World Building Part One: Geography

In these next few posts, I’d like to discuss my approach to world building. For those of you who are writers, I hope this discussion helps you hone your craft. For those who are not writers, I hope that you’ll find insight into the process of my world creation interesting.

When designing a world, geography is perhaps the most important factor. There is a theory that the geography of an area can entirely predict it’s history, and while I wouldn’t go that far, it serves to highlight the importance of terrain. With the creation of Purovus, I already had a rough idea of the people groups that I wanted to inhabit my world and so I designed the world to produce that number. For instance, to keep the Halystrian Empire separate from the Vostakin tribes I needed a natural barrier. I used forests, mountains, rivers, and a steppe to separate the two cultures. The impediment of the terrain would ensure that movement between the two groups would be sparse and that their cultures could therefore remain distinct. 

Alternatively, one could design the people groups around the terrain. This is how I created the Northmen, the Brithondians, and the Midneans. After I had placed my planned nations in their respective corners of the world, I found that I had many habitable niches that had been unclaimed. The Northmen and Brithondians nucleated around large river valleys that provide their nations with fertile soil and fresh water. The Midneans occupied a sheltered basin that is kept temperate and moist by coastal winds. 

Another aspect to the geographic approach is that a terrain will produce certain cultural traits in the people groups that occupy it. Those who live rugged highlands are likely to be a hardy tribal people, unlikely to work together but difficult to conquer. People who live on plains made fertile by a river will become the great empires and nations that we know from antiquity, especially if their are passable routes to other such nations. Those who live on islands or regions with prominent coasts are likely to become a maritime people, using their ships for both fishing and trade. People who live on inhospitable plains will have to rely on horses and other livestock to survive and will likely be nomadic. 

Geography can also predict certain conflicts, of which many are needed to fill the annals of a world. Mountain people will likely have to raid the lowlands to supplement their meager harvests. Coastal cities are vulnerable to pirates and other raiders. Nations wishing to expand will usually push for the next natural barrier, often a river or mountain range. Wars are fought over fertile fields, silver mines, mountain passes, and valuable ports. Victors like to consolidate their gains by making their conquests contiguous nations. There are always exceptions, but a survey of history reveals that geography plays an undeniable role in the events that unfold. 

Next week we’ll discuss the importance of having a consistent fantasy time period and the role of magic, two factors which consistently trip up authors when they’re creating their worlds. 

The Sensiahd word of the day is predun, meaning “plain”. Example sentence: Eth tegaloch ys ar eth predun. The city is on the plain.

What is Faerie?

One consequence of writing a book has been that I’m is forced to explain my work to people who are unlikely to ever read it. This issue provides a difficulty at the best of times and a harrowing social interaction at the worst. In my infinite wisdom, I decided to name my debut novel The Wind from Faerie so as to thoroughly confuse the uninitiated. The problem is that people who are unfamiliar with fantasy rarely understand the concept of “Faerie”. I’ve found that even those familiar with the genre often require a refresher on the subject, so I’m here to provide a brief breakdown.

Faerie as it is used in American English is another term for the Fay Realm, the place in which the fay, faeries, or fairies reside. The spelling “faerie” is generally used over “fairy” to divorce the subject from the Victorian concept of what is essentially a magical butterfly (e.g. Tinkerbell). Faeries are beings of mystery and power, most easily compared to the Tuatha Dé Dannan of Irish mythology or the elves of Germanic mythology. The realm of Faerie is where these beings dwell. It is a land of magic and mystery but is intimately tied to the cycles of nature. Faerie is the antithesis to civilization. There nothing is tamed, nothing fully understood. Whenever a mortal stumbles through Faerie, they will never return home the same, if they return at all. Faerie is dangerous to humans because of both its supernatural joys and terrors. Either one might kill, or leave the unlucky soul eternally ensnared. For a more in depth discussion of Faerie and fairytales, I highly recommend On Fairy-Stories by J.R.R. Tolkien. 

Faerie is not a concept directly addressed in The Wind from Faerie. The Fay Wood has many of the characteristics of Faerie but cannot be said to fully embody that realm; it is a local outpost of a larger concept. Faerie in my book plays a similar role to William’s Broceliande: it is a realm of potential. Faerie is the embodiment of all the magic of the natural world and anything is likely to come out of it. In this case, a wind is blowing from Faerie. That wind, carrying the wonderful potential of the Faerie realm, is a harbinger of change in the real world. This wind coincides with Kellan’s propulsion into a larger world, leaving us with a burning question: what role does he have to play? He certainly doesn’t know.

The Sensiahd word of the week is cos meaning forest. Example sentence: Eth cos ys sen. The forest is old.

The Road to Elvish

    When I was a child my brother and I created our own "language", though it was really more of a cypher. We wrote the shaky hieroglyphics of our alphabet on an index card and taped it to the wall of our most secret place: the room under the stairs. I don’t remember actually using our alphabet to create covert messages, though that was undoubtedly the intent, but that index card remains nearly twenty years later. 

    Foreign languages always held a sort of magic for me, and I treasured what few words I could learn. I attempted to learn German via a multi-CD program, but lacked the discipline to learn much. My first trip to Europe in 2008 made me yearn to be multilingual, but high school French classes didn’t suffice. It wasn’t until after college, when I began learning Welsh via saysomethingin.com that I truly became excited about my bilingual capabilities.

    I suppose it was around this time that I first became aware of the Proto-Indo-European language, and the historical theories that accompanied the rise and spread of the first European languages. This discovery coincided nicely with my first writings that lead to The Wind from Faerie. I had long ago decided that I wanted my writing to harken back to the earliest roots of Western stories, and if I were to create a language, I resolved that it should have a similar tenor. Being rather obsessed with elves, their language was naturally the first I wanted to create. 

    Elvish was intended to be a language both familiar and foreign, like the very concept of the elves themselves. I wanted their language to have a certain mystique, but to sound like something that could still be spoken in the untouched corners of Brocéliande or some other magical place. My own severe case of Celtomania and the aesthetic value of the Celtic languages led me to the decision that Elvish would be solidly placed within that language family. Elvish is intended to be a variation of Proto-Celtic, though a great many words were conjured ex nihilo. Speakers of a Celtic language may notice the similarities between Elvish and their own tongue, and no doubt a touch of the magic will be lost due to their familiarity with the tone and conventions of their language. I will say that my own grasp of Irish and Welsh have been weakened by my invention of Elvish. I’ve picked up the bad habit of not only mixing my Goidelic and Brythonic Celtic together, but am apt to intersperse a smattering of Elvish words which are sure to doom every listener to a state of hopeless confusion.

    The spelling of Elvish words roughly follows the Welsh conventions because they are elegant and simple once learned. I could not use Irish spelling conventions because I have come to believe that there are none. Here are two of the most essential rules: “c” always makes a hard “k” sound, and “w” makes a “oo” sound when flanked by consonants. I have also elected to avoid using broad and slender vowels, so that the English speaker can more uniformly pronounce Elvish words.

The Elvish word of the week is “Sensiahd”, meaning “Elvish”. Literally it means “Old Speak”. Example sentence: Es siahd Sensiahd. I speak Elvish.

The Beginning

        I have been writing since grade school, and it was the typical menagerie: the plot to a spy novel, the first couple chapters of an Arthurian fantasy, an historical fantasy about the Hundred Years War, and many morose little poems. It was a great creative outlet, but all my grandiose plans were inevitably foiled by the gulf between my own lack of skill and the heights of my ambition. I’m sure hormones also had something to do with it. 

    Still, the foundation of Purovus was laid in those turbulent years as I toiled to create a world in which my friends and I could play Dungeons & Dragons. My brother had gotten me hooked after only a game or two, and now I was determined to DM my own adventure. We were too cheap to pay for the handbooks and too distracted to follow many rules, so I began creating a home-brew RPG. It began as an amalgamation of D&D and Skyrim, so that we could have a fantasy realm with which we were familiar. My players were rowdy and incorrigible, always pushing past the facade of what I had prepared and into the gritty world of ad lib creation. 

    I determined that there was only one way to outsmart my players: I would have to create a world that was real. It had to be populated with people who lived and died, with history, legends, and myth. There had to be war and prejudice, hope and redemption. Then I could enter through the wardrobe into a place alive. I would no longer have to rely on quick thinking and I could respond to unexpected turns by simply revealing what was already there. 

    High school ended and college began. I continued to tinker and eventually found a new group willing to delve into my burgeoning world. Eventually, all my borrowings were stripped away until I was left with something purely of my own creation. I still only perceived it as a somewhat ostentatious platform for a game, until sheer boredom drove me to write. 

    I was living in Salmon, Idaho, the most remote town in the lower forty-eight. My fiancé was across innumerable mountains and I was spending most of my days in a tent, often separated from even my small oasis of civilization. There was nothing to do but daydream and write. The disparate threads of story finally began to weave together and in a year I had finished my first book.