The past weeks I’ve been working on collecting notes about Enderra, the fantasy world. I’m going through my written material, all the way back to the first notes about the world, and gathering it all up in one document in an attempt to create a concise and definitive world book about Enderra. I’m at the point where I “only” have the notes about adventures from the Enderran Dungeons & Dragons campaigns left, and the Tales from Enderra. The Tales were a series of sword & sorcery fiction I wrote in circa 1995, and they’re about 50,000 words in total. The adventure notes are much shorter, but there’s still a lot of material in them.

Even so, I’ve reached a nice milestone today: The new Enderra World Book is just over 30,000 words long. And that’s just existing material, I added very few “new” things to it.

As a little sneak preview I thought I’d share the all-new work-in-progress Enderra map with you guys. This pushes the history of Enderra about 30-50 years into the future from the 1999 D&D campaign.

I expect to be done with gathering “old” material in about a week or two, and then I’ll start editing it. From the looks of it, Enderra will become my first World Book after all. I also have a tentative plan for the first additional book for the Enderra setting, but I won’t reveal this just yet. ;)

Stay tuned for more Enderran updates to come!

…you have to worry about it actually meaning something in another language. There was the anecdote of the car company – Volkswagen, I believe; but it does not matter – which tried to sell a car brand called “Nova” in Latin America. No Va meaning “doesn’t go” or even “doesn’t work” ruined their product for them.

Whether this story is true or not doesn’t matter any more than who made this mistake. It still means that any words you invents, especially names of important places like planets or your protagonist names – need to be checked on-line. Otherwise you may add just a little more humor to your setting than you’d like.

I guess I was lucky. One of our Turkish translators tells me that “enderra”, in Turkish, means “rare”.

I can live with that.

While I am on the topic of maps… The Map of Thraeton that I showcased last month is now done. That is, as done as it’s going to get without detailed world-building – the place names are mostly placeholders, and so on.

Thraeton World Map

Thraeton Eastern Continent

Thraeton Western Continent

Thraeton North-Eastern Detail

I think it came out quite well, if I may say so myself.

This is my entry for the Cartographers’ Guild’s “just for fun” competiton for March, the River Challenge:

Cartographer's Guild River Challenge Entry

The basic template of the landmass and some pre-defined lakes and rivers was provided by the guild’s community leaders, and there are various rules on the number of rivers the map needs to include.

I honestly did not enter this one to win – the guild counts far better artists than I am amongst its members – but rather I took the opportunity to try out a “fancy mountain” style. As you can see… it still needs some work. ;-)

I guess everybody has their favorite topics. For one, it may be dragons or juvenile wizards, for others it’s intergalactic smugglers and energy swords. For me, one of the most fascinating ideas is the existence of Parallel Universes. That is, the idea that there may be other worlds existing alongside our own.

I guess since everybody who stumbles across this, one way or the other, is probably rather well-versed in this now commonplace topic of fantasy and science-fiction stories, I don’t need to elaborate further. What makes the topic so fascinating, however, is that a Multiverse is not any longer something you’ll only find in fairy tales. There are many scientific theories and hypotheses that tackle the matter. Scientific, if you let me use the word for something currently untestable, because many very smart and very reasonable physicists are taking the matter serious.

So why do parallel universes hold such a great appeal to me?

First and foremost, it gives me a great cosmology to work with. I don’t have to fumble for any weird constructs like a divine creator; I’m using the probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics to explain why the universe (or rather, the Multiverse) exists, and why things happen the way they happen, even if this is not necessarily how the “real” Multiverse works.

Secondly, it lets me get around the familiarity problem. No matter where on Earth I set a story, someone else will live there and know a lot more about it than I could find out through research or even visits. For example, in one story I have in mind, the protagonists would have to go on a bike trip through New England in the present time, that is 2008, or whatever the year. I am not sure anybody does that… especially local teenagers. No problem, I my version of New England, it’s all the rage.

Is it a cop-out? In a way. I’m throwing the audience (the players, the readers – who ever it may turn out to be) a huge hint about what’s going on (that is, that this is not “our” Earth) by having the foreign exchange student fly into Boston’s Logan Airport on the Pan Am 747 Clipper Princess of Mars. And I firmly believe that departing from “our” reality is fine as long as you can provide good explanations, and your reasons are consistent.

Finally, parallel worlds let me play with history or setting as I please. Need a world where the Nazis reign supreme in 2017? No problem, it’s a parallel world. Need a standard fantasy setting with dragons and wizards? Sure, another parallel universe where the laws of physics are just a little different. Need to have demons invade London or aliens showing up in North America? Why, they must be coming from a parallel world.

It is true that I don’t really need a cosmology to support stand-alone settings. But it also doesn’t hurt.

For example, my fantasy world Enderra was attacked by vicious demons in about 1992 (our year), which plunged Enderra into chaos and anarchy, and it took a thousand years for the people of Enderra to recover. This easily let me make many desired changes to the setting. Later, when I worked on Thraeton, I wondered how the natives may have learned magic. It was a simple matter to have wizards from Enderra travel to Thraeton during the Demon War. They didn’t stay – there was no demon presence on Thraeton – but they left behind knowledge of rudimentary magic.

Thus two of my settings became connected, and part of something bigger, and in my opinion they are both richer for it.

So it’s September. World Building Month is over, and, as always, I didn’t post nearly as much as I had intended to. No matter, the important thing is that everybody had a good time, and I think that’s something that can be said about WBM.

While I haven’t managed to keep the initial output rate up, I am quite happy with what I have accomplished. World Building Month made me post 67 times in August. That’s a lot of material, and I finally got this weblog off the ground with some real material.

I fully intend to keep going, probably at a much more relaxed rate (I am back to work). Arnâron will receive its language, and it will be formed into a “world book”. I’ll post more about my other worlds, too, and about world building in general if and when I feel I can contribute to the craft.

Thanks to Eliza for launching World Building Month, I loved it. Thanks also to Kaya, who drew my attention to it, and to all of you who have posted on your own blogs and who have dropped by with your comments. I’m looking forward to seeing you all in the next months. Here, and on the other blogs.

When I said that I don’t have numbers, I wasn’t quite correct – I do have numbers, just no symbols for them.

Numbers

I originally considered using an octal number system but decided against it for two reasons. First and foremost I wanted to keep it simple, and a base-8 system isn’t the simplest solution, the decimal system is. Secondly, since the inhabitants of Arnâron are biologically humans, and they have ten fingers, they are by far most likely to develop a decimal system.

Uncountables

Plurals

The language uses measure words to form plural or to specify the number or amount of anything. There are five measure words:

“Uncountable things” takes precedence over “living things” and “unliving things”, but not over humans or abstract ideas. For example, a crowd of humans always uses the special humans measure word, even if the number of individuals is unknown or even unknowable. On the other hand, grass is uncountable – even though you could in theory count the individual blades of grass. However, if you actually have a defined number of blades of grass, they would become countable living things. This isn’t very different from how English handles it (”grass” versus “blades of grass”).

Another example is land: Land itself is uncountable (”He owns a lot of land”), but it can be countable (”He owns two acres of land”) or even an abstract idea (”Lands of plenty.”)

The use of different measure words may also change the meaning – compare everything: Ruj Ri (”everything uncountable-things-measure-word”) and everybody: Ruj duJa (”everything humans-measure-word”).

To complicate matters further, it is possible to use the measure words in ways other than their literal meaning. For example, one could use the “living things” measure word to quantify one’s enemies. The idea expressed, of course, is that they are “less than human”; a grave insult. It is even possible to go one step further. Referring to enemy soldiers as “unliving things” even further degrades them and implies that they already lost the battle – they are as good as dead.

Context makes a lot of difference as well. For example, one could refer to oneself as a “living thing” as a means to humble oneself, or when one wants to explain that one’s life is unhappy and depressing. A soldier may describe himself as an “unliving thing”, meaning that he is a servant of his master, a tool, a weapon of war, and will serve faithfully without questioning his orders. Or he could use it to show that it is only a matter of time before he will fall in battle.

Some examples

The following are in X-Sampa and native script:

Everything

Ruj Ri (”everything uncountable-things-measure-word”)

Everybody

Ruj duJa (”everything humans-measure-word”)

Everywhere

Ruj Ri doR (”everything uncountable-things-measure-word place”)

Everything – The Universe

Ruj wo doR (”everything abstract-concepts-measure-word place”)

Two women

do duJa jina (”Two humans-measureword woman”).

A lot of water

geJa Ri du (”Many uncountable-things-measureword water”)

I really need more words…

After way too many hours spent working on it, I proudly present: the alphabet of Arnâron. I’ll call it a “final draft” because I am sure I’ll still change some things around… But I think it’s roughly in its “final” form.

As a reminder, I covered the phonemes in an earlier post.

Alphabet - Final Draft

A quick sample, “Arnâron”:

Script Sample.

Unfortunately, the vocabulary of the language doesn’t suffice for a much longer text, yet. I have the basic grammar down, and I can form plurals, but I am missing numbers, future/past tense, imperative, and so on, as well as quite simply a large number of even basic words.

I’ll get there… the main issue right now is that I really want to work on culture and nations, but to do so I need the language!

Designing a language is quite hard, if you’re going at it from a complete lack of any kind of linguistic knowledge. It’s easy to throw something random together, but I find it hard to make it not suck.

In the meantime, it looks like at least two other World Building Month participants – Cirellio and LeLoOr – have discovered the joy of designing languages, and I’ll follow their designs with great interest. Hey, maybe we can make week 3 of WBM “language week”? ;-)

Time is always an issue. I have a regular job that takes way too much of my time, and usually leaves me with little energy in the evenings. And then there are other things. But no matter what I do, schedules always seem to be unpredictable. I knew there was a reason why I do not plan more than a few weeks ahead. It turns out that something I had planned to do won’t happen and that will leave me with ample spare time for the rest of August.

Figures.

So I’ll be world-building.

Since World Building Month is half-over, and I do want to at least have a complete skeleton of a world by the end, I thought about what needs to be done:

• Language. Very important.
• Religion. We know some basics already, but this needs to be worked out in detail.
• Details on the nations – Customs, history, rulers, attitudes.
• Money and trade: The economy needs to be designed at least in some detail. What do the nations produce, what do they export, and what do they need to import? Where are the main resources located, and what are they?
• Cities of Ârnaron.
• Ruins and relics: The shattered past lurks among the dunes.
• Astrology and zodiacs.
• Heroes and villains: Create at least a few of each as sample characters, so to speak.
• Prizes and princesses: What do the heroes and villains fight over, and how?
• The hordes: There are uncivilized, regressed barbarians everywhere, as befits a savage, mythical Martian styled world. Need to write about these guys, too.

I think that mostly covers it. I’ll probably deviate here and there and throw some other stuff in, as ideas pop up. But if I forgot something important or if there’s anything you actually want me to work out, do let me know via comments.

As I sit on my balcony and watch the sunrise and feel the breeze, I realize that the saddest part about building worlds is that you will never, ever, be able to do so in those fancy locations you come up with.

Mental note: Don’t conworld at 5am.

After some deliberation, I’ve signed up for the world building month, and I just decided what I will work on: I’ll revisit a project I started last year, and let slide way too much. Welcome, my friends, to the beautiful desolation of Arnâron.

Arnâron (pronounced roughly “Ah-nuh-ron” – [aʀ̥nɑˑʀon] in IPA, [aR_0nA:\Ron] in X-Sampa) is an ancient world that became arid is now slowly dying. Life on Arnâron is a constant struggle for survival as the remaining species – and people – compete for its dwindling resources.

The world is my attempt to design a modern mythical Mars – a new Barsoom, if you will. A dying Mars with canals and all the associated things is a world that I always loved more than most other settings. There are three reasons why I don’t simply use Barsoom:

First and foremost, Barsoom simply wouldn’t be my own setting.

Secondly, while most of the John Carter of Mars books are in the public domain, it seems that ERB, Inc. still claims ownership of the trademarks like “John Carter” and “Barsoom” and while I am in no position to determine to validity of such claims it makes using Barsoom impossible for anything worth-while.

The third reason is probably the biggest reason of the lot.

When I started out, I tried to make this setting work by using the real Mars as a foundation. This didn’t really work: Our Mars simply was never a truly Earth-like world, and even if I changed things around enough there was still the problem of the low gravity… in short, modern scientific findings completely ruined my suspension of disbelief. There are of course ways to work around this but they’re all obvious hacks. For example, I could have set the story in the past. But that would still leave the problem of Mars’ low gravity. It doesn’t work for me, so how could I expect others to suspend their disbelief sufficiently?

Mars, I hardly knew you

The approach I settled on is an easy one that solves all issues I have with using Mars in one fell swoop: I moved Mars to another universe, gave it more mass, changed the make-up of the solar system somewhat, and lo and behold, that problem is now fixed. No monotonous geography, no low gravity, no pesky space probes ruining the fun setting. I probably won’t get away with cool story titles ending in “… of Mars”, but I’ll survive that (and there’s a somewhat heavy-handed hack even for that problem). But there will be canals, ruined cities, vast deserts, violent cultures, beautiful princesses and most importantly, sword-fighting.

At the current stage, Arnâron consists of a collection of notes, background material, and a lot of work I did on using Mars. I won’t have to start from zero, but I would hesitate to call it a “work in progress”. As a listener of the Shakespeare & Dragons podcast, I am going to try and build this setting along Paul’s “story based approach to world building”.

So stay tuned – work begins tomorrow, on August 1st. And if you have any type of feedback, suggestions, or criticism, please, by all means, post a comment. I’d love to hear from you.

Since the Earth’s continents drift over its surface, the planet is slowly changing its familiar view. Everybody thinks the dinosaur lived on “our” Earth, when in fact the Earth looked completely unrecognizable millions of years ago.

Some geologists and palaeontologists have attempted to reconstruct Earth’s map at various points in the past. Two efforts have reproduced beautiful and useful maps. The first, the Paleomap Project of Christioher R. Scotese offers maps that are functional but somewhat plain. Dr. Ron Blakey, on the other hand, has created beautiful “satellite views” of ancient Earth. An example is this map, from the Middle Devonian:

In a world building context, these maps are highly useful if you create a setting that is set in the past or in a parallel universe that is based on historical Earth. But there are other uses: For example, these maps could be used as alien planets (except for the very recent maps, in which Earth’s continental outlines become quite recognizable).

I have actually used the Middle Devonian map to create the map of an Earth-like fantasy world, which I call Arth (in honor of Starflight):

Pretty, no? And nobody who saw the “Arth” map by itself would suspect that it is merely our own planet Earth, just 385 million years ago.