Building Worlds

One of the best parts about writing fantasy fiction or creating a table-top roleplaying game is, in my opinion, world building.

Some writers hate this process. Some dedicate hours to it and end up spending months or years building meticulously detailed worlds.

While I have never hated the world building process, there are absolutely occasions on which I’ve bashed my head against the desk in exasperation with the process. This is especially when I realise I’ve spent three hours designing a marvellous menu of different drinks and dishes that could be served in a tavern, right down to what they look like, smell like and how the barkeeper makes them, when in reality, I need to be writing the damn story instead.

(I’m now imagining a purple cocktail made from the specially brewed extracts of rare mushrooms that explodes into colourful fireworks when a straw is put in… This has not yet made its way to being essential to the plot of any story I tell. Maybe that’s something I should try?)

In essence, its really easy to get lost in the tiny details and find that hours have drifted by and you’ve done nothing towards advancing a plot.

I am no closer to finishing the damn book. Again.

Yet, in spite of the frustrations, I try not to view that as an entirely bad thing.

Firstly, I’m still writing. I’m creating and making something that makes the world feel more real for me. If the world I’m writing about feels like it’s real to me, then hopefully that’s something that will come across in the story I eventually do get around to writing.

Best of all, sometimes these ‘side quests’ into world building can create little bits of writing that brim with the joy and magic you feel when you immerse yourself fully in the universe in your head. Those are the things that you want to find. Those are the bits that are worth sharing most of all.

A Side Quest that Became the ‘Whole Story’

In one of my DnD campaigns, I originally started with a very thin veneer of lore and history for the world it was set in. As the story began to unfold, my players leading their characters on a merry dance through the traps and temptations I threw their way, I realised that if their actions were going to mean something, then there had to be something to work towards. There had to be a deeper wrong to right that appealed to their characters. There had to be a story they could believe in that would ask them to make difficult choices.

So I decided to up the stakes.

I created a character, a god in fact, that I hoped embodied just how hard it is to tell if something is good or bad - at least for a while. I gave my players moral quandaries to consider. I gave them something cruel and dark and evil to face down. Yet in that darkness I tried to weave glimmers of light and reason, wondering if they would spot those shimmering threads and tug on them to see what happened.

Much to my delight, they did.

In order to do this with a character, I need to know their story inside out. Writing it was very difficult. I knew what it looked like from that character’s perspective. But how would such a story get shared in a world that didn’t know or believe they truly existed?

The answer is as old as time itself: Fairy Tales. Legends. Myths.

Wonderful things.

Choosing a community of characters that lived on the edges of the world my players inhabited, I decided to write the story as though it was a myth or legend, passed down over the centuries between generations. As someone with a PhD in Ancient History, I have a lot of love for oral histories, epic poems and the powerful connections between the two. Homer’s Iliad and the Odyssey come especially to mind. Beowulf too, if you prefer Old English to Greek! The resonance these works hold, their repetitive, rhythmic form of is one of the key factors in how they endure. They were passed down by word of mouth, by storytellers reciting them over and over, thousands of times, before they were ever written down.

Stories are powerful and the way we tell them matters.

Taking my years spent studying Greek and Roman myths and legends, I went about making my own, much more ‘modern’ version of an epic history/ poem/ legend for my game world.

It was clumsy, stumbling and goodness knows it’s not perfect. But I liked it. In fact, I loved it and still do. I’m not really sure what it is. It’s part poem, part fairy tale. It’s weird and wonderful, but something about that just seemed to work. However if anyone has any suggestions on how it could be improved, then please let me know!

So as we take our steps into another year full of uncertainty and scary things, here is a bedtime story from one of my DnD campaigns that shows that even through the worst things there is always a chance to start again and be happy while we remember what we may have lost along the way.

The Lord of Stars and the Lady of All Light

Gentle is the night, sweet children. Curl your tails and hush your scales.

Listen well.

For if your flickering tongues can taste the velvet black of darkness, then you have scented the memory of he who brings the stars.

The Valiant Blade.

The Bold Defiant.

Defender.

Beloved.

Curl your tails and hush your scales, sweet children. Huddle close and slumber safely, feeling the embrace of the Lady of All Light.

Weaver of fates.

Shaper of worlds.

Warrior.

Beloved.

This is their tale.

Once beyond the night, beyond all worlds there strode the Lord of Stars. The light of stars blazed through him for he was the stars, and the stars were he, and heavens drifted in his wake.

He fought a terrible foe. A darkness. A great evil.

One seeking only power.

One that slew his friends.

One that sought to consume all things for naught but satiety.

The Lord of Stars would not allow their victory and he did not fight alone. Many powerful beings rallied to his banner. His valiant defence, of home, of hope.

And Beloved.

For the Lord of Stars did not fight alone. The Lady of All Light walked beside him. Shimmering. The Bright One. Universes birthed within her grasp. A power unlike any other. A warrior that fought fiercely for all she loved.

Friends.

Home.

And Beloved.

Lord of Stars and Lady of All Light. Two were one.

A match of heavens.

United in love.

Divided by war.

Sun shone, Moon gleamed, whiskers crackled.

Vines grew, Light wove, Antlers clacked.

Scales glinted, tongues flickered, water roared.

Flowers bloomed, sparks flew, spines rattled.

Fur brushed, tail whipped, fangs clashed.

Tools tinkered, stripes wavered, eyes glinted.

Fire raged, Thunder boomed, feathers hushed.

And two blades led the blaze of battle.

One of fire and one of stars.

But it was not enough.

Vines withered, Antlers shattered.

Flowers wilted, spines snapped.

Friends and allies lost.

An army falters.

The Lord of Stars orders them all to flee.

Defeated. Hopeless. Lost.

But the Lady of All Light will not go.

The Bright One refuses.

She stands beside him and they fight

Against tyranny.

Against Evil.

Until Worlds End.

Until Stars Fall.

The Lord of Stars crumbles to the darkness, leaving all that matters behind.

The cry of her grief pierces all the heavens.

The force of her rage throws back their foe.

The Lady of All Light claims both Sword and Dagger,

And with a power beyond all imagining.

She flees.

Through endless dark,

through starless skies,

through the black of despair.

Hunted.

Grieving

But not alone.

Whiskers ran beside her.

Thunder boomed beside her.

Fur brushed beside her.

Four Together Ran.

And The Lady of All Light made a new home to shelter her and her friends.

Safe from the Tyrants. Safe from Evil.

A place for four to dream and mourn and to begin again.

An eternal shelter among the stars.

Our Home.

So curl up snug your scales and tails, sleep soundly in your bed.

The Bright One painted our night sky that drifts above your head,

With stars that shine so brightly to remember the love she lost,

And we spin this tale across the years to always tally the cost,

Of what it is to fight and lose,

And what it is to win,

Glad that stars still guard our night,

‘til each new day can begin.