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 just making a big list of all the prompts; the bits I have in mind. I may not use all of them. Remember, these are not necessarily off the top of my head. Some of these represent bits I liked from discarded worlds or stories, and want to recycle. Years of casual refinement have gone into some of these bits. Others were just inspired by a work of art I saw and liked. There’s a lot of cool ideas that might fit other settings, but eventually I’ll whittle them down to what I want to have in FERGUS.
- “Elves” that are immortal but suffer from a memory loss curse that is seen as evil but is actually intended to keep them sane.
- Man-sized blackbirds. They are basically just crows the size of people, but they share more maybe in common with a winged dinosaur. They are vicious and predatory and what’s more, intelligent and capable of mimicry to lure their victims. They take over whole sections of a forest, killing the trees, making them skeletal and white. They also hide their intelligence.
- An animal that causes bad luck as a defense mechanism.
- Arrangement of 9 Magical Schools: Kinetic, Elemental, Necromantic, Druidic, Mental, Physiological, Craft-based, Spiritual, and Time/Space.
- World strewn with ancient collapsed monuments from a forgotten era.
- Animal companions that share a connection with human partners
- Some kind of major size differences between playable races. I’m not sure I want to do giants, so what about something like gnomes or brownies?
- Different breeds of lizardfolk that follow the D&D class system. like, a particular breed that would be rogue-like, a breed that would be fighter-like, a breed that would be Bard-like, etc.
- A group of people who are incapable of magic so compensate with fighting and engineering ability.
- Halflings that somewhat resemble Tolkien’s halflings, but with more pronounced rabbit-like features (feet, ears, tail)
- A red cliff castle with a narrow switchback path leading to it, considered impossible to breach.
- Mad gods in a classical world style pantheon. They are powerful but unpredictable, petty, and fickle.
- Knights who ride giant birds.
- Dragon-Slaying heroes.
- A chunk of verdant land, like a large island, transported by magic and placed in the middle of a desert (remember the map I made early on?)
- Monks who use crystals to form items made of mental energy (one color being armor, one color being a shield, one color being a bow, and so on).
- Dragons in the place of angels, basically the firstborn of the gods, who rebel against the gods over the creation of humanity.
- Bodypaint or tattoos that give power or protection.
- An obsidian sword carved by wind spirits over centuries to a perfect edge.
- Stone-Age cultures next to steel-age cultures.
- Giant insects as ridable stock animals.
- Primordial incomprehensible forces against which mankind are mere insects. (Think Lovecraft)
- Portals/Gateways to other worlds built into the ancient ruined architecture.
- Ancient people who have simplified from a hyper-advanced society to a peaceful tribal society.
- Elemental races: Salamanders, Naiads, Sylphs, and Golems.
- Elemental dimensions.
- A blind draconic monster named Vigilance (this was before skyrim, alright) whose missing eyes feel intense pain at the barest glow, so violently hunts down anything in the cavern passage where he dwells.
- A Triad of a Shadow Realm, an Inferno Realm, and a Garden Realm that all have connections to this one.
- Ancient lost weapons and artifacts.
- Demi-humans in the form of the Greek monsters: Satyrs, Centaurs, Sirens, Minotaurs, Harpies.
2: Fit Pieces Together
Right now I still don’t know which of these pieces I will end up using. So next I’ll just look over them and start making connections, and piecing things together.
The elves with the memory loss could be the ancient people who were once much more advanced but now live quite simply. Because of the memory loss. This ties in with the ruins and the makers of those gates to other worlds.
The elemental dimensions or shadow/garden/infernal realms could just be other planets that one can access through those gates. The elemental races could be just the inhabitants.
The concept of halflings as more rabbity could actually fit in well with the other demi-human races. So I could just bunch those together.
Stone-age cultures could tie in with the magical body-paint somehow, and I also like the idea of the obsidian weapon being from them, being a stone tool and all.
A small race of humanoids no larger than cats, maybe even about half that size. They are the ones who can’t use magic so they have to rely on engineering and tricks, but also great courage. Like imagine if regular humans were the giants from Jack and the Beanstalk. Oh! They could be the bird knights, too, just… riding normal birds.
And further, what if the lizardfolk are seen by these little folks as dragons? So maybe the lizardfolk have elemental magics so can “breathe” fire. Now the little folks can be seen as giant slayers and dragon-slayers.
The island of mountainous land that was transported into the desert, that could have been through one of the world-gates, so the desert is a different planet from the mountain’s origin. I had liked the idea of the lizardfolk laying constant siege to the island in defense of the desert as their home, so this idea would make them alien inhabitants of that world. And maybe they use the giant insects as mounts?
3: Set Aside Extra Pieces
As I mentioned before, I’m not going to be using every prompt from the initial list, so certain things I can definitely set aside. Maybe they’ll come up, but maybe not.
I don’t think FERGUS will need the triad of three realms, but I still might utilize other planets and “elemental” races.
I don’t see myself using the crystal monks, at least not initially, nor the fallen-angelic dragons.
I’m not sure if I have a place for the demi-humans just yet. They require fairly specific magical circumstances to exist, since I have a hard time imagining them as being any kind of a natural evolution.
The lovecraftian entities I want to keep in mind, but I don’t know how they’ll fit in yet, so I’m leaving them aside, but will be looking for opportunities as FERGUS develops. Probably they can tie in to the gate-accessed worlds.
4: Start Seeing the Big Picture
Now is the time to elaborate on what we’ve put together and decided to use so far.
From what I currently have, what I’m seeing come together is a fairly limited situation with unlimited potential to explode. Call it an introduction setting to FERGUS.
So here is the story as I’m imagining it so far:
There is a vast desert. To the scaled ones who dwell there, it is their home; their paradise. The clans have their scuffles, their rivalries and disputes, but all worship the desert as their mother, and many may receive the elemental power she can bestow. Beneath her sands are ancient monuments to strange beings very unlike the scaled ones. Statues, carved walls, pieces of whole cities may be revealed by mother-desert and then covered again with the passage of time the the flowing of sand. A few taken an interest in the study of these things, but more are interested in the prophetic meanings of what Mother Desert desires to show her children.
For many ages, the scaled ones only ever saw the ancient things in passing, but never knew them to truly exist. Then, three hundred years ago in the most sacred part of the desert, a mountain fell from the sky. On it was a strange and alien land, inhabited by those ancient beings. But they are not holy. They are foreign, they are intrusive and alien. Like a corruption, their waters, their corrupted plantlife seeped out into the desert. And the strangers followed. The clans have long been at war with these invaders. For three hundred years they have raided, pillaged, punished any who dare trespass into the sacred sands, and prayed for a way to be rid of the blight upon Mother Desert’s body.
As for those of the island. The Mountain, or rather, the range of mountains which were moved, they do not know why, but some assume it was the doings of the gods. Others blame the elves for all the good it does them. Among the inhabitants there are humans, simply trying to live, to go about their lives, but now they are disconnected from the world their forefathers knew three hundred years ago. Instead, beyond the borders of their country there is a vast desert filled with bloodthirsty reptilian fiends.
Also, there are the elves. They are flighty, and childlike in spite of their long lives. For them, anything more than a decade in the past fades into the shadows of time. They have no old friends. But they have a connection to certain magics. Humans may also learn these magics, but through hard work and study rather than a natural connection.
Lastly, there are the little folk. Ambitious, courageous, but luckily small in number as well as stature. They have no magic, and so must make up for their disadvantages through sheer cleverness, using poisons and contraptions, and sheer ferocity, so that they are feared and respected by giants and dragons alike.
The mountain holds many secrets. Within it’s heart, waiting to be rediscovered, lies the key to reconnecting this land to the world from which it came. And possibly, many many others.
Conclusion
This is only the start of the process of refining FERGUS into a complete setting (Hint: there’s no such thing as a complete setting until you decide to stop developing it).
We have conflict, mystery, a sign that humanoids have been to that planet before.
But still, there is a lot of refinement to do even with just this single set-piece. I need a lot of naming, I need to develop the human cultures present, and exactly how the magic works.
We’ve also come up with some hint of what the gods might do, or how the lizardfolk see their god.
We’re not just seeing what the world will be like, but also getting ideas for what kinds of stories can be told there. We’ll keep developing FERGUS next week.
Until then…keep dreaming up new ideas!
—Charles