World Building #2 - Applying My Approach / First Chapters
In my first post in this series I talked about the way I think about building a world and how I think about expanding it from an initial idea into an actual fictional world.
With the whole reason for this series being to share how I go about creating a fictional world, I didn't think it would be fair for me to explain my process and just leave it that. So, using my recent project as an example, I plan to share the world I've been creating through this blog series.
This post and other future posts will include chapters from the document I have been using to record my thoughts on my fictional world to hopefully illustrate how, by starting with a single idea, I'm working to expand on it to create a world and all that being a world implies.
My hope in creating my world is to create a resource, and a setting, that I can use for any number of creative projects. Also, by setting projects in my fictional world, I hope to be able to create games and stories set in that world that have purpose or meaning to add depth to the projects I create. By using this world as a resource, I feel it will be easier to create games and stories that feel grounded because rather than relying just on the story being directly told to shape a scene, the scenes can be played out against the backdrop of my fictional world that comes with its own rules, environment and history.
The Initial Idea
The initial idea that became the basis of my fictional world was my wanting to create an RPG style game based on an environment similar to Aincrad from the anime Sword Art Online. While thinking about the structure and scope of the game world portrayed in Sword Art Online, and realising that I would need to structure my floating castle based on being able to create it myself, I decided to quite drastically shrink the size of the structure. I also thought about the layout and environments contained within it as well.
At this point I was still thinking about how I could possibly create such a game, I hadn't yet started to try and think about the world this structure exists in, or the people or creatures that would live in it. For the first few days after having this idea, I was purely focussed on the technicalities of how I would create a game from this idea. Eventually I hit a critical point, what would players experience in this hypothetical game?
Initially, I drew a blank. I knew I wanted to have the game be some kind of fantasy style setting, which to me is one of the perfect settings for creating an RPG style game. However, RPG games also have one important thing I hadn't thought about yet ... a story. Any memorable RPG tends to be set in a world that has a story, characters that exist within it also have stories, and the ways of interacting with the game world also have stories behind why they exist the way they do. So I finally began thinking about the world I would set my game in. What would be the story behind the world? Why would the floating structure exist? Who lives on the structure? Who created it? Who is the antagonist of this world?
As I started answering these questions, and asking more, I quite quickly ended up with quite a lot of information about this world I was creating, so I started to document it. Initially this was as a series of points and notes on scraps of paper, but eventually I started typing it up into a document. As I typed it up, the format became a series of essays describing the different facets of the world I was building. As I continue to develop this world, I plan to reach a point where I will be able to create a printed copy that will serve as my own encyclopaedia on my world that I can refer back to as I create games and other projects set in my world.
As a side note on this, while I was working through things, I also came up with a name for my world, "Goroesgi". This is a Welsh word related to the words Survival and Survivor which ties in with the history I created for the floating castle, and to me has a reasonably fantastical sound to it.
The First Chapters of the World of Goroesgi
The following passages are extracts from my document as written, and include the first two chapters. If you have any questions or feedback on my world, or my blog in general, feel free to leave a comment. I'm also happy to answer any questions you might have as well.
Preface
Goroesgi, the Floating Ark and Citadel in the Sky, exists in a fantastical world that was once peaceful and full of life. Today though, the world below is overrun by Demons and Monsters from an unknown place that spread across the globe, poisoning the world and killing all natural life on the surface.
Goroesgi was built as a final act of survival in an attempt to preserve what life remained, and keep it out of reach of the Demons and Monsters that would ensure their final destruction. No one alive today remembers the true history of how it came to be, or how to work the wondrous contraption that now serves as the world they now live in. Over the centuries the knowledge of the workings of the Ark have been lost to time, and the Demons and Monsters once thought of as myths and legend have started to find their way onto the Ark, and while they are currently just as ignorant of its workings as the people that call it home, it is only a matter of time until, by chance, they might be able to undo the achievement of the Architects and finally complete their determined mission of driving all natural life to extinction.
This text contains elements of the history of Goroesgi and the World below, and descriptions of how the lives of the people living on the Ark came to be. The hope of collecting this information is to finally understand the Ark and learn to combat Demons and Monsters that are no longer isolated in the World below.
A History of the World
In times long past, and long forgotten, when the world below was full of life and wonder is where the story of the floating Ark begins. Before it was even built or conceived, the people of the world below lived in peace and happiness. They knew their world and what life meant to them. Their lives were not privileged or easy, their society was not overly complex, nor their technology overly advanced, but they were a happy people.
Content with their place in their world, the people of that time were ill prepared when the darkness came.
While little remains to explain the true detail of when the darkness came, it is still remembered through history that the darkness swept across the world followed by Great Beasts and Demons. The beasts and Demons were creatures the likes of which had never been seen before. Whatever the darkness touched turned to dust. The Great Beasts charged across the world, destroying everything in their path. The air and water was turned to poison, all of the plants and forests withered and died, and anything that managed to survive their onslaught then had to face the Demons, creatures of strange abilities and powers. They had a thirst for blood like no other that was exhibited through a unique determination to hunt and kill all forms of life they encountered.
With the world torn asunder, a few of the people of that time managed to survive long enough that, with their great minds and focus, they were able to learn of a way to avoid the complete extinction of their world and build that which had never been built before. They conceived of a great flying Ark with the sole purpose of preserving what natural life they could, along with the histories of the great civilisations that once lived on the surface of the world.
To build it, the Architects relied on the powers of the Demons, for without them, the Ark would never be able to fly or sustain itself.
Discovering how the powers of the Demons worked, and deciphering enough about them to be able to use them was no easy task. Every achievement and advancement came at a great cost and loss of life, but eventually, the result was the creation of a power source capable enough to not only fuel the Great Ark, but also sustain the ecosystems contained within it.
While the work to build the Ark proceeded, the Demons, who learned of this great endeavour that would deprive them of their will to completely destroy all life, tried to ensure its destruction and that it would never be completed.
Eventually, only a few thousand people survived at the time the Ark was launched. Most of those that were saved knew nothing of the functions or operation of the Ark, and while a few of the Architects survived, the others who were saved were unable to understand the thing that saved them or how the miraculous construction worked.
When the Architects that remained finally died, after serving for decades as great leaders and custodians of the Ark, none remained who knew how they built it, or how it worked.
For generations the survivors lived and died on the Ark. The story of how it came to be moved into myth and legend, the Architects became deified as the gods of creation, and the people that continued to live on the Ark came to believe that the Ark was their world, their only world.
While the Ark was created with the long term keeping of a population as a primary purpose, the upper levels were always meant to house the Architects and the teams of people needed to manage and operate such a vast structure.
Over the ages however, people settled to the lower levels of the Ark, and with the deification of the Architects, chose to believe the upper levels to be the realm of the gods. Avoiding them through fear and reverence.
Many who found the courage to venture there over the ages never returned, and those that did return, came back with stories of crumbling cities, a great library filled with unreadable texts, and a Castle sitting a top a single mountain in an endless open sky with nothing else above it.
Over the ages, while the people of the Ark had no understanding of it, they naturally began to develop new abilities and powers similar in nature to those of the Demons, and the power that fuels the Ark.
The people came to understand these strange abilities as magic.
Over time, against the intent of the Architects, Monsters and Demons began to appear in the Ark. To the survivors that had called the Ark home for generations, these creatures became a burden, but their new found abilities proved to be a match for most of the strange creatures they encountered.
The Demons, who were so singularly focussed on the eradication of life were unable to overwhelm the people of the Ark, and instead worked to contain them, to ensure that no one could easily climb the levels of the Ark.
The Demons, in keeping the people in isolation in the lower levels wanted to understand the Ark to ensure its destruction and complete their bloody mission. Although the Ark used their own powers, the Demons could not understand that which came to them as naturally as breathing, or how the people that created the Ark had bent their powers to their will.
The result of this was a bloody stalemate where the Demons could not recklessly attack the survivors living on the Ark, but they could also never destroy a thing they couldn’t understand.
To this day the stalemate endures. The Demons have won the world below, but appear to never be able to win the war.
The longer the survivors endure, the more accustomed to their new abilities they are becoming. With those abilities getting stronger and more focussed with every generation, allowing the survivors to begin to overcome the challenges set in place by the Demons to control them.
For now, this power is limited to a few, and while these few pose little threat to the overwhelming numbers the Demons can bring to bare, it is only a matter of time before the few become many.
The stalemate is drawing to a close and the world will soon change, no one can say when or how the world will change, only that it will change.
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