Species/Race – The Fire Thieves Studio

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 a...

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 d...

The Making of a New World: Arranging the Puzzle

16Nov

By CharlesNo Comments

Environment, Original Worlds, Species/Race, Unnamed Fantasy Setting, Worldbuilding Process

The Making of a New World: Arranging the Puzzle

Last week I began development of an original fantasy world. We discussed the genre and subgenre, the general aesthetic, and the tone of the world, and gave it the temporary code-name FERGUS. This week, it's time to discuss filling out the world with some detail, and determining how to bring a collection of disparate ideas into alignment. The goal is to arrange all these bits and then fill in the gaps, until we have a complete, intricate, and even elegant world. By bits I mean things like races I want to see, monsters that would be cool, settings and locations, plot devices, cultural elements... just anything I might want to put into a story set on this world. And yes, I'm going to stick with this metaphor of putting together a puzzle. 1: Dump Out the Box This part is ...

How to Make a Monster Part 2: The Primal Predator

28Sep

By CharlesNo Comments

Monsters, Species/Race, Worldbuilding Exercise, Worldbuilding Process, Worldbuilding Topic

How to Make a Monster Part 2: The Primal Predator

Last week I talked about the 4 Monster Archetypes I am using the Primal Predator, the Twisted Reflections, the Corrupted Humanity, and the Divine Enforcers. This week I want to break down the Primal predator and see if we can build some of our own. Primal Predator Examples: Xenomorph, Jason Vorhees, Jaws, Demogorgon, Graboids Common features: Physically Superior either by natural ability, supernatural benefit, or mastery of it's environment (an environment where we are disadvantaged.)Natural Advantages: Hypermetabolism, Great Strength, Natural Carapace (usually bulletproof of course), Dense Bones, Acidic Blood/Spit, Regeneration, Thermal Vision, Claws and Teeth, Voice Mimicry, Heightened Senses, Tentacles, Venom, Quills, SymbiosisSupernatural Powers: Immortal, Undead, Py...

How to Name Things when you struggle with Naming Things

31Aug

By CharlesNo Comments

Culture, Species/Race, Worldbuilding Exercise, Worldbuilding Topic

How to Name Things when you struggle with Naming Things

Coming up with the perfect name for a character, a location, or almost anything can be one of the most frustrating parts of worldbuilding, or storytelling in general. At times the perfect name just comes to you, but often, when you have to name a thing before you can move on, it can be feel like nothing fits, and what you settle on sounds like garbage the next time you hear it. It is easy to overthink, especially if it is an important name, like a main character. It is also unfortunately easy to tell when someone has overthought a name. Johnny Stormlash. Nikki Heat. There is a kind of a love of ironically appropriate names, but for me, unless it really fits the genre to be so cheesy, those kinds of names only annoy me. So I'm going to go through some ways to circumvent the ...

Creating New Civilizations with a Random Generator

24Aug

By CharlesNo Comments

Culture, Species/Race, Worldbuilding Exercise, Worldbuilding Topic

Creating New Civilizations with a Random Generator

Mountainside Temple in Bhutan Where to begin: Asking Questions I've already talked about this in previous posts because it is one of the key aspects of my methodology when it comes to worldbuilding. If you're stuck, don't know where to go next, don't have any idea what might need to be added to bring some uniqueness to your world, you want to start asking questions. Each answer will provide the potential for new questions, new answers, connections, and patterns to develop. Let us say you know you want a warrior culture, but don't want them to just be Klingons or follow that same honorable warrior cliche. You want something more original. Let's say they are human, for the sake of ease. Where do you go from here? Well, we've already established two parameters for what they need ...

Designing Unique Alien Species for your World

10Aug

By CharlesNo Comments

Species/Race, Worldbuilding Exercise, Worldbuilding Topic

Designing Unique Alien Species for your World

This is honestly one of my favorite topics. It's always important to me for a world to have a variety of points of view, physical forms, and non-human species and cultures. Of course it can be tricky to come up with something that isn't just a copy of some other setting, so today we'll explore the options when it comes to creating a cast of non-human species. An important thing to consider as you work on this is: what role is this species playing in the world I'm creating? Do you need them to be antagonists? Allies? Are they the dominant species or hidden and unknown to most of the world? If they live alongside humans, how do humans see them and how do they see humans? Keep these intentions in mind, to help the rest of your design elements line up with them. Though, of course, don...