#worldcraft

Wip!

“ I don't know what to do, and my son is my horse?! ”

– Loki tells to Odin and Frigga before both laugh at him

Sleipnir is a male individual of the mutated horse is the adopted son of Loki, Angrboda, and Odin, and the adopted brother of Fenrir, Narfi, Vali, Hela, and Jormungandr.

Sleipnir was first introduced in Worldcraft series set in 31st century, and later in Seven Code Talkers series set in the early 21st century, the 2000s.

Take Note: All of my drawings and photos of people, animals, plants, mythology, disasters, organizations, events, and more are purely fictitious. These are included in real-life situations and events with fictional characters or creatures that aren't real, be at your own risk. For nationality or indigenous, be advised. Ognimdo.

Etymology

Pashnea

Physical Appearance

Sleipnir is a mutant horse who is regarded as Odin's best stallion, having previously served Angrboda. Sleipnir's basic skin color is gray with white rime patterns and black stocking patterns; he now has eight legs; his mane is sleek and black; and the hair on his tail is incredibly long and cannot be tripped.

I've been thinking about non-euclidean geometry for a few hours and now I'm reading about William Rowan Hamilton and the Quaternion things.

Image taken from- www.fgukmagazine.com

Fantasy cultures can veer on the side of absenteeism in a story or feel deeply understood and grounded in fantastical realism. When I transitioned from my main characters' perspective in my WIP, The Sun Ballad, to my secondary point-of-view character I entered a completely new world with an equally diverse culture I was bound to unearth. I found myself describing lavish rooms decorated with hand-woven tapestries, trays laden with sweetened milk and manuka chocolate trying to contrast the two perspectives of my characters with their environments.

It's easy when drafting a culture to simply write what feels right for the scene, describing clothing, dance, music and culture to better emulate a feeling or surroundings as opposed to conveying a culture. Implementing cultural concepts should emulate your own cultural design and feel niche in it's design.

This post will cover:

-Creating a distinct and realistic feeling culture

-How to contrast cultures

When creating a culture it's important to communicate a sense of unity in its design, these are a group of people with similar ideas who have not yet grown apart or diversified, although there must be a common ground, a common goal. For example, in the freezing arctic, it might be difficult to convince settlers that fasting is the best way to devote one's self to their chosen god. It's important to think about what percentage of a persons life can be dedicated to supporting a cultural evolution, In a place where life is hard and food is scarce there might not be as much time to whittle wood into little figures of gods or paint elaborate tapestries to gift the new king. Places that are prosperous and established can afford to put energy toward storytelling, arts and culture and people can turn these cultural arts into occupations and live their lives depending and developing it.

Start from the ground, the region, the ideas, the religion and begin working up if your god survived a fight by being protected from encroaching fire, settlers might vouch for modesty and punctuality, with armour on always. Build on, how might rulers and preachers control the populous? With story tales, ideas, threats, warnings on how the gods punish wrong-doers, are defenders of the law dressed in distinctive clothes or are they secretive in their duties taking on the role of spies instead of soldiers. What is enlightenment to these people, what is luxury, what is the worst crime someone can commit and how do they protect themselves from it?

Asking these questions allow you to think deeper on how culture originates, remember there is a reason why we tell stories, why we make things up and add value to shiny rocks and formulate a hierarchy within our groups it's because we're social animals, pack animals at heart. Acceptance and happiness is desired and culture is what is acceptable and what brings one happiness.

Around a laden table, people tell stories of the gods, of hunts and of heroes and villains, they feast on the favoured dishes of the area. What are these foods, if your people live around open seas and little rivers they may eat more fish, crustaceans and shore dwelling plants. If the region is surrounded by thick mountains, mountain lion meat and goat milk might be on the table. I've found that creating a list of all the foods fantastical or not, meat and vegetarian on a list to reference whenever my characters are eating, if they are feasting the delicacies come out. This way the food my characters can access in each region stays consistent and helps cement the culture of the region and its people.

It may also be interesting to explore how do different cultures in your story interact with food, is it something to be respected and treated with care should no one touch another's plate while they are eating, are religious figures required to bless every meal. Research how different cultures interact with their food, is it purely animalistic or inventive in design. How is the food presented and what table manners are vouched for?

People interact with food differently and how a culture or group of people eat can say a lot about their home region and culture.

From headresses to full-length ball gowns, information on your cultures treatment of modesty and accesability of decorative metals can help with a cultures memorability and impact in descriptive scenes. Clothing can be directly tied to a religion or wholly separated, certain characters or groups can be recognizable by a piece of unique attire or emblem. Remember you can also communicate classes through clothing, there will always be a simpler, mass-produced piece of cultural attire common amongst most of the masses. Diversity in cultural clothing is often the result of most of the populace trying to save some of their money and make life easier for them, painted on flowers as opposed to embroidered one, weaving old fabric into new to create a checkered pattern. Do not overlook heirlooms, keepsakes and smaller attire like jewellery and coin purses, clothing tells a story look to your own and see how much it tells you, the colours you like, cuts and fabrics most accesable to you, favoured animals or cuts.

Contrasting Cultures

All of these features and ideas to explore are enhanced when used to compare and contrast two cultures, what are the differences and how do they impact communication and collaboration between two groups. If one group respect and worship deer and another routinly eat it a relationship between the two groups might struggle to form and will likely fail to be established. Always note the impact of a cultural idea or development on others in the surrounding area and take advantage of these differences and dillemas afterall we fear what we do not understand and misunderstandings or mistranslations from one culture to another can create an interesting ripple-effect.

Cementing your characters cultures and worldview is paramount to crafting an interesting and believable world that strays far from our own, never underestimate the power of consistency and clarity.

Today I learned that at some point the Half-Life level editor was briefly planned to be a commercial release, rather than a free download. The world would have probably been quite different if this happened, and not necessarily for the better...

(Yes, I know Worldcraft was originally a shareware editor for Quake etc., but this looks like it would have been a big-box retail product! I remember seeing one or two big-box Quake editors on shelves back in the 90s, I can't imagine they sold especially well...)

Does anyone else remember their very first ibf or group of ibfs? Cause I do and I really miss them.

Like, I have one of them on wattpad, but I wasn't that close with her, and then there was one I was really close with and he had a YouTube channel but I can't remember his channel name.

And then both the YouTube guy and this other one who I spoke to a lot both asked me out, but I had to turn them down cause I had a boyfriend at the time (we broke up like two months after and I kinda regret turning one of them down cause I actually liked him, but I didn't want to be that bitch).

But yeah, there was more, we were like a dc worldcraft (What a game) group that ended up making a group chat on kik.

But yeah, those three and this other girl who was Terra on worldcraft kinda just popped into my head and I really miss them.

There was another one, who I became friends with because my irl friends made me make a riverdale rp account on insta a couple years ago back when it was good, but like, they disappeared and I miss them as well cause they're inactive now.

Worldcraft were large spherical space stations constructed for habitation. They were capable of space flight and hyperspace travel. Some had artifical surfaces meant to mimic real planets’ nature. The Empire constructed a few before the Battle of Endor.

Source: The Illustrated Star Wars Universe (1995)