This weekend was somewhat productive, baring 92% of Saturday where I did nothing but chat for 12 hours. Just relaxed, though a lot of work since it was world creation of a different sort. I haven't done it for a while, but I managed to get one entire page of ideas out in the entire day.

I made up for it on Sunday by cleaning the apartment, making proper meals, watching a movie, wiring up some speakers, finishing my homework (though with complaints), doing an update to Running Bomb (got a good review of it this morning), installed a new Wiki software, and basically started writing out Wikipedia-inspired articles for my fantasy world.

There isn't that much there right now, mainly because I have all these ideas in my head or things I wrote for Muddy Reflections and Wind, Bear, and Moon. I'm rapidly heading toward renaming that to Flight of the Scions which is also helping me framework this new introduction very nicely. And is helping me work on making the characters more interesting. The conflict, it feeds my soul...

*cough* Well, I started working on a small part of the world, the Isle of Vo which is where Dyfan is from. It is easy because it is a relatively isolated place that uses its own view of magic, language, and history. It is also a parasitic island which makes it easier for me to wrap my mind around it and get used to writing up the articles. Though, it did change Dyfan around more than I originally planned.

You know how characters have a tendency to be similar? For example, I am a highly tolerant person with relatively view biases. So, my characters share the same. When writing up Vo, I realized that Dyfan could be so much more unique and still fit with the story. The language I wrote up, Volis gave me that idea. Instead of him being "Dyfan Selcribe", it fit better with "dyfan et gison" and built up his entire backstory at the same time. Even started learning IPA while working on Volis, mainly so I had something that could be pronounced and has a proper grammar. And a writing system.

Because I'm enjoying creating it.

I also started writing up the Crystal Compass which is the modern view of magic in that world. I developed it pretty heavily in Muddy Reflections and it ties into the sacrifice for power that is so integral to my stories. Just a first draft out there, but it also isn't the "one true rules" of the world. I know how magic works internally, but I'm planning on never writing it up exactly. Just people's imperfect understanding of the laws of magic. Ditto for science.

Last night, while watching a proper movie instead of writing, I also started on the map of Fedora again. I have like six of them, but I packed away most of them for this move, so just decided to redo it. This time, the ideas of plate tectonics and super continents managed to slither into my brain (damn you, Wikipedia!) so I'm building them up to hopefully look a bit more realistic. And, I always had the idea of Fedora being a Pangaea type of place, so I'm hoping it will improve things.

And, since I'm that far back, I decided to create a map of the continent, then do a rough 10,000 year history. Nothing major, just taking the map, then showing the various countries and nations as they move and conquer and disappear in 1,000 year increments (probably down to 100 year in the last millennium and 10 year increments for the last century). That way, I could start mapping out the influences of the various nations and also where there would be ruins (cities are frequently built on older cities). It would also give me a neat way of having languages change over time, which would let me start with a base language (like Latin), then split it apart over the centuries into different ones (French, Spanish). Hopefully, that will give me similar languages but different enough that it feels more like a living world.

Its a fair amount of work, but it feels right. I like having foundations for my writing and I want a world that doesn't feel like I just threw together a bunch of names for areas, then just created worlds. Well, I did that, but it feels hollow to me. I'm not planning on putting said languages into FS (or WBM) but the fact they are there helps name the countries and characters and puts a bit of history into it. Well, maybe a bit of Volis, because its pretty and it would be a homage to Tolkien putting Tengwar into his books.

Now, you'll probably notice that I actually put up my world up on a public website. Yeah, I did that on purpose. It is Creative Commons by-nc-sa licensed and, frankly, I think public development is in many ways just as enjoyable as the world itself. Plus, judging from years of past experience, maybe 1 in a 1,000 people will read it and, if I'm lucky, I'll get three comments on it. So, it will stay public and hopefully someone will enjoy reading about what happens behind the scenes of my (unpublished) novels and ("published") stories.