a nearby “pirate archipelago” (it’s more sophisticated than it sounds) attacking all around the north and eastern coastlines - central conflict to the story;
- Infighting among the tribes and also raids outside the forests.
My main characters would largely be the few survivors of the Elven population. I am currently writing a prequel short story with one of them, for me to both practice my writing and assist with world-building and just how it all works. Any advice on that would be great as well. Effectively my MC got screwed in a bad way, and he's doing a bit of a world tour trying to get back home, an Odyssey of sorts.
PS: The post itself was also an opportunity for me to just write this all out in brief which was a useful exercise. A lot of decisions have been made while I was doing that.
These are all relatively “young” nations or tribes, with some races occupying the continent only for about, let’s say a thousand years, though the exact time frame may change. Most of the history from before has been lost. There was a lot of migration and resettlement going on prior to that.
Takes about 40-50 days by horse to travel South to North, 60 or so days from East to West, at their tallest and widest distances - I'm not talking galloping but normal horse speed, I guesstimated at 25 miles a day to travel that far. That's how far my geographical planning went.
So we have:
- One very prosperous kingdom (Seleiro) to the south east, founded by elves who are rapidly going extinct and form a fraction of the population, with the rest predominantly humans;
- Dwarven mountain holds - living above and under the mountains, the dwarves hold and control a huge % of the market on mining all throughout the continent. They are currently highly unoriginal and very formulaic dwarves. My apologies . They live largely south, but dwarven miners are sought after and are everywhere;
- Forest tribes - humans with shamanistic powers living off the wild in a large sprawling forest encompassing a lot of the east of the continent. Many tribes, lots of in-fighting within and raiding outside the forests;
- Vanami - amphibious creatures living predominantly underwater off the north of the Heartlands, but maintaining outposts and towns above water for trade. Will quite happily eat other races;
- Plaeri - basically lizardmen, living in the deserts in the west; quite barbaric and rarely stray outside of their desert;
- Veks - white furry humanoid creatures, tall, long, thin, living mostly isolated far to the north west, highly mysterious.
Notes:
- A large proportion of the “unclaimed territories” is taken by cities and towns and villages and hamlets and crossroads inns, predominantly settled by humans;
- Seleiro has also established several trading posts in some areas where these villages are, slowly bit by bit extending themselves through all of the Heartlands, allowing trade to smoothly flow through the continent;
- There is strong trade going on between the dwarves and Seleiro, they are very amicable neighbours;
- Seleiro and the dwarves are the only ones who actually have seafaring capabilities to engage in any kind of trade.
The conflicts inherent to the setting are:
- Vanami regarding all other species as meat;
- Plaeri and Veks fighting for reasons unknown, so far not involving other species;
- Elves being mistrusted, as one way they’ve been battling complete extinction is to mate with other races
- Raiders from a nearby “pirate archipelago” (it’s more sophisticated than it sounds) attacking all around the north and eastern coastlines - central conflict to the story;
- Infighting among the tribes and also raids outside the forests.
My main characters would largely be the few survivors of the Elven population. I am currently writing a prequel short story with one of them, for me to both practice my writing and assist with world-building and just how it all works. Any advice on that would be great as well. Effectively my MC got screwed in a bad way, and he's doing a bit of a world tour trying to get back home, an Odyssey of sorts.
PS: The post itself was also an opportunity for me to just write this all out in brief which was a useful exercise. A lot of decisions have been made while I was doing that.