Unsure whether I want to use Norbayne or go with something new altogether... Might go with Norbayne.
Key Features- Culture, religion, mythos
- Languages
- History
Magic, settlement and geography and biology would probably play major parts too.
Creating the Base (Task One)
- The “base” is the key set of ideas and images that makes up the feel – not necessarily the salient points of a plot, but the resounding images – that make up a world. What do you want people to visualise and remember most?
- Think innovative and be different. Much more so than with the plot, or specific mechanisms for anything, or characters, it is the base of feel that needs to differentiate your world from anyone else’s.
- Picking a key feature or two with which to innovate is a good start – you could take a science fiction approach to biology but with a standard fantasy level of technology, or particularly pick out an unusual physics idea such as a world that doesn’t spin or has much higher/lower gravity than our own. Innovating doesn’t always mean you create anything per se, just that you combine it in new and interesting ways.
Well Norbayne itself is a heavily forested continent, so the deep woods should be a prevalent image. The other continents, not so much, but Norbayne itself would be the main story-telling area. Beyond that, the fear of the Eclipse, a weekly phenomenon during which all light fades and the blackpelts which are daemonic hunting dogs materialise on the surface and are drawn to sentient life. They are the servants of a particularly cruel daemonic lord, one who has a vendetta against mortals.
Norbayne has a varied mix of cultures, but several have been forced to amalgamate and work together, causing a fair bit of strife in communities with mixed heritage and therefore clashes in cultural behaviour. Racism is rife, particularly against peoples such as the Dunscarth (Drow-ish, sort of.)
Religion doesn't play quite as large a part. For the most part, gods as we know them don't exist. What does exist is a variety of daemons in the Otherworld, but they are far more like absent overlords than something to be worshipped. The Ilaena (Gnolls basically.) do worship what they call Flesh Render, a "Goddess," but if she does truly exist then she is a daemon.
The mythos will be fairly undefined, and most, if not all the races will have differing versions. In the tradition of all great mythologies, they are all true to a certain extent and detail, with varying accuracy, the beginning of life.
I have a fair bit of interest in linguistics and I have a working knowledge of Gaelic, Latin, Spanish, French and Sindarin. And English. I also have a little Polish and Greek but nothing to write home about.
At any rate, the languages will probably be a large part of any stories I might write, especially when considering the discrimination that often comes into play with regards to oppressing languages (The English disallowing the speaking of Welsh comes to mind). I would like to show this, so languages will likely be quite prevalent. On the other hand, I'm not Tolkien, so writing my own languages might be tough. Chances are I'll do something similar to what Tolkien did, which is to translate the languages of Norbayne into a familiar equivalent.
The history of Norbayne is quite long and filled with interesting events, the fall of the Bovus Empire etc. At any rate, the history of the world will play a major part in shaping the present. Ruins and ancient sites will be quite common, mainly from times before the blackpelts were unleashed.
As an honourary mention, one of Norbayne's major aims is to provide plausible evolutionary paths. Biology therefore would become quite important, even if it were only in the background.
Is any more information wanted/needed?
