Collaborative Worldbuilding Project

[Fluffr_Nuttr]

Nice, unlike other world-building projects, I'll try to circumvent what made them stagnate and let you work on what you wish to and then we assign them together a part in the history of the cycle of ages or in the last age depending on how the nation is. Then we can work backwards and maybe construct more of the background. You can try with non-humans as well. No problem.



It seems like nice setting, although I would diminish a little the power of the US-parallel so as to have a multi-polar world.

Which year, technology-wise, are you thinking of?

Also, I think we can both come up with something better for a name.

1.I was personally thinking around 1830 ish for the tech.
2. Also, I think the Cataclysm should have divided the world like this:
a. There is the Known World, where science dominates and magic has died out due to the Cataclysm. This is where the big empires that I mentioned earlier are.
b. there is the Far Lands, where magical beings roam and wizards dominate. The known world has colonies here. Some even separated and founded their own nations, including the U.S equivalent.
c. If you travel even further from the Known World, physics as we know it starts to break down. This point is called the Horizon. It is completely uninhabitable, and some even say that beyond the Horizon lies Hell itself.

 

[Fluffr_Nuttr]

Also, a few possible names for continents:
Equabar
Aerupa
Palibar
Aurora
Boreala

 

[Fox-Fire]

I was personally thinking around 1830 ish for the tech.

You can work on that period of time, but remember that I'm opening the possibility for constructing the periods before and after that window of time. I have no problem on your working on a very broad period of the history of your nation and those nations close to it, however, it has to be able to be assembled with the rest of what the others are working on. Therefore I suggest you work on your nation and help other with as much you can so everything be joined together better.

This is Codae's idea for a cosmic map showing how the world is organized. I have the idea that, following the analogy of the Yggdrasil-like construct of the universes, this could be the treetop: "the normal universes" and the trunk of the tree would be the more magical ones, one above the other. The central world could be what we are making right now. Following your idea too we could have had a vast interconnected network in the past, in the cycle just before the cataclysm, but when it occurred the connections broke, as Codae suggested, and left many species extinct in the central world, namely all magical ones, but many of those magical races still exist in the other peripheral worlds along with your US analogue. I suppose that the nation wouldn't have survived the cataclysm intact and maybe your current idea is what managed to rise again after many centuries (or maybe even millennia) after the cataclysm destroyed the original colony.

What do you think?

 

[Fluffr_Nuttr]

If the treetops world are normal, and the trunk world are magical, then what is the central world? Sorry, I'm just kind of confused.

 

[Fox-Fire]

No problem, I'll explain myself again.

The middle world would be the one where all met, the forces of the world, the axis mundi, and as such I was thinking it would be where the magic made its apparition in the "treetop" and from there it expanded. After the cataclysm the magic would have been broken from its source and dissapeared from the central world, isolating it from the others but not completely isolating those other from magic nor between themselves.

That's my idea. What do you think? Feel free to propose, this is a collaborative project after all.

 

[Fluffr_Nuttr]

Oh wait. I didn't know there was a freaking 2nd and 3rd page, so I didnt get all the updates! I was talking about the first original world we had, and how some continents and lands on that planet were magical and stuff. I am such a complete idiot. I am updated now, thank god.
Anyway, like your idea.

 

[Fluffr_Nuttr]

Also, what if the effects of the Cataclysm are starting to wear off, and magic is starting to spread across the worlds again?

 

[Fox-Fire]

That's in the OP.

 

[Falkanner]

When we make the history for this world, are we designing the present-day world and creating a backstory (top-down), or starting at the beginning and working our way forward (bottom-up)?

 

[Fox-Fire]

I think that we should go bottom-up for the last age after the cataclysm and the rest of the ages before it don't have to be as well-defined nor coherent to the laws of human civilization so we could use either for those periods.

 

[Codae]

If the treetops world are normal, and the trunk world are magical, then what is the central world? Sorry, I'm just kind of confused.

The central world isn't actually special in any way. The diagram could be distorted to put whatever world you want in the middle without breaking the underlying structure. Some examples (sans color-coding) are here.

 

[Rosella]

I think varying levels of magic-

2 to 5x extremely minimal magic,
2 to 3x low magic (real witches, sorta?),
2+ medium magic (hexes, familiars?)

 

[Fox-Fire]

The central world isn't actually special in any way. The diagram could be distorted to put whatever world you want in the middle without breaking the underlying structure.

Interesting, I knew that design was familiar from somewhere. Let me redesign the structure of the worlds, what about this proposal?

On the right we have a plane composed of several worlds, each a black dot, on the left there is the Axis Mundi connecting several planes together, this time each plane is a black dot.

The worlds in each plane have similar characteristic to each other. That doesn't mean that each world in each plane is completely similar to the ones next to it; a world could be mostly oceanic while other a great desert and the next one islands floating in a sea of clouds with the three of them belonging in the same plane. While across planes the fundamental characteristics change. For example one could be the world of the spirits of nature, other the realm of the dead and so on and so forth and none of them would be similar to the world we are creating right now.

Magic could be born out of the interaction between these worlds and, like Earth's magnetic field, experience severe fluctuations around a certain period of time giving birth to the cycles of rise and fall. However, the last one was different and mostly shattered the connections which only now are beginning to heal.

 

[Fluffr_Nuttr]

So let me get this straight: There are multiple planes of existence, each having their own fundamental characteristics; and one of these planes is divided into a bunch of worlds, that are connected by spells?

 

[Fox-Fire]

So let me get this straight: There are multiple planes of existence, each having their own fundamental characteristics; and one of these planes is divided into a bunch of worlds, that are connected by spells?

Yes, that is my proposal. It isn't the final word though, I would like more discussion if people are interested.

 

[Fluffr_Nuttr]

I'll expand on your idea:
There are many planes of existence, each one ruled over by a God. One plane, though, is particularly fascinating: the Known Lands. This plane is made up of several worlds, each different in its own way. The known lands used to be ruled over by the God Mu, who governed his realm lightly. He, unfortunately, did not survive the Cataclysm, leaving the Known Lands without a God. Multiple gods have tried to take over the Known Lands, but in till recently they haven't been able to do so due to the disconnection of the planes due to the Cataclysm. But since the Cosmos has started healing, the threat of being taken over has gotten far worse...
So, how do you like it?

 

[Fox-Fire]

So, how do you like it?

I like it quite a lot, although I would add another layer that consists in other lesser Gods. The basic idea is that each plane is governed not by a single God, but by a pantheon where one predominates, although not always and not the same God. In the case of the pantheon of Mu (I encourage everyone to think how their culture might perceive this), their fate was mostly grim because of the Cataclysm. Mu is dead so no one is there to control the evil/chaotic/misanthropic/nihilist/dark lesser Gods or avoid a titanomachy between these gods and the ones that stand for opposite forces.

Basically there is no one who stops the other surviving gods of the Known Lands from fighting each other and no one to protect the pantheon nor the world as a whole from the other Gods' greed.

 

[Fluffr_Nuttr]

What if all the gods are related, and they form alliances?

 

[Fox-Fire]

What if all the gods are related, and they form alliances?

I don't think it should be as simple as that. Maybe most of them had a common origin but I believe not all of them should be related, it gives us more room to create and to plot between the gods, after all, how an eldritch abomination might be related to the protagonist of a Hero's Journey?

 

[Fox-Fire]

I think varying levels of magic-

2 to 5x extremely minimal magic,
2 to 3x low magic (real witches, sorta?),
2+ medium magic (hexes, familiars?)

I'm not sure how this clasification works, care to explain it?

I just thought about how the planes could be organized, what do you all think of this?

Planes for the Collaborative World Project:

- Fundamental plane or order plane: It contains the Gods that lord over all of the planes. It is incomprehensible for mankind.
- Plane of the ideas: It contains the abstract concepts given life and shape. Almost only able to be glimpsed by understanding.
- Basic or forces' plane: It contains the basic, physical forces of nature.
- Spirits plane: It contains the spirits of nature.
- Human spirit plane: It contains the spirits of the ancestres and human-like spirits.
- Animist plane: It contains the lower spirits of nature or those that have no superior reasoning.
- Known lands' plane: Human plane.
- Counter-animist plane: It contains the evil or chaotic lower spirits of nature.
- Chthonic plane: It contains the spirits of evil ancestres and negative human-like spirits.
- Exiled Gods' plane: It contains the realm of the Gods who are too harmful to roam free.
- Chaos plane: It contains chaos given life and shape.
- Eldritch plane: It contains the Eldritch Abominations.