oanja

This was taken from pillowfort where people are doing all sorts of questionnaires to introduce themselves to others. I thought I could very well do one on DW. All the questions are about worldbuilding. I have a couple of fantasy stories I’m working on and I think this will be a fun exercise for me, as I haven’t hammered all the details out yet, and this will make me think about new stuff, or flesh out things I was only faintly aware of.

This also got pretty long (1,2k) so feel free to ignore this. :D But if you have a project of your own and you could answer these questions about your story, go for it!

1. What was the original inspiration for your world? Why are you making it?

I don’t think there is any one thing that inspired this world. I was more thinking about how I wanted to write about what it is to be a hero, what kind of sacrifices it would take and how much would the hero actually be able/willing to sacrifice for the greater good. Then I wanted to combine that with a polytheistic religion where the gods have human avatars who are granted power through their god

2. Does your world have any kind of 'aesthetic,' or a predominant genre (other than fantasy/sci fi/etc)?

Hmm, this seems like two different questions? But as far as aesthetics go I want opulent robes and people having to be dressed and their make-up applied and have the difference between the outside mask and the real self of the individual be very obviously represented by their appearance in public versus in private. As far as smaller genres within fantasy, I think it’s mostly going to be court intrigue.

3. Introduce us to your continents and major cities/countries.

This is something I’ve very hazy on at this point. I think the whole thing is set on the same continent and it’s not even going to be such a huge area. I think I’ll either go with a crumbling Empire (ala late Rome) or Medieval Europe where dynasties and countries were very much in flux and the holy Roman Empire was sort of the thing people were supposed to be a part of, but in actuality… I haven’t named the country where this is set yet.

4. What cool species does your world have? This can be people races, aliens, neat wildlife, monsters, whatever.

I’m sort of tempted to add dragons, because when are dragons not totally awesome, but right now the world is pretty boringly human only. The problem with adding dragons would be to then justify them, like what function should they serve? I guess they could also be tied to the different gods… I definitely don’t want to make them the bad guys. Only cool sentient dragons for me, thanks. (idk I’ll have to think about it some more, but anyway there won’t be other “fantasy races”)

5. Tell us a fable or myth from your world.

This isn’t canon, canon, because I haven’t written it properly, but the reason why the gods act through their human princes is in the olden days when anyone could pray to a god and have their prayer answered it almost led to the destruction of the entire world. The gods don’t really understand the human world (or care) so they were just answering anything that caught their eye. So one day a king might pray for the god to destroy his enemies and a whole country would be wiped out, or an orphan might pray that they would become the most powerful person in the world and that would happen. So, some people got together and decided that this is not a way for a world to work and made a pact and a group prayer where they asked that each god would pick an intermediary, who then would filter the prayers to the god, so not everything would get through. The gods agreed to this and the system for the temples was born. Since then the temples use divination to find and pick the emissary of the god who then serves in this capacity until they die and then a new one is picked.

6. How does magic (if you have it) and technology work in your world? What tech level are you at? How does magic influence technology, and vice versa?

This is pretty low tech level society. All magic comes in the form of divine power from the gods and doesn’t really interact with technology much, I mean you can have literally blessed weapons etc, but that’s about it.

7. What are the major religions of your world? How have they affected the rest of society and history? How are they organized?

I haven’t hammered out the number of different gods yet, I want them to be about human virtues/attributes instead of being like the goddess of the hunt, or god of harvest etc. So there are gods of: Mercy, Wrath, Balance or maybe justice and Ruin/decay. I feel like I need another “positive” god, but I’m not sure which one to add.

The whole society is pretty much a theocracy, but there is also a political elite with a king/emperor, but it is heavily influenced by the temples and it is very easy for the priests (I’m not sure what I’m going to call them yet) to topple rulers if they so wish, but there is also a kind of balance of terror between the different temples/gods/priests as they also want different things, so the ruler can use this to their advantage too.

The organization is a bit of a mystery yet. I don’t know that much about real religions and how they are organized so I think I need to do more research, but there will be different levels of hierarchy where the emissary is at the top and then some type of high priests and down from that.

8. Tell us about a cool geological or magical feature of your world.

Pass. I haven’t really gotten to this nitty gritty about what things look like.

9. Introduce us to the major 'civilizations' or societies of your world, if you haven't already. How do they interact? What do trade routes look like? What did 'ancient' civilizations look like-- or are the current ones the first?

This is so many questions! I think we’ll mostly spend time in this one country/empire, that is at war with another country. The conflict will play a part in the plot. The last two questions I don’t know the answers to. :P

10. Tell us an important story in your world. This could be the planned story arc for a campaign, the story you're writing set in this world, or just the story of an underdog prince and how he changed a kingdom.

Well I think I forgot to mention in the previous myth question to talk about how there is always a price for the prayer to come true, that the devout must always make a sacrifice. So basically the world is full of martyr stories where people sacrifice themselves, or each other, or something else in order to achieve their goals. These days, because the whole society is in decline the easiest sacrifice to make is money, so often it’s the rich who get their prayers heard, if it pleases the particular temple.