Here’s an assortment of links you might find useful.

How-To’s

• Map-making tutorial using The Gimp.

Inspiration, Locations

• Photos from Paris Exhibition, 1900. In color.
• Abandoned subway stations in New York City
• The Uros people of the Titicaca lake live on floating islands, which is a cool style of living for a conpeople.

Science Fiction Stuff

• Tests have shown that it is possible to protect long-duration missions from solar wind using a magnetic shield.
• Scientists figured out that Mars’ loss of atmosphere to the pressure from solar wind isn’t a slow, gentle process; instead it is quite violent: Solar Wind Rips Up Martian Atmosphere.

NaNoWriMo 2008 Research

• Wikipedia on radioactive fallout
• Wikipedia on fallout shelters and blast shelters
• Mount Weather government bunker
• Gas masks vs bad smells: Gas masks do not filter out odors, unless they are designed for the job, but vick vapor rub is a work-around used by law enforcement and emergency workers.
• Geiger counters
• Compound bows – bow hunting is done in the US

A few assorted links:

• If you are designing alien species or monsters, and want them to be realistic, you may find this website about different senses that animals have a good starting point.
• Stuck for names? The random name generator can help. It features several sets of names (American, Hispanic, Chinese, etc) and even generates addresses and other personal information! I would not personally use it for major characters, but it surely helps fill out the ranks of extras until you decide on better names, if ever.
• Charlie Jane Anders posted some thoughts on character design, which are probably not revolutionary but worth reading anyway.
• Tom Patterson is providing free, high quality shaded relief maps.

Sometimes, after you have built your world, you may wish to destroy it. If you need ideas on how to accomplish this, there are two good sources: Wikipedia’s End of civilization article covers the basics. And Exit Mundi is a thorough collection on the topic.

Eliza has published the second showcase of world building month entries. Great way to read up on everybody’s projects. I actually try to follow all of them (I activated Google’s RSS reader) but I fear I am not doing too well on that.

There are also some projects that I simply don’t have much to say on – for example the science fiction universe Jan van Hove is creating. I kind of feel bad about it. However, while I’ve built Sci Fi settings in the past, and in general like science fiction, I currently just don’t feel like touching Science Fiction with a ten foot light saber (my Voyagers setting hates me for it).

I just noted I never mentioned here, and while I am sure most people who frequent this blog currently came via Eliza’s world building month “project”, there maybe some who didn’t. Eliza has published the first week’s summary on her blog, and there is quite a lot of work going on. Check it out.

Since my last update post, I’ve added a bunch of world building links:

• PhysicalGeography.net, in their own words, is “an educational web portal that focuses on a specific area knowledge known as Physical Geography. Physical Geography is a sub-discipline of two much larger fields of study – Geography and Earth Sciences. The main purpose of Physical Geography is to explain the spatial characteristics of the various natural phenomena associated with the Earth’s hydrosphere, biosphere, atmosphere, and lithosphere.” Looks very helpful!
• Geek Dad’s How to build a world series.
• Fantasy Mapmaking with Photoshop video tutorials.
• Medieval Deomgraphcis Made Easy

Looks like a “Worldbuilding for neophytes” series. Still, may turn out to be interesting. Find it here.

More desert imagery… Again, you can click on the photos to get to the source.

Namibian Canyon. Photo by Tjeerd Wiersma.

Texas Desert by Monahans. Photo by Klaus Bertow.

Arnâron isn’t a completely dead world… like on Earth, life clings on wherever it can:

Namibia national Park Namib Naukluft. Photo by Patrick Giraud.

Namibia national Park Namib Naukluft. Photo by Patrick Giraud.

Sand dunes in Namib Desert, Namibia. Photo by Thomas Schoch.

There are so many beautiful desert photos, I am sure I’ll post more in the future.

To get into the right mood for designing Arnâron, I’ve collected some desert photos from the Internet – in this case from Wikipedia.They are all available under a free license of one sort or another – Click the picture for details. (Wikipedia also has the original size images if you wish to obtain one in high resolution.)

Libyan Desert. Photo by Roberdan.

Ancient dunes from the Namib-Naukluft Park in Namibia, Africa. Photo by Bjørn Christian Tørrissen.

Sand dunes of Wan Caza in the Sahara desert region of Fezzan in Libya. Photo by Luca Galuzzi - www.galuzzi.it.

Near Ouarzazate(Marocco). Photo by Maxme.

Photo of the Moul n'ga Cirque in the Tadrart region, Southeast Algeria. Photo by Pir6mon.

It’s still the weekend and I’ll get away with spending a lot of time on this world-building thing. So let’s take a quick look at what else has been happening.

Eliza has added an underground city to her world of darkness (which is not called The Black, silly me). She even posted a sort of schematic of the layout of Vastii. which I quite like for its “cave drawing” style.

Saint know-all has been working on details of a dragon-like species, known as the “taal“. Nice fresh take on them, I am not even sure I’d really call them “dragons”, but I guess “dragon” is, in a way, as general a term as “monster”.

RG Sanders introduced Arbiture, a dysmal place inhabited by – if I got this right – fallen “angelic” (very powerful) beings, who are now warring endlessly among themselves.

Cirellio has begun to build a planet called Cirellioland Lura. Lura has some funky stuff going on with electromagnetism. I’ll definitely want to see how that pans out. For my part, I try to avoid messing with the laws of physics as much as I can, except of course for fantasy worlds and even there it’s just to include magic and fire-breathing lizards and the like.

Ken Kiser started off with a creation myth for his world, which, if I understand correctly, is a setting for a novel he’s writing. Or rather, it looks more like an explanation for magic than a real creation myth, as the humans and the world already existed when this tale took place.

Finally, Aeronwy has created a world called Tria – something which she says she wouldn’t have done without world building month. And she seems to have discovered the joy of being a deity. And if nothing else came from World Building Month, this alone would make it a success. :-)

I’ve added the following links to the “Worlds on the Web” page:

• Bergonia, a sqaurish fictional island nation
• Kingdom of Kaupelan another constructed nation, beware of pop-up advertisement
• The Republic of Novegrad is a really nicely done con-nation
• The Armorican Isles

Today is August 1st, and Eliza’s world building month has started. So far there are 14 people who signed up – that is, including both the organizer and of course myself.

I don’t want to pre-empt Eliza – she’ll keep tabs on people and presumably post some sort of summary – but of course I’ll want to comment on what’s happening, as it’s happening. Don’t think I’ll be able to post something daily, but we’ll see.

So far, there have been a couple of “Hello World” type articles. Besides this, Eliza has posted a summary of what she intends to build: A world called “the black” which is plunged into deep darkness for long periods, reminiscent of Nightfall and – the very different but surprisingly entertaining, relatively speaking – Pitch Black. It’s a neat premise and it’ll be fun to see how it turns out.

I am assuming most of the other participants are based in the Americas, and will probably post during the evenings. I’m genuinely looking forward to seeing what develops during this month.

Eliza Wyatt invited people to take part in an “open” world building month in August. I am very tempted to join, since I haven’t done nearly enough world building recently. Still have a few days to decide I guess. Meanwhile, it’s a cool idea, so if you’re interested head over to Eliza’s site and sign up.

The New York Times has an article on-line which describes the creation of Tho Fan, the conlanguage used in the BioWare game Jade Empire. Tho Fan wasn’t used extensively in the game, but it still seems like much more effort went into it than is usual for these games.

More resources:

• How to design a good flag
• Flag generator
• Creating Fantasy and Science Fiction Worlds
• Inkscape – A Guide to a Vector Drawing Program