#worldbuild

A GUIDE TO WORLDBUILDING

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WHY?

its fun and pushes your creativity to new heights (you can also shift to the world you created iykyk) you could also make it into a story

WHAT?

name of the world

flag

map

creatures that live there

goverment

education systems

language(s)

norms

currency

legends

technology

history

powers

nature

jobs

traditions

problems

fashion

food

religions

races

HOW?

collecting ideas for example you can make a pinterest board where you save pins that inspire you (it can be anything from food youd like in your world to creaturs or landscapes)

But what bodyplant do I think would be most adequate for a high gravity planet? From what existing life would I draw inspiration from? Allow me to introduce you to:

You are always horizontal, you are always lying down, you are never gonna fall down and break a bone, your body is a cylinder entirely made of cushion.

And it's not like you're gonna be building staircases, that sounds like a horrible idea in a high gravity environment regardless of bodyplant. Ramps everywhere, no accessibility issues. And how do you go downhill? I am so glad you asked.

I’ve talked before about how I like to worldbuild for my writing, and I thought it would help if I demonstrated the process more actively, so I’m going to come up with some worldbuilding as I write this post, all following the steps I gave in the linked post

1. Visualise the landscape

I like to do this by finding a location in Minecraft to build in, so I created a new world in order to get a snapshot of the spawn location and see if I could get inspiration from that. Here’s the image I got:

And honestly, I’m pretty happy with this starting point! You’ve got the natural rise and fall of this valley, the different sand and terracotta types, the trees up at the tops of the mountains. There’s a lot of character to the land already

2. Give your location a main export/value

In Minecraft, gold and mineshafts are a lot more likely to generate in the badlands, so that seems like a pretty solid start based on the location alone. This means that the location would be home to a mining community, and thus a lot of the people living here are likely to work in the mines, and thus may be quite hardy physical labourers. They’re also likely to be quite a wealthy community, considering they’re the ones with all the access to gold and precious ores, and so their trade avenues are likely to be pretty diverse

3. Consider how this export/value, combined with the landscape, would shape your location’s founding, history and/or culture

So from the biome and export alone, we’ve conceptualised a wealthy mining community of physical labourers. If we’re to add in how the land looks right now, my first instinct is to look at that dip in the valley where the red sand is; that’s a clear indication of a river that’s long since dried up

In real life, settlements tend to pop up by rivers and other natural water sources since water is such a necessary part of life, meaning that a settlement passing along the lost river would make plenty of sense. If we wanted, we could leave the river drained, and construct a dilapidated mining community from a bygone era — the water ran out, and so the people had to leave for survival

4. Expand on these ideas until you’re satisfied

From here you’ve already got some solid worldbuilding, and if there’s not much to be done in this land then you can leave it at that. But we’re here for a full project, so allow me to ramble for a while:

There are still questions that remain if we’re curious enough; what caused the water to run out, and where did the miners go? My genre of preference is fantasy, so I have a little more wiggle room for ideas here, such as considering this from a magical or divine perspective. Maybe they angered a god, or they mined a cursed gem, and it caused the river to dry up?

But a cursed and barren sand settlement is awfully similar to Porphyria, an existing city I have, so I want to try something a little different. What if, instead of the river drying up being some kind of disaster or curse, it was actually by design? What if there were a dam put in place that blocked the river from reaching the settlement?

And why would someone want to cut off the water supply to the settlement? Their gold mines. What if somebody wanted to buy the land and claim the gold for themself, and when told no, they attempted to make the land inhospitable to force the settlement’s hand?

But we’ve already established that these miners are a hardy community, and I have my doubts that they’d just take this lying down. But what would they do? Break the dam? Find a new water source?

Wait, maybe the latter could work, actually. What if they found an underground spring or something while mining? Maybe water that’s sourced from further up the river, forking off underground, and thus hasn’t been blocked off by the dam? So maybe, instead of staying on the surface, the miners move underground

Actually, now that I think about it, this is getting similar to an old civilisation I came up with years ago but didn’t do much worldbuilding for; a ravine where the dwarves of Glynnwyld moved to evade the ripple effects of the Great Elven War. Originally it was full of green grass and sparkling crystals, but that could always change to fit our new worldbuilding and put this badlands mining settlement into my existing lore. Maybe the High Elves built the dam to cut off the river that flowed into dark elf territory, and the dwarven settlement was just collateral damage? Or the dark elves needed more land and access to precious minerals for the war effort, and so built the dam to gain full access?

And that resulted in the dwarves moving underground, leaving behind the shell of their old settlement in favour of forming a true underground community

I’m finally able to draw Pippin properly!? Wow

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For those who have no idea what I’m on about, this is Pippin, a god that I describe in concepts and forces that canonically rules over every single world and character I design.

Instead of a physical being their presence is better likened to something like time or gravity. And because of that, trying to represent them in a drawing has led to very little success.

———

Who is Pippin?

Pippin is two beings, Pip and Pin.

Pin is a being I can describe visually with fractals. Honestly even that is an incredibly abstract and flawed definition. They are stagnancy, absolute zero, where nothing exists because nothing moves and nothing can be perceived. I have attempted to also describe them with negative space, but they aren’t nothing, so this isn’t entirely accurate either.

Fractals fit Pin to me because they are infinitely recursive and can demonstrate to a human perspective how Pip sees themselves/their effects on existence: beautifully predictable.

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Pip is the opposite of Pin. I often describe them as entropy, but the scientific definition of entropy as a measure of the distribution of a given system makes this description a little shaky. They aren’t pure chaos either, as the colloquial definition of entropy would suggest. They are simply everything that isn’t nothing. They represent the absence of nothing, and statistically there just happens to be a whole lot of chaos in that nothing. Ironically the patterns of chaos and stability often resolves into fractals, but I digress.

Because I am human and an equipped to think in patterns, I cannot properly even comprehend my own character, but visually I tried to make them look as much like an ink splatter as possible because that was the most visually understandable depiction I could think of. I also gave them some color, and a sense of rot or decay, as both those things are also the mark of something in the face of nothing.

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Why make Pippin?

Why the fuck not, basically.

I had seen people make up gods for their worlds, something that I wanted to try out. I liked the idea that there’d be multiple gods that governed over different things and worked together to maintain order.

I noticed a lot of these depictions shared a resemblance to polytheistic mythologies where you had a few incredibly powerful gods and a gaggle of other gods that reside under them as gods of smaller concepts. I also noticed that these super powerful gods usually were either opposites OR spacetime, and I was very much considering space and time.

But as all encompassing and space and time are, it didn’t feel like enough. It covered the physical realm, sure, but this god was meant to govern the fictional ones inside my head. So instead, I referred to something else-

Quantum mechanics.

Pippin is actually the god of superposition and the god of a collapsed state respectively, or something like that, except if those concepts were applied to the entire world. And because Pippin governs the world as one being and not two, the world doesn’t become so still as to be transparent and it doesn’t explode into every variant of itself.

Perfect! It works when applied in the context of the physical world, and the narrative.

The Wizards of Terrin

Still in worldbuilding mode and inspired by graphical breakdowns of other people's worlds so wanted to try my hand. Starting with the main focus of my story, the wizards!! Here are all of the wizard subclasses you will find around Grimwood Academy and beyond.

There is one other subclass that is not depicted (The Dark Wizards) as well as the Sister Schools (alchemy, arcane mathematics, engineering, history etc) and I may add them in the future but I got tired haha :'D

Everyone here is a real character from in and around Grimwood Academy. Future lines ups, especially of other Magic Philosophies (if I get around to it) may require some placeholder characters.

Note: Technically, the two field wizards depicted are informally retired and work as professors. But because of how much one's sub-class affects their philosophy and approach to teaching; they typically keep their respective title.

Feel free to ask questions, I could yap about these guys for years!

Close up/crops under the cut:

▼ Ordism ▼

Ordism is a philosophy and religion depending on who you ask, it specifically follows that idea that a nation should become unified so as they embrace the energy and shape of a triangle, by;

Staying in our own lane - Keeping to our corners equally, not intruding or overlapping over any other corner.

Staying grounded - Being able to rest on any individual side and stay completely balanced.

Prioritizing harmony over conflict -Despite all corners going in completely opposite directions, the lines still keep them connected as one shape.

Asriel specifically chose the triangle because it's a shape portraying a perfect & equal balance at all times, as well as containing the least amount of sides as possible. Being the simplest& most efficient way to connect multiple points. He also believes that everything happens in threes, examples being the birth, the journey, the end. The light, the darkness, and the dim, or even right, wrong, and questionable.

The Ordain

The symbol is called the Ordain. The all, the order and unity of chaos & calm.

The figure they specifically believe in is Chanti, a representation of the truest, purest form of peace. To be enlightened & guaranteed a spot in the ordered universe one must embrace her image & form by being true to the teachings of Devine.

There are three parts of the Ordain, the Devine, the grounded, and the heart.

The Devine represents those who project the teachings of order onto the grounded, they represent the chaos part of order & chaos since their job is taking that that is disorderly and transforming it into order for the purpose of unity. They are considered the ones that are "qualified" to handle chaos, and are the ones that the grounded are meant to put their trust in, so they do not get distracted from their unification process.

The Grounded are the people, the ones that are the weight to order, the grounded are the most important part of Ordism since they are meant to be the string that completes unity as a whole. They are the ones that conceptualise order and therefore make it real. Without the grounded order does not exist as a separate practice, just a word with no weight to it. The Devine must hold the grounded higher than themselves, and always offer kindness and gratitude for them as a whole

(seperately as individuals, not so much since the breaking on unity can happen due to any individual.)

The Heart are the Velkris and researchers in the keep. They ensure that the grounded have their needs met & are always finding ways to improve everyone's quality of life. Without them unity cannot be a priority because survival would instead take its place.

Monestaries

There are Ordist monasteries all over linen and even outside of Asriels Clandyria. They are buildings that hold up to 50 people, and every monastery is open all the time in case anybody needs guidance or help with their spirituality or mental needs. They host a pray every lightlapse (week) which has these people express a kindness to each and every single person in the church as they pray on their role and responsibility as a grounded ordist.

Sentiment

In Ordism, it's generally encouraged that people are kind and open to one another but at the same time detached. Because they are meant to acknowledge that those who break order and breed chaos within the space are seen as disorder and must be removed or healed. The people of Ordism are meant to tell on any of their loved ones if they suspect there is disorder, however it's not always necessary since the devine usually catches this before any regular person can. Ordists are meant to celebrate the removal of disorder, as it is seen as healing the space and community. They are forgiving and willing to grant second chances as the Devine are as well, however when one refuses to be healed, it's always considered necessary to boot them out of the circle at that point.