World Building #13: Nations of Man

Let's start fleshing out the human societies of Makara.

If you'll look to Makara's map you'll notice that humans are concentrated on three different regions: north, west, east.

The northern region is what lies between the Selkie Empire and the Dwarven Republic. Given that the nations are fantasy counterparts of Rome and China respectively, its natural to make the nothern region a fantasy counterpart of the Middle East, complete with a Silk Road connecting the two nations.

With a vaguely dry and warm climate and a mountain range to create rain shadow, the area immediately to the west of the Dwarven Republic is a perfect place to put a desert. I've decided that the Dwarven Emperor-in-Exile doesn't hold his own nation, but is instead stays at the leisure of one of the rulers in that desert area, interfering with the local politics and gathering strength to take back his nation.

I like the idea of placing a river flowing through there where civilization can gather. Perhaps with a Mesoptamian feel, with city states dotting the river and a single large powerful city holding dominance over the others.

To the south of the river valley is a region bordering the elves, with only a series of hills separating them from the point-ears. Here is a militaristic and perhaps theocratic nation, united and strong to be able to fend off elven and selkie incursions. Let's give them a priest-king and call it the Caliphate.

The rest of the regions are hot dry plains, with lakes, streams, and oases dotting the area. Let's putting some nomads there, nomads that regulate the trade within the region and between the Selkie and Dwarf nations.

To the west we have a human region that is caught in the middle between the Selkies and the Orcs. Now, we need something there that is tough enough to weather invasions by both Mongol-Viking-Russians and the Roman Empire. I decided to put a Mesoamerican-ish nation there. Heart ripping Aztecs are terrifying enough to fend off other nations, right? Plus, heart ripping might have a qi-based purpose.

A friend of mine mentioned that the Incans had legends of mummified kings ruling the emprie from beyond, so why not give the Western Humans a pantheon of lich-god-kings ruling their nation, drawing qi energy from the hundreds of sapient sacrifices performed by their priests. That qi sustains their unlife and also gives them the ability to empower their warriors with incredible strength, at the cost of countless lives. Frightening and powerful, well enough that orcs and selkie alike stay away from their borders.

Finally, to the east, let's place our traditional European fantasy kingdoms. Knights, kings, princesses in peril, etc. There's plenty of room there for a multitude of nations, with perhaps three or four large major kingdoms and a dozen or two smaller kingdoms that swear fealty to the others.

I'm not quite sure what kingdoms I want to place on the east yet, but I like the idea of putting a Camelot-ish kingdom up to the northernmost portion of the region. An peaceful countryside defended by an order of Arthurian knights against the Celtic elves and Roman selkies.

Also, to the south, there's a small grouping of human-controlled islands. I like the idea of these being mist-covered mystical islands of mystery, with qi wizards holed in their tower, looking out upon the world.

World Building #12: Makara

Time to give you a cartographical update:



As you can see, I've finally named my setting. Now, some of you might be wondering where this name comes from. Some obscure piece of myth? Some literary reference? Some fascinating etymological search?

Nah. It happened mostly by happenstance.

I was discussing what I should name my setting with a few IRC buddies when my good friend Makari came into the channel. Hilarity ensued.

[9:44pm] [Ominous] Let's name it Makara.
[9:44pm] [Ominous] After Makari.
[9:44pm] [Makari] o.O?
[9:44pm] [Virgil] Right place, right time. :)
[9:44pm] [Makari] What are we naming now?
[9:44pm] [AdStroh] >.>
[9:44pm] [kpenguin] Makara
[9:44pm] [Makari] you?

[9:44pm] [kpenguin] that actually has a nice ring to it
[9:44pm] [kpenguin] Makara
[9:45pm] [Ominous] That's why I suggeste dit.
[9:45pm] [HOURAISAN] Occidentalia dammit
[9:45pm] [Ominous] Most of my names are derivatives of other names.
[9:45pm] [HOURAISAN] YAAAAAAAA
[9:45pm] [Virgil] Not everyday you get a continent named after you.
[9:45pm] » Virgil applauds
[9:45pm] [Makari] Yaaaaay. :D
[9:46pm] [kpenguin] Okay, Makari
[9:46pm] [kpenguin] The continent my setting is set in is named after you

Now, as for the map itself, you'll notice that I've moved around the elf and human nations, placing the elves in the center of the continent and decentralizing the humans into three different regions. Furthermore, the entire continent as shifted onto the equator, which gives the elves a jungle to live in. Appropriate, since the jungle is where wood is most wild.

Now, I want the orcs to still be in a fairly cold area, so I'm shrinking the planet into half the size of Earth. The planet is also twice as dense, so the gravity will be the same.

Any other physics problems with this will be resolved with magic.

Ugly Artwork: Faster than a Speeding Bullet...

First of all, yes, it's been a month since my last post. Shut up already.

Secondly, as you may or may not know, I am now a moderator on Giant in the Playground. This is an incredible honor for me. I have been a member of the community for over three years now and love it dearly. To serve it is incredibly satisfying.

Anyway, I'm putting up a worldbuilding post pretty soon. I need to get some logs from an IRC chat and a friend of mine is searching for them. To tide you over until then, here's this picture:

It's a character I'm playing in a superhero play-by-post. The concept of the campaign is essentially "A crippled Bruce Wayne founds the Xavier Institute and forms an X-Men/JLA amalgam". My character is Peter Parker, your friendly neighborhood Superman. As you can see, the costume is very inspired by that of Invincible, who is also a bit of a Spidey-Supes mix.

Ugly Artwork: Will You be my Pocket?

A bit of art I did on a request. Nothing too special, but I thought I'd show it off.

You might recognize the medic on the right as the same as the Inequalizer. It's a request by the same person. For the uninitiated, in Team Fortress 2, a medic might choose to follow around one player in particular and continuously heal him or her. This patient is called a pocket.

World Building #11: Mapping It Out

I've decided that I want to place the setting on the Western Continent™. The sea at the bottom is very nice and gives the Selkies a way to touch almost every other piece of the continent. After some consideration, serious consideration, I decided I wanted to shrink the continent and move it under the equator. Having the setting encompass a continent the size of Eurasia feels a bit... off to me. The scale is too big.

I made my own version of the map, focusing on the western continent and making a few adjustments to the continent.

Lots of islands, flatten some mountain ranges and added others. I overlayed it with the outlines of the plates to give me an idea of where to put ranges. I may draw up climate zones later, but first I decided to draw some vague borders.


This map represents the political make up of the continent at the height of the Selkie Empire's influence. The dark grey, as you may have deduced, represents the selkies. The silvery gray are orcish lands. The blue is for elves, the brown is for the human kingdoms and the yellow is the Dwarven Empire.

At the time of the setting, Selkie territory has shrunk some as humans, elves, and orcs reclaim territory as the selkies wage civil war amongst themselves. The dwarven empire is now the dwarven republic.

The smallfolk are located on islands somewhere on the map. Most likely they'll be on the islands on the eastern gulf.

World Building #10: More Musings on Race

Some more thoughts on the various races.

Selkies

• Selkies by tradition are seals that can take human form. In this setting, they're humans who by the influence of Water magic transform into seals. What if that's not the only creature they can transform into? Perhaps with the proper amount of training or perhaps by region or perhaps by bloodline, some selkies can transform into other marine mammals. I'm going to be honest here: I'm partial to this idea because this means sea otter selkies. I find otters ridiculously adorable. Also, beware the orca selkie!
• Looking at the map, the best places to put the Selkie empire would be on either the long thin sea on the Western Continent or on the more rounded sea on the Eastern Continent. The Eastern Continent is a bit more appealing for its sea's obvious parallel to the Mediterranean, although that might be a reason to put it on the Western continent. Distancing oneself from the real world and whatnot.
  

Smallfolk

• Smallfolk, I've decided, live on an archipelago. A volcanic archipelago. The islands will likely be located in the sea that is dominated by the Selkies.
• Volcanic ash means that the smallfolk lands make for good farms. I can see these islands becoming a breadbasket. The Elves could be agricultural powerhouses with Wood magic, but agriculture is a perversion of the Wood. Dwarves too could be good farmers, since Earth has fertile connotations, but they're too distant to have that sort of impact. Of course, we'd need a fairly large island to support large farms, but we can deal with that later.
• And, of course, farmer smallfolk are probably different than the smallfolk that spend all their times in the main cities. Any thoughts on that?
  

Elves

• A friend of mine linked me to the Lorwyn elves of Magic the Gathering. These are elves that are obsessed with physical beauty to the point that their society revolves around it. A silly idea, perhaps, but I'm willing to make the elves look ridiculous. When I was reading up on them, I immediately thought "flowers". Flowers, after all, exist only to be physically beautiful to pollinating animals and the continuation of the plant species depends somewhat on those flowers being attractive. So, let's have a "Flower Tribe" that embraces physical beauty to the fullest extent, a bunch of pretty looking, flowery smelling, elves that do not bow down to ugly druid blood trees but who live out in a hierarchy based on being beautiful. Those with perfect looks are at the top, and those who are ugly, non-elves essentially and any elfs with deformations, are at the bottom and are nothing better than prey.
• I probably need to add a sympathetic elf division at some point. Probably.
  

Orcs

• Tribal nomad units of orcs don't work well for getting mining large deposits of metal to be forged into metal weapons and armor. Since metal is the scthick of orcs, they will probably need to be a few stable mining towns, villages, or even cities to provide the rest of the orcs with their metal needs. These orcs will be more merchant than warrior, focusing on the materialistic connotations of metal than the warlike ones.
  

Dwarves

• Dwarf women. Beards or no beards? Its a very important question! The universal answer I seem to get is "no beards" and, given that this isn't an entirely comedy setting, I suppose I must concur. As hilarious as Discworld dwarves are, unisex dwarves don't exactly fit the bill.
• What happened the the loyalist dwarves? Were they all hunted down by the Revolution or did they escape somewhere. It is possible that a remnant of the Dwarf Empire still exists with a Prince-Emperor in exile. Possibly in one of the nations they once conquered, a human nation. This allows for a human-dwarf mixed nation. How about a desert? Humans, a lower class, labor on the surface while the dwarves live in cool tunnels underneath.
  

World Building #9.5: More Cartographical Madness

Hey guys. Just a quick update. My good friend Mad Mask decided to do me a favor and whip up their own version of my map:

Beautiful, isn't? A very, very pretty illustration of what the world looks like, although not quite usable as a political map. What I really like that Mad Mask has done is add more water, opening up the seas, adding little bays, drawing rivers. The rivers in particular inspire to think of civilization boundaries. Nice job Masky. Very nice.