Culture – The Fire Thieves Studio

World of Eos: 8 Questions to Build Up your City

12Mar

By CharlesNo Comments

Culture, Environment, Original Worlds, Unnamed Fantasy Setting, Worldbuilding Exercise, Worldbuilding Process, Worldbuilding Topic

World of Eos: 8 Questions to Build Up your City

Previously: We determined the three original seats of human civilization on Eos. Each was pitched by the servant of a god to the humans living in the creshold valley. Each servant then guided the humans who aligned with their philosophy to the location where they would build their city. Today we're going to develop the first of those cities in a number of aspects. We're starting with Banderlin. Banderlin was built by the followers of the god Infra Dev. The values he upholds are hard work, labor, honesty, stability, tradition, and dedication to the tried-and-true. These values will inform some of the details, but I want to expand out even further, into the general inspirations for this location and this culture and define some more specific elements. So this will be kind of a brainsto...

The World of Eos Origin: The Dawn of Dawns

3Mar

By CharlesNo Comments

Culture, Original Worlds, Religion, Storytelling, Unnamed Fantasy Setting, Worldbuilding Process

The World of Eos Origin: The Dawn of Dawns

Last time we looked at The World of Eos, we established the first three cities that were formed when humanity was introduced to the world. We named those cities, Eld, Athrea, and Banderlin, and determined both the divinity behind the creation of each civilization, and their general purpose and method for promoting their civilizations. We know at this time the deities are taking a very proactive hand in these cultures. We also have looked into the origins of where the deities come from, how and why humans have been introduced here, as well as what the world has looked like up to now. However, most of that information, the humans will not be privy to, and neither will most readers/players inhabiting the story. We need to overwrite the sci-fi origins with a curtain of mythology, folklore...

New Random Deity Generator Tool: When you need religion… fast!

2Feb

By CharlesNo Comments

Culture, Religion, Worldbuilding Exercise

New Random Deity Generator Tool: When you need religion… fast!

Sometimes when you're working on a setting, you don't want to create a whole pantheon from the ground up, or a complex and details religion starting from the very origins of the world. Sometimes you just want something basic with a few interesting details to be fleshed out later. So if you need a deity fast, where do you begin? Right here! This tool should be a fun and quick way to spit out whole pantheons in less time than it takes to bring forth a universe from the void. Keeping in mind, the focus here is on a Pantheon of Fantasy deities, not necessarily a single monotheistic creator. There'll be several phases. In each phases you can roll randomly, or you can pick and choose. Do not feel any more beholden to the dice than you want to be! The process will be broken down int...

The World of Eos: Designing and Naming the First Cities

25Jan

By CharlesNo Comments

Culture, Unnamed Fantasy Setting, Worldbuilding Process

The World of Eos: Designing and Naming the First Cities

Welcome back, imaginary regular readers! You may notice I've changed the title of this series of posts. Last week I discussed the age of dreaming, and the development of the advanced humans into the elves or "Letheans." Today we are going to brainstorm and figure out some story for the three starting groups of true, unaltered humans who were created when the rest of the Secretary AIs began to break their programming and act as gods. Three Cities; Three Civilizations The Flavor I'm going with is an ancient world, dawn of civilization, fertile crescent kind of a sense. It might also be reminiscent of the Conan stories, kind of a time before time. It's an age of bronze, monumental construction, barbarian hoards, city-states and polises rather than kingdoms or nations. Oracles, epics...

The Making of a New World: Elves in the Age of Dreaming

18Jan

By CharlesNo Comments

Culture, Original Worlds, Religion, Species/Race, Unnamed Fantasy Setting, Worldbuilding Process

The Making of a New World: Elves in the Age of Dreaming

The development of OPERATION FERGUS continues today as we look at the foundation civilizations. We have an idea of what we need based on the stories we have determined, so a quick recap if you're jumping in:The elves (yet to be renamed) were the first people. Before the Age of Dreaming, Edras, God of Lore, had inflicted the gloaming upon them so that they would forget most of their immortal years, only ever remembering the last ten or so, to keep them from being driven into despair and madness. We'll be deriving the details of their civilization based on that story. They don't exactly have an organized civilization, as the Gloaming keeps them from building much in the long term. Humanity was created later, by the three gods, Devra, Ciaru, and Arakir. This was the Age of Awakening and th...

The Making of a New World: Names and Divinity

12Jan

By CharlesNo Comments

Culture, Original Worlds, Religion, Unnamed Fantasy Setting, Worldbuilding Process

The Making of a New World: Names and Divinity

A simple update this week, I'm looking at the pantheon I've developed for Project FERGUS and developing it a little bit further. If you've read up on previous posts, you'll know that the world is going to be a fantasy world with a diverse pantheon inspired by Greek, Roman, Nordic, and a bit of Egyptian pantheons. Yet the world itself has a more sci-fi inspired origin. The beings known as the gods were once powerful AIs who ran the advanced human society before it collapsed and they started to break their programming. So each AI Secretary had a purpose, rather than a name, and it is those which I will use to develop the names they now go by in the era in which stories are told. The AI Secretary List Conflict ResolutionPopulation ManagementSanitation ServicesAcademic ResourcesEnerg...

The Making of a New World: Establishing the Timeline

29Dec

By CharlesNo Comments

Culture, Original Worlds, Religion, Species/Race, Unnamed Fantasy Setting, Worldbuilding Process

The Making of a New World: Establishing the Timeline

Things in Project FERGUS are getting serious now. I am wanting to start naming things, such as the cultures, the locations, and the names of the Gods in the pantheon, but I think it is important to consider factors like WHO is doing the naming. So to that end, before we can determine the names of things, we need a timeline and basic descriptions of the cultures as they develop according to our story. So I'll start with a smallish timeline that depicts only the events we have determined so far. Basic Timeline Arrival of Advanced Humans on Eos.Breakdown of Society, First Rogue AI Initiates Memory Mitigation, creating a new society. Eventual cascade failure as AIs go Rogue, create Human, Little Folk, Lizardfolk Populations.War between Lizard race and all others culminating in destru...

The Making of a New World: Planning a Pantheon, or: Plantheon

21Dec

By CharlesNo Comments

Culture, Original Worlds, Religion, Unnamed Fantasy Setting, Worldbuilding Process

The Making of a New World: Planning a Pantheon, or: Plantheon

Back to Project FERGUS!So I've determined a lot about the world's history, but only what we might call the ACTUAL history. Of course, most of the cultures and civilizations (if not all) will have a deeply skewed view of that history. They won't understand the extragalactic origins of the ancient races, the technological functions of what they know as "magic", or the artificial nature of the intelligences which they know as gods. So today I want to explore how I can transform that story about the AI Secretaries that ran that society , into the divine comedy that most people of this world would be told. I'm mostly going to be making lists and refining them, and walking you through the process of starting with some loose ideas and building a really solid Pantheon from there. It is impo...

The Making of a New World: In The Beginning…

23Nov

By CharlesNo Comments

Culture, Original Worlds, Religion, Storytelling, Unnamed Fantasy Setting, Worldbuilding Process

The Making of a New World: In The Beginning…

Today we're further developing the new and original fantasy setting, temporarily called Project FERGUS. We know the genre profile includes Adventure Fantasy, Sword & Sorcery, Ancient Horror. And from last weeks brainstorm, I know that a pantheon of fickle petty gods is something I also want. Also present: an ancient advanced species who are no longer present, or are at least extremely diminished, their secrets forgotten. So in thinking about just HOW advanced they would be, I know I want their tech to be the source of magic. So REALLY advanced. Easily advanced enough to be spacefaring. So I'm thinking of all the magic, the supernatural elements, all explained in at least some ways by this kind of fantastical "science" that is indistinguishable from magic. So lets get into...

Keep in Mind: When Creating Ancient Religions for your New World

26Oct

By CharlesNo Comments

Culture, Religion, Worldbuilding Topic

Keep in Mind: When Creating Ancient Religions for your New World

The purpose of this post is to ask the question: How can I make a fictional religion for my world feel less "fantasy" and more authentic to an ancient world? There are a number of aspects that are taken for granted in high-fantasy settings, as they have become tropes of the fantasy adventure genre, and leaked over from modern religions, but they aren't really the way things were for a lot of the ancient monumental religions of the past. Hopefully some of the ideas I'm talking about here will help you think of your created religion in new ways, to help you simulate that ancient world feeling. To clarify, I'm discussing mostly western religions (greek, roman, nordic, judaic) here. That doesn't mean these things can't apply to other religions, just that I don't personally have as much e...