What's your craziest worldbuilding idea?

Crazy ideas. Sounds like fun. I think this is far removed from any world I would write, but maybe some point in the future. I think my current world is probably the craziest as I went for a very unique planet situation, which is present in the background, but transparent to the characters. I am not sure, given the style of the writing that it will ever come out. One aspect of it is the world is covered in a grey haze, not a very thick one, visibility is still quite far, but people on the surface would have a definite limit to what could be seen and have never seen any but the brightest of objects in space (kind of like those living one east coast ). From a dwellers perspective, this is just the normal state, and so they don't think anything of it. Another aspect is that tress are equally likely to be purple as opposed to green, and the seasons are strange. But...again, it is not something characters really stop and contemplate, they just live with it. They have other things to do than ask why is the bright spot in the sky covered in haze.

 

I don't tend to go for crazy stuff because it can become too complicated and for me the setting isn't the most interesting thing.
But right now my world consists of the dream world that is controlled by a Sharman.

 

That is really cool and very creative! I think the oddest world I've made is in a story for my niece. It's a world on a flower. The flower has six petals, each a different color. All the plant life reflects the color of the petal it's on. Each petal has a microscopic nation run by a different fantasy being. Fairies, unicorns and goblins with three nations to be determined. The flower sits in my niece's room in a pot with a stone statue of a sprite. Whenever there's a problem in need of a hero, the statue comes to life and teleports my niece to adventure!

 

Probably the 'Nexus' in 'Strange Exit.' A tubular realm in the midst of the etheric void, where gravity is always 'outward' making it possible for characters to stand at 90 or even 180 degree angles to each other and thought equals motion. Also in the etheric void, a city built on nothing where time does not function normally - have to get back to that one some day.

 

I've found I take the 'Everything and the Kitchen Sink' approach to much of my world building and particularly fantasy (there's several kitchens to take from it). Not sure what I'd call crazy for much of it though, given my approach also means coming in at it from a different direction. Eld itself is perhaps the full crazy for my world building though. Sure, on the outside it's a world of standard fantasy with almost all the races accounted (no hobbits or halflings, sorry), dark lords, dashing hero's, loyal knights, pirates and airships and world tree's and dragons and all you expect in it.

Then come the details, kind of taking a bit of learning from Discworld and some other fantasy worlds, it has turned Eld into an absolute mess. Undead apocalypse, they happen. Though in some fantasy with an alarming regularity. It is now a post apocalyptic fantasy world that's only a couple decades past being almost destroyed and trying to pick up the pieces and not fall on old ways. The undead still lurk, the magic is connected to the world and the undead are parasites that live on the magic and don't cycle it back into the world when they die (again). And with the way the world is, if they fall back the undead will reap the benefits and Eld will die. Not everyone is fully aware of that particular consequence.

The world can also once again flourish and magic can come back to the heights it used too. When the big magical beings tossed astroids on their enemies, mountains were sundered and coasts were rearranged and gods died at the hands of mortals (good times!). And connected to that is a Chosen One of sorts, but it's more story stuff. And people have to make the connection to it all anyways. So far survival is good enough for them, but Eld might say different in time.

 

PM me an email, and I'll send you a copy of 'Strange Exit.' About 21,500 words.

 

Thanks! My sister has four kids and I'm working on stories for each of them. Of course they each get their own world to be heroic in. My avatar is how I appear in them.

 

I plan to publish them if my laziness doesn't get the better of me.

 

People think that the Spectral Realm is some strange empty place between the worlds that you can pass through as a shortcut to visit other realms when you don't have a more direct connection. But in truth, the Spectral Realm is the actual nature of reality.
It seems like the Spectral Realm looks like a hazy reflection of the various worlds it connects, but in reality it's all the other worlds that are manifestations of the Spectral Realm.

The landscape of the Spectral Realm looks like someone had taken the maps of all the other worlds, cut them into pieces of hugely different sizes, and glued them all back together at random into a single giant map. To travel to other worlds, or even other places in your own world, you only need to go into the Spectral Realm, go to the place you want to be, and then leave the Spectral Realm again. Moving in the Spectral Realm is very fast, but finding your destination is the difficult part.

Spirits and demons don't actually travel through the Spectral Realm. In truth, they are always on the Spectral Realm. When they appear in any other world, they really just creating a new manifestation, but their true form always exists simultaneously in the Spectral Realm at the same location. Any magic that appears to trap a spirit actually creates a barrier in the Spectral Realm. They can abandontheir manifested form in the physical realms, but they still can't move, which also means they can't move to a place in the Spectral Realm from which they could manifest into a different world.

 

Hmm...

Thinking about it, until I wrote 'Strange Exit,' my weirdest bit of world building was probably 'Gawana,' a continent sized living labyrinth, which was the setting for much of 'Labyrinth: Journal.' I had to spend a fair bit of effort designing the living maze and the rational for its existence.

 

My Craziest worldbuilding is probably are the World, animals and the trees.

 

Imagine a reality that operates by entirely different rules than our own. There is an infinite ocean that spans eternally without light in all directions. Long ago the goddesses blessed the world with light in the form of starlike balls of their essence, each of the seven gods giving up a piece of their power to allow life to exist in this universe except for the unnamed one, goddess of the dark waters beyond the world altered by the goddesses.
Each of these balls of divine essence constantly exerts massive amounts of force in all directions, creating a sphere of divine light filled with magic in which water is pushed out. These spheres were filled with air and the border of air and water given life and solid continents by the goddesses, each of the six named ones forming a world like our own, but inverted so that the horizon rises as it fades.
Each of the spheres borders two others in portal like holes in the water, and the goddesses locked each sphere to be stationary with magic regardless of the motion of the essence cores. The bordering six spheres make a ring, and each essence core has a daily arc that goes through the water to allow a day-night cycle, though the length of day varies by the speed and size of the core's arc.

The six realms, worlds, or spheres were once isolated from each other, when the life inside was made by each names god, and now, centuries later, the race made by each god is still most common in the realm they originally hail from and the bordering realms.
In clockwise order looking "down" on the spheres, there is Midra with blue skies, home of humans and green plants, named for its creator, the goddess of society and intelligence, then Elva with dull blue-violet skies, home of the elves and dull blue-green plants, named for the goddess of mist and light, then Drella with purplish gray skies, home of the drow and bluish gray plants, named for the goddess of dusk and magic, then Darga with fully gray skies, home of dwarves and fully gray plants, named for the goddess of earth and crafting, then Irica with greenish gray skies, home of giants and yellowish gray plants, named for the goddess of war and wisdom, and then finally Orica with dull blue-green skies, home to orcs and dull yellow-green plants, named for the goddess of beasts and anger.

All magic in this world comes from the power of the gods, and mortals can use a portion of this power by devoting themselves to a god with similar moral beliefs and gain magic that relates both to traits of the caster and the divine domains of the goddess. For example, a particularly violent follower of Elva may have trouble establishing a connection to the goddess due to her relatively nonviolent views, but might develop a signature fire style of magic due to the combination of their core violence and her light magic.
There also exist followers of the unnamed goddess, cultists who believe she is unnecessarily shunned as she never did anything to prevent life, merely not creating any herself, who learn magics related to water and shadow in secret, some even capable of thinning the magic at the border of the realm to let sea monsters into shallow water, which has resulted in unforgettable tragedies throughout the history of all the realms.
Of course, not all of these cultists are evil, and a decent majority are nonviolent or even heroic, having to work from the shadows to help society and hope no goddess ever learns of them.

To be clear, the goddesses are not all-knowing, though they know everything that their followers know and have limited clairvoyance in their own realm, nor are they all powerful, but the main restriction on a goddess's power is the will of the others, as any overstep of their power will be met with decisive punishment from the rest of the group. They also aren't quite immortal, with the possibility of death if enough of the other goddesses act together to kill one. This didn't work on the nameless goddess due to the fact that though each of the six others tried to kill her, she was the only one who didn't lower her own power by removing her essence, and survived, wounded, to recover in the dark of the endless abyss.


I hope I was clear in my word choice and thank you for reading a summary of how the world works. If anyone has any questions, I'd be happy to try to answer them, as I did leave out most of the worldbuilding to keep the summary from becoming unbearably long.