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Now I have one too. Tell me I'm special.



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You're special, even more special than your map.

What's that blackened land bit?

I assume that's where you live.

Can't be, the entire island would be blackened.

It was the cradle of civilization before the denizens of the first city let a demon prince out through a volcano.

The earthquake/volcano/tidal wave combo turned the eastern continent into a bunch of small islands.

Does it look too much like a dick? I can't unsee it all of a sudden, I should probably edit it.

Given that it's the work of a demon, it looking like a dick seems approps now.

I was actually reading through to see if anyone else caught it.

... it's so hairy.

Which dick are you talking about? I see three dicks.

You're special.

The bluish glowy blobs are spectral fog surrounding areas infested with the undead.

You are very special, just like everyone else.  

Now with less dick and more names.




Full size.

Nice. That's a lot of water. I just wonder how that much water has changed life in the world. Is everyone really just isolated? Did they develop isolated? Is the first culture to create boats dominant? Is there much trade over the water? Are areas of water claimed by kingdoms? Does anyone ever go to the west ocean because it really doesn't seem like there'd be a reason to?

Honestly, I would love a good read on a world with a heavy naval and general maritime technology focus with the cultures sharply battling for the scarce resources available.

Will11 did something sorta like that with his... Magellen... Magagaegelion... Meh, it's some name like that, and it's a series. Boats, fantasy stuff, and maratime exploration. It's a fun read.

Continents are smaller than Earth overall but honestly I'm not seeing too dramatic a difference in the amount of ocean between them. There's less land (and of course a continent the size of Australia being pretty much unusable for agriculture doesn't help) but not really enough to put a resource crunch on a world with a magically assisted medieval tech level.

If anything more ocean would mean people were less isolated. It's far easier to sail a long distance than to trundle along over all kinds of terrain carrying everything in packs.

People used to sail west to get to the lands to the east, but there's not much reason to anymore. Two of the main elven (Ankoris) colonies were abandoned centuries ago after they pissed off some spirits, and the Plenoka Islands are tricky to navigate and require you to sail clear to Kelimbra and then around Kelimbra to find a good port and civilization.

The big ocean on the left side of the map probably has a pretty good chance of being a hurricane generator. Any ideas on your weather patterns, or is it just earth's generally?

That ocean is still a bit smaller than the Pacific, but yes it can generate some pretty nasty storms that hit the east side of the map. Ashira's Retreat is magically protected so usually the Seneve would go there if it looked like there was a bad one rolling up, and they raise flying mounts that are good at detecting approaching storms.

Cool, instead of meteorologist, you have pegasi units (who are probably more accurate than our weathermen today, ha ha).

Pretty! I love it! You are so special and so is your map!

Just infodumping some setting details here about the map locations, partially for my own reference. And also because no one can stop me.



Hundelbreld - 'Handel' means trade and commerce, 'bield' means a shelter or refuge, I swapped some letters around and got Hundelbreld. Wealthy merchant cities line the coasts of both halves of the country, with a powerful navy to protect them. There are forts protecting the Ghostriver as well, although with all the focus on outward threats, certain unsavory elements have been allowed to flourish within the cities so that even the most upstanding-seeming merchant house can turn out to have a dark side.

The southern tip of West Hundelbreld, due to the warmer climate used to be relied on to feed the rest of country. With food cheaply imported from Maranay now they've fallen on difficult times, made worse by becoming a favorite target of pirates and slavers coming in from the western side of Maranay on a route that keeps them on the outside edge of navy patrols.

Eastern Hundelbreld has what may be a species of some kind of dwarf or gnome hidden back in the hills by the lake, but aside from Hundelbrelans loving to write charming folk tales about them, they're not of much importance and rarely travel. All of the country has quite a bit of mixing between humans, orcs, and elves, but most of the power and money is in the hands of the humans.

Port Sowsear - The name comes from the saying, "You can't turn a sow's ear into a silk purse," that this world just so happens to have too. Sowsear is the obligatory rough port town every setting needs, a hive of drunkards, whores, pickpockets, and out of work pirates. (And many of its citizens are all of the above.) It was named by the Mayor who built it up from a pier and collection of shacks to a den of sin that sailors making the run from Maranay to Hundelbreld are eager to stop at. An exile from Hundelbreld himself and wanted for a long list of crimes, he did, in fact, wind up getting several silk purses and loads of wealth out of the arrangement before eventually being beaten to death by an unknown party in a warehouse on the docks. The story of what he was even doing there and why is a local favorite still with a hundred variations.

Maranay - Nearly the size of the US, the interior of the continent is a maze of rivers and swampland controlled by violent xenophobic lizard folk (the Seneve), but the majority of it is forests and lush grassland perfect for agriculture and ranching. Various settlements have been established there to provide a surplus of food and lumber to trade to everyone else all year round.

The northern coast has Hundelbreld towns, the southern side is used by the Ankoris, and the swamps form a fuzzy no-man's land between them with neither side willing to truly push to lay claim to. For now it helps relations that the Sevene are a common enemy, worshipping evil gods and capturing humans and elves alike to eat or enslave. Once and awhile someone will get it in their heads to try and eradicate them, but organized expeditions always fail due to the Seneve's mastery of the difficult terrain, and so the hunting is mostly left to adventurous types working alone. There's a band of bounty hunters called the Lizard Skinners made up of former slaves that's especially dedicated to the work.

Ankoris - This is the Elven homeland. The variety of different geographic regions leads to varied ways of living, but in all except the farthest arctic regions of the south there's a caste system followed based on bloodline and magical ability. (Most of the elves encountered living among humans or elsewhere are pretty low down on it, which was usually a factor in leaving.)

Not a whole lot is known about the country as the elves mostly keep to themselves and don't encourage visitors, although there was a brief (by elvish standards) period of expansion cut short by something going Terribly Wrong with the spirit-sending magic they used to communicate and keep tabs on each other from a distance. The threat was contained and eliminated in their homeland but two of their major holdings across the sea were simply abandoned and left overrun by the restless dead even today.

Haunted Sea - There's a massive area in the center of this ocean and weird shit just happens here. Encounters with the undead and otherworldy creatures are frequent. Compasses are known to misbehave, and there are said to be islands that are never in the same place twice.

There are lots of theories and contradicting information floating around about what the cause of the phenomena is and how to protect a ship, but it's not always practical to avoid it entirely and most sailors just expect to eventually see some things and have some wild stories to tell.

Dukehaim - Shitty little island country the Hundelbreldians would exile misbehaving nobles to back when they still had nobility. Not much of note happens here although there's some interesting history stuff for the kind of people who like reading up on misbehaving nobles. (In the game mechanic sense, this island exists to provide a safe haven on this half of the world, if you've fucked up badly with everyone else.)

Anan Iragea - A protectorate of Ankoris and aside from the Maranay colonies the only bit of their 'expansion experiment' that still exists. Population is mostly elves following a much looser version of their traditions and some humans who might be descended from the Versegeans. Everyone is mainly occupied with fishing and hunting seals, and for those living on the southern half of the island, killing a polar bear is a rite of passage for warriors.

Southern Ice Fields - Fishers and whalers, mostly elven, travel along the western portions of the coast but avoid the eastern half or going inland due to territorial tribes of snow apes and dangers of encountering ice elementals and such.

Kelimbra - bordered by mountains and cliffs on its eastern side that leave nowhere to build a port, Kelimbra is considered by many to be the farthest edge of civilization. It's praised as the most beautiful country in the world, with lots of green hills and quaint little villages, and castles and monastaries carved directly into cliffsides. They're still ruled by a monarchy, but the capital Alimar is an enormous and well-ordered city that mixes the very very old with the new along with being the center of trade for the country.

There can be friction between the locals and all the Hundelbreld merchants who have moved in, and still the occasional difficulties with the orcs holding out in the mountains, but it's one of the more peaceful placed to live. The northern shore of Lake Guen has been set aside as a training grounds for various schools of wizardry, as Kelimbra takes pride in championing the idea of 'ethical' use of magic.

Serpent's Grave - The southern half of Kelimbra, where it's said the first demon to enter the world from Versegea was slain by ancient heroes empowered by the gods. Because of this the whole island is considered a holy place and is populated only by a few shepherds and the monks and clerics who upkeep the statues and shrines. Travellers sometimes make the journey to petition the gods, and Kelimbrian paladins and newly crowned royalty use it for their dedication ceremonies, but most of the year the island is almost empty. The most controversial resident is a Hundelbrelan knight-turned-vampire who volunteered for imprisonment there until a cure could be discovered for his condition.

Chobekido - Formerly claimed by Ankoris. They didn't have the same troubles the others had the day the spirit-sending went awry, because these were mostly low-caste elves lacking magical potential that had been transported to the fertile island to farm for the others. When the colonies were ordered to be abandoned, they decided to stay. Their superiors couldn't rely on their own magic and had no safe way to contact anyone back home, so Chobekido got its independence after only two days of skirmishing. Since the island contained nothing of value aside from good farmland and was no longer of strategic importance, once the spirit-sending problems were resolved the new monarch decided it would be unseemly for elves to slaughter elves just to reclaim it.

Versegea - Once the cradle of civilization, now a barren, blackened wasteland. Little is remembered of Versegea now, even by the elves. All that's known is that it once was a home to humans, elves, orcs, and seneve alike, as well as a lost tribe of seafolk who lived in the bay. As the story goes, the people were tricked by lying spirits into slaying their emperor and putting a dark pretender in his place. The new emperor was a sorcerer who began to oppress them all and eventually summoned a demon prince through a volcano, razing the whole continent.

The survivors were scattered and the most of the continent can't sustain life today, but that hasn't stopped obsidian mining operations from springing up, many of them backed by slave labor. There's a certain type of obsidian called 'lavaburst' that's highly desirable to wizards, although its sale and use is forbidden in Kelimbra. Because of the proximity to Serpent's Grave, Kelimbra does what it can to shut down the mining camps and pretty much takes the stance that there's no valid reason for anyone to ever go to Versegea, but they're stretched too thin to police the whole coast.

Lan Chomak - One of the abandoned colonies of Ankoris. On the southern and eastern coasts there are ruins of elven villages and a fort still more or less intact, but when the wind comes from the north it can stir up the dead. Even though the lower coasts are mostly safe, the place has an unsavory reputation and most Chobekidians and Plenokan Islanders alike give it a wide berth unless a ship just absolutely has to stop there for repairs or fresh water.

Plenoka Isles - Since Plenoka is where the first section of the story takes place I have a ton of details about this one area, but, readers should discover those for themselves. But the islands are a kind of paradisal backwater the rest of the world has forgotten about with no one in a hurry to do much of anything. The closest thing to a normal port town is Gusty's Anchor which is home to a lot of washed up sailors and retired pirates. Otherwise (Garkele excepted), most of the communities are semi-nomadic and tribal in nature.

The other major exception is the wizard Ashira, who built a tower on one of the islands about a century ago to have a peaceful place to pursue her studies and honor her goddess. (Ethelda T'dalaron, a lesser known goddess of knowledge and inspiration, sort of Lawful Neutral leaning Good, who will also play a role.) Over time Ashira collected a few like-minded people and befriended some of the Seneve of the neighboring island to form a tiny, quiet community of scholars, gardeners, fishermen, and clerics. They're an anomaly in Plenoka but no one wants to fuck with a wizard, and as Ashira has proved content to mind her own business while also willing to help if asked, she's gained a lot of respect that to a degree is also extended to those around her.

Enkatet Ocean - The western ocean I forgot to write down on the map. Most notable for not being haunted, and not going anywhere important. Potentially there are things out there no one's ever discovered because there's just not much reason to go that way anymore. Haunted, swampy side of Maranay to Plenoka Isles route just doesn't have much appeal to anyone but maybe a slaver, and slavers have easier pickings elsewhere.



On the off chance anyone is still reading this, AMA. I'm still fleshing some of these areas out and someone coming up with questions I hadn't thought of could help.

Read the whole thing, I usually like worldbuilding info dumps (almost as much as I hate lenghty descriptions of inanimate objects in-game).

What's the undead situation in Maranay? It looks like the affected area is in the South, do the elves have to deal with it?

I also wanted to ask about the Garkele community, but you said you wanted to leave the area for the reader to discover so I won't press.

And finally, can you explain the reason behind some of the names? You already mentioned Hundelbreld's and Sowsear's etymology, so I was curious about the others'. I guess they could be random names, but you seem to go into some detail when worldbuilding.

The interior of that western blob is a place of monsters and spoopy happenings. There are the ruins of an ancient sevene city in there somewhere which indicates their culture used to be far more advanced, but not much is known about that. The Maranay sevene aren't very talkative and it's debatable whether the more approachable ones on Sevene Isle kept any kind of records.

Anyway the problems likely originate from the city, but there's still a ton of usable land around the area (that whole Western section isn't swampy at all) and you could theoretically even have villages right up at the edge of it without any more problems than the occasional wandering monster or having to decapitate your dead before burial.

I should've talked a little more about the Garkele but I was getting tired of typing and there's some stuff that happens over the course of the story I didn't want to get into. But in general they're just big ol militant assholes who say they can trace their ancestry back to the original Versegeans and act like this means something. They do some limited trade with Chobekido and are running some kind of operations in Versegea. They'd fall into the Lawful Evil category and are organized and technologically advanced, at least compared to the rest of the Plenokans.

Trivia: if you encounter a full sized ship with masts and sails around the islands, it's either crewed by Garkele or stolen from them. The Plenokans use smaller craft since they're only hopping island to island.


Some of the names really are just random syllables, although like real life place names they usually refer to something that meant something to whoever settled the place originally. And elves I just decided liked hard consonants as opposed to being in love with flowing language and cellar doors.

Great Boarwood is called Great Boarwood because it has a big forest, with boars in it. Elf Coast has ruins of elf villages. No one knows or cares what the elves called the island, it's controlled by orcs now and they're not very original at naming things. (See: Kulu Field. An island with fields of a plant called kulu which is harvested for its roots.)

One small bit of trivia re: names, the goddess Ethalda T'dalaron has a name I came up with after browsing word meanings on one of those baby sites. Ethelda = wise counsel (although I've changed it to Ethalda now since I just like the sound of it better). Tidal = 'knowledge that breaks the yoke' which just sounded extremely cool, I love those names that are entire phrases. And Aron means lofty or inspired.

Lol knowledge galore! "Knowledge that breaks the yoke" does sound cool, and besides the English meaning of "tidal (wave)" adds to that idea.

Oh and I didn't reply to the other post but those Garkele supremacists sound like an interesting element of the Versegea plot.

Btw at first I thought Versegea derived from "gea" (Earth in Greek) + "(re)verse", "reverse earth" since it was where the demon came out from the underworld.

I had something vaguely in mind like verse / saga but originally came up with that name for something in a different setting actually. I like your interpretation though, I think that's going to be the official one now.

Eldatha could be said to be the goddess of practically applied knowledge for positive ends. She influences her followers to 'work smarter, not harder' and one of her most famous clerics invented the mill.

Probably if more people the setting paid attention to her it'd be a more technologically advanced world.

Yeah, the thing that stands out the most here is the undead/ghosts. That's gonna be cool. Will all of this stuff be explorable, or will it be just a few areas? For example, idk if a human would explore the dead island (EM's home) or the elf one.

Each named section will have its own hub area with plot bits attached to that. Some allow for more involvement than others and with some it depends on if you meet the right criteria.

You only play as one character and in a lot of places due to your species you might meet with hostility at first, but an adventurer goes wherever the hell they want.

Woah! This is some impressive world building. Which game is this from? I'm adding this straight to my list of things I completely, absolutely, 100% need to read... But probably will never get around to reading because I'm too busy writing shit. >.<

This is going to be my big fantasy epic I've put off for awhile. The protagonist is an evil outsider who's been living on the mortal plane and specifically Ashira's Retreat a few decades as a servant of the wizard, taking a liking to a chill neutral existence, when [EVENT] gets her sent out into the rest of the world on a quest to save her mistress.

I know there are a lot of cliches such as Drizzt disease and yes the character might be literally Chosen by a goddess to go on this quest but it all makes sense in the plot I swear...

It takes inspiration from some elements of D&D which is why I've been referencing alignment and such, but none of it exactly. I'm not sure yet how much tracking of skills etc there will be or how visible I'll make it. Although I've toyed with the idea of there being an in universe understanding of the concept of levels or hit points and such just going by a different name, I'm not decided on anything yet.

Drizzit

So glad this hasn't been written yet, since it means I get time to read Rogues and the new Robin Hobb books before it comes out. ^_^

Will the protagonist draw upon his innane drow abilitities every confrontation? 

I know you meant innate but inane is also fitting.

Lol, oops. I was hit with a globe of darkness typing that.

It all looks very intriguing and well thought-out. Can't wait to read it! ^_^

I am suspicious of this post.

I think we spotted a wild leora disguised as a nasty ford.

This looks really cool and I'm excited to read it when it comes out!

All the undead stuff sounds really dope too. Is it just ghosts or are there zombies, ghouls, and other such abominations?

Versegea sounds interesting assuming there is more to that place than meets the eye (being the former playground of a demon prince).

Looks great! This surely will be an interesting read no doubt.

I'm loving this and can't wait to read it when you finish!

I also now feel encouraged about the next update to my own WIP thread I'll probably post this weekend. I wanted to get into world info in it but was afraid that it would be too much of an info dump xD. Now that someone else has done the same thing, I can now post my info dump with peace of mind knowing that I'm just following the latest trend.

Impressive!

... And now I've just remembered that I need to check out your story again too. ^_^

Here's what the protagonist looks like:



Well, sort of. It's not exact but I eventually realized I was doing good locating even one image of a demonic looking chick who wasn't some big titted sex goddess.

... Sorry, @Endmaster. She is my new waifu. ^_^

You seem to have a type.  XD

My boyfriend should probably be worried. 

Dammit. The actual character is supposed to make you think more 'wow, charisma as dump stat', but again, finding fantasy art of a non-hot woman might as well be impossible.

Don't worry, you got it spot on... I just have a the weirdest, lesbian boner for female character that aren't supposed to be traditionally attractive. (Definitely wouldn't kick Brienne of Tarth out of bed... Just saying.) 

Here’s a another version  of that map.

Wow you mangled that html to an impressive degree. I'll post what you sent me a little later though, they're pretty cool.

Between this and the meme attempts in the Discord, I'm noticing a trend where every time Shouja tries to be funny with images, it's mostly just confusing.

I figured out what's missing. Rivers!

Speaking of which, it's one thing I'm having a lack of motivation to add to my own world maps haha!

Hey there's the Ghostriver and the backwards Lostmire one, they're just the only thing big enough to appear on the map so far.

I hate drawing rivers though. If I make smaller regional maps they'll probably be included there.

I've decided to include stats.

Been agonizing over this for awhile and it's not something I do lightly, but I think it's necessary for that EPIC tabletop feel.

The stats will be invisible however and I think primarily will just offer new options now and then if you pass a check. Really really want this to remain a story and not be about picking choices to max out numbers.

I'm a big fan of invisible things like that. Keeps focus on the story while maintaining the feel of a game. Same reason I appreciate non-numeric stats.