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Worldbuilding infodump

This thread is a disorganized space for me to throw worldbuilding ideas to the wall to see what sticks, and I'll also post maps as I work on them. I don't have a specific question but feel free to critique or discuss anything here, feedback is always welcome.

Okay so here’s the basic idea of my world:
  • Overall steampunk/clockpunk with a magical element.
  • Simultaneously ahead of and behind the real world in terms of technology. Consider the advanced tech of Star Wars but also what is basically magical sword fighting.
  • This magic takes the place of electricity or works alongside it, powering the world. In any case, the internal combustion engine has not been invented. If the power replaces the need for electricity then it was also never explored.
  • Magic used instead of electricity would lean more steam/clockpunk, alongside electricity would lean more teslapunk.
  • I want to avoid ‘clones’ of existing cultures in the way that Westeros is a clone of England and so many steampunk settings are basically Victorian England. This will probably mean recombining existing cultures into new ones.
  • Plastic was never invented. A small detail with huge implications and influence.
  • Guns were also never invented, possibly because gunpowder was never invented. Weapons definitely exist though. The idea of electric/steam/magic spear guns and stun weapons are interesting.
  • I have no idea how religion works in this setting
  • I want to have animals similar to what we have, but also have dinosaurs or something similar exist.
  • One reason that I want to worldbuild is to paint the settings. And one thing I really want to include is a desert setting. I don’t have much detail for that yet, just a town reasonably close to the river coming out of a rain shadow as per WASD20’s instructions.
  • I want to avoid a stereotypical middle-eastern feel for the desert towns so they'll be based on something backwards like an adaptation of Norse architecture.
  • That being said I really middle eastern architecture so that'll make an appearance somewhere.
  • Another setting is a large city which is not in a desert. Only ideas there are 'avoid Victorian setting'.
  • I’m interested in the idea of floating cities or even a floating continent, but I’m not sure how or if they would fit.
  • Two aesthetics that I can’t get over are ‘Dishonored’ and ‘Final Fantasy’. So they’ll probably be in there somehow.
 

A map that I've made, a work in progress. The desert city would be to the east of the mountains and more cities would be further east than that, away from the desert. To the west of the mountains you'd find the area somewhat cut off from the east and more in contact with the landmass in the northeast and the southern islands, if anyone lives there. The volcano might not stay.
 

Miles Lacey

Archmage
Okay... you could have electricity in the larger towns and cities but magic in the smaller towns and villages. The reasons: logistics and cost. It's cheaper and easier to use electricity in a large built up area.

The internal combustion engine was never invented because the oil in your world is of a slightly different composition (due to dinosaurs never dying out) so diesel and petrol were never invented. That, in turn, meant no plastic was invented either. Thus, engineers in your world created a more advanced steam engine or even a clockwork engine to operate a vehicle.

Comparisons with real world cultures are impossible to avoid but you can reduce the chances of that by not using names that sound too much like real place names and settings that would invoke specific cultures in the minds of your readers. I would avoid the Norse stuff: it's been done to death.

As for religion? Water is written about a lot in the Bible because Christianity was founded in a semi-desert environment where water was (and still is) a precious commodity. Muslim dress codes seem ridiculous until you realise that Islam was founded in the deserts of the Arabian peninsula and the dress codes are very practical in the desert.

Dinosaurs could work but if you want them in your world you'll need to figure out how they interact with humans and create the sort of environment in which they could realistically exist.

Floating cities and lands don't do it for me and I've never played Final Fantasy games so I can't comment about that.

You have good ideas that could work. It's going to be the execution of those ideas that will be tough.
 
electricity in the larger towns and cities but magic in the smaller towns and villages.
I'd rather have things more uniform, but the idea of at least slightly more advanced tech existing in cities is logical.

(due to dinosaurs never dying out) so diesel and petrol were never invented.

This makes a lot of sense and fits extremely well, I love it. Might need to consider another type of oil for some things like lanterns, but it could be unsuitable for the development of an engine.

Comparisons with real world cultures are impossible to avoid
I know I'll never avoid it completely, I'm just going to work with it. And that might include Norse architecture but I will be avoiding town names ending in -heim and all that.

As for religion?
There's so much to unravel there, and an argument for not swapping things without altering them as the clothes worn by a desert culture wouldn't just transfer to a snowy setting without changing.

As for dinosaurs and floating cities I'm determined to make dinosaurs or a variation of them work. As beasts of burden certain ones might make of the inconvenience of not having engines. But I'm scrapping the floating cities. They don't work, I want more realism than that, I'm going to cave there. They're just a cool aesthetic.


Thanks for the feedback!
 
Some additional information that I've been thinking about:

  • The dinosaurs might be not quite dinosaurs, more dinosaur-esque creatures. Maybe the result evolution over time and even selective breeding by humans. This is to be more plausible about them existing at the same time as humans.
  • I don't really want to include too many modern animals and I've come to the conclusion that dairy products other than eggs probably don't exist. Human diets include meat, fruits, vegetables, eggs, and grains along with bread that does not contain milk(flour, water, salt and yeast make a basic bread).
  • Gunpowder should probably exist. But guns do not. I want zero guns. Not with bullets, anyway.
  • I do want stun weapons, spear guns and captive bolt weapons.
  • These need a power source, especially a stun weapon. Captive bolt could be more like a crossbow. This power source could come in the form of something like whale oil derived from aquatic creatures(Dishonored coming through already), a radioactive material(least favorite idea), or something involving magic. Any of that could result in a decent fuel cell.
 
Also thinking about other races. Like desert-dwelling elves that live like Drow, underground and only coming out at night. They wouldn't actually be Drow, though. Just elves that have adapted to a desert, perhaps for the solitude.

Or male Drow refugees that fled the Underdark since it's so harsh for Drow men. A desert outpost of humans that interacts with/does trade with the underground Drow population is interesting. This would be some distance from the city, perhaps.

Or the city could become (in)famous for being populated by humans by day and Drow and braver humans by night.
 
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I would stop using that word drow. It is not public domain.
My bad, I see it used everywhere.

Then I would say that the bigger city probably would be mostly human with an outpost existing somewhere above ground while a below ground dark/desert elf population lives nearby. Or the elves live near the city and the outpost doesn't exist. If it's an outpost, the humans of the outpost come to interact with the elves while most people wouldn't. Or, the city is populated by the elves by night and humans generally don't go out at night. Maybe humans brave enough to run shops that the elves would trade with. Could be lucrative.

Otherwise I'm not sure what the elves do at night in the city unless they somehow have shops of their own that are locked during the day. They probably have their own city in the underground space. Maybe there's an outdoor arena or sporting area they use, even.

Also if it's a large underground city, they might have their own currency and an exchange rate between elf money and human money would have to exist.
 
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Situation A:
There is a large city by a river in the desert where humans live. Gaslamp fantasy level tech. Dinosaurs or similar animals as beasts of burden alleviate the lack of the internal combustion engine. But, this city was built unknowingly on top of an underground city of desert-dwelling elves. After some initial conflict and negotiations, an understanding is struck. The elves only ever venture out at night when it's cool, so the city belongs to the humans by day. At night, the elves come out to hunt and live their lives, venting into the city to trade with the few humans that run shops at odd hours in order to trade with the elves.

Situation B:
The city exists, but not near an underground city of elves. That underground city is far away, near an human outpost. Humans don't generally interact with elves, but being stuck at the outpost and near to the underground city, contact is made and the humans of the outpost come to an agreement with the elves, an unusual circumstance.

I like A more, but what does anyone else think? In either case, elves usually keep to themselves so it's a strange arrangement. Other elven cities would likely be in a forest or mountain region away from humans.
 
I think A is more interesting, but it also comes with more complexities.
I agree. Supposing the elves were able to build a city underground with airflow and everything(or else killed the dwarves that did and took over?) then they would have had to hide their existence through the building of the human city. Tension would follow when they met, but then a peace could be reached. Still really wanting a steampunk/gaslamp fantasy feel makes it even weirder to work out.
 

pmmg

Myth Weaver
Well...could form organically.

Suppose the Elves had a resource that the humans wanted. Maybe they had a source of gold. Humans move in initially and set up a trading post. The elves allow it cause it easier to trade their than get a big caravan together to deliver to market. Come back in 100 years, and there is a big human community there. Just sprawl would do it.
 
One of the more interesting aspects of worldbuilding is trying to figure out how things wound up how they are today, and that's a great explanation!
 
Both are fine. One pretty much is the precursor of the other. Cities almost always start small and grow as people move in and population expands.

One interesting aspect you could dig into is that humans and elves percieve time differently (assuming 70-ish years for a human and much longer for an elf). A city can grow rapidly in 100 years, which would be 4 human generations, but the blink of an eye for the elves. You start with elves allowing the humans to live nearby and suddenly they find themselves in the minority in the time it takes them to go from baby to adult.

Both have plenty of opportunities for conflict (which sits at the heart of every story). Pick the one that excites you the most. And go with that. And remember, you can always use the other idea later. Just because you discard it now doesn't mean you can't come back to it.
 
Both are fine. One pretty much is the precursor of the other. Cities almost always start small and grow as people move in and population expands.

One interesting aspect you could dig into is that humans and elves percieve time differently (assuming 70-ish years for a human and much longer for an elf). A city can grow rapidly in 100 years, which would be 4 human generations, but the blink of an eye for the elves. You start with elves allowing the humans to live nearby and suddenly they find themselves in the minority in the time it takes them to go from baby to adult.

Both have plenty of opportunities for conflict (which sits at the heart of every story). Pick the one that excites you the most. And go with that. And remember, you can always use the other idea later. Just because you discard it now doesn't mean you can't come back to it.
So I'm trying to find a magi-tech power source for my steampunk-esque world and this fits really well. I'm thinking of just leaning into the idea of using crystals even though it's been done several times. People mine crystals and through some alchemical process they're charged with energy and power everything, though the crystal do need recharging. Different crystals hold energy differently and efficiency varies with the type of the crystal and the purity. Different cultures have different available minerals so more cultures with more efficient crystals can develop faster but less put and less capable crystals could slow a culture's advancement. Of course trading does increase over time so inequalities wouldn't stay exactly the same.

Either that or just hand-wave and say aether. Maybe even have aether collected and distilled and recombined into a fuel called aethernol or something similar. Could also combine the two and say that the process of focusing aether requires the use of really pure quartz. The demand for crystal could still increase over time as society grows.

Anyway: The human trading post sets up perhaps where two major roads meet and hopes to trade in the area's precious minerals or something else like a source of aether. But the elves were already there. They could have wiped the humans off the face of the earth, but that could start trouble and they're not very warlike. Besides, the humans have brought with them some interesting stuff like foods the elves aren't familiar with. So they decide to make the best of it and trade back and forth, the precious resource for human goodies. The human city grows and both sides reap the benefits.

I had been picturing the outpost as military and wanting to stay small, but I really like this.
 
I would also like to think that maybe given that the elves and humans have an alliance, there are a number of elven guards in the human city and maybe some human guards in the elven city. Characters I'm think about are an elven guard who is on permanent night shift in the human city, or a human shopkeeper who trades more in the night market with the elves than during the day.

And I'm also considering that dwarves existed but went extinct somehow. Don't really know where I'm going with that.
 

pmmg

Myth Weaver
I human might share his story front with an Elf to keep it open 24/7, or high one.

Maybe the Elves brought dwarf pox when they moved in the area.
 
I human might share his story front with an Elf to keep it open 24/7, or high one.

Maybe the Elves brought dwarf pox when they moved in the area.
I love the idea of a shared shop or hired elf assistant. But I'd rather go with something like, the elf-human alliance crowded out the dwarves who wanted no part of them and their societies so they kind of just dwindled. Or a disease did wipe them out, but many years ago and the elves had nothing to do with it.
 
You don't have to actually have the answer about what happened to the dwarves or give it to the reader. Especially not if you're planning a series. It's fine to just have "the dwarves disappeared at some point in the past. We don't know why or how or if they're really extinct or just left the area." These kinds of mysteries are fine. If your characters don't know there's no reason to explain it to the reader. If anything, they make your world more complete.
 
You don't have to actually have the answer about what happened to the dwarves or give it to the reader. Especially not if you're planning a series. It's fine to just have "the dwarves disappeared at some point in the past. We don't know why or how or if they're really extinct or just left the area." These kinds of mysteries are fine. If your characters don't know there's no reason to explain it to the reader. If anything, they make your world more complete.
Thank you, I like that. I'm also working on where the city actually is. I'm having a hard time picturing the map I've drawn as large, even though it's roughly the size of the USA. It's in the rain shadow of the mountains by a large river, where major trade routes meet and the city is a well known trade hub. But I need to do a lot of refining.
 
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