My science-fantasy worldbuilding "project"
My science-fantasy worldbuilding "project"
I :cisheart: escapism
Something light for today, atleast for me to write about. I like Wolliver’s post-apocalyptic series, and I saw that more of us have some sort of a pet project universe, I imagine it is beacuse of the interest in history and epic tales. I’d like to present you my own creation:
The Surface
I'll start by explaining the image above. The surface of the world stretches forever in all directions. It has infinitely many biomes ranging from earth-like to those that resemble the surfaces of other planets and those horribly or beautifully twisted by magic. Above the surface flow inifite rows of “suns”. They are much smaller and closer than our sun, each illuminating an area roughly of roughly 10 000 x 10 000 km. 10 000 km is around 6213.7 miles and a little more than the lenght of Euroasia from west to east. I might change that lenght if I decide that it is too small. Looking from above the suns form a moving checkerboard-like pattern of alternating night and day. Between the rows there are areas always illuminated by atleast one sun but never in great amounts. It’s like a permanent twilight that changes the side of the sky every 24 hours. These areas, called border zones, are characterised by their cold climate and are usually dangerous and sparsely populated.
The existence of border zones leads to a natural coordinate system of cells where 2 border zones determine the “western” and “eastern” boundaries of a cell and the “northern” and “southern” ends are determined by the extent of a sun’s light when it’s above a certain point agreed upon by society like a capital of a major empire. Below the suns are artificial structures called moons and below the moons are clouds.
Climate
The movement of the suns is maintained by a mysterious substance known as the Aether. The Aether is different in different parts of the world causing the suns to move up and down as they flow. The regions where the suns are closer to the surface receive more light and thus are tropical, while regions where the suns are higher are similar to border zones. Wind patterns and sea currents abide by similar rules as on earth though they are sometimes dictated by the will of magical beings.
Seasons and miscleanious info
Due to unknown causes, the coming suns periodically vary in brightness leading to seasonal changes in temperature on top of regional differences. In unusual cases their color can also be different. They can even show up very dim, completely dark or be missing, causing events known as “long nights”. Long sequences of dark suns have wiped out entire rows of civilisations.
Moons
The moons endlessly circle over an area of 4 cells close to the clouds. All of them are actually enormous floating palaces inhabited by a race called the Star People. They are reclusive, but sometimes engage in trade with the surface or allow its inhabitants to use the moons for quick travel.
The underground
Below the surface there are 40 000 kilometers (24 855 miles, about the circumference of earth) of rock penetrated by a web of subterranean civilisations and corridors that connect them. There are also abyssal caves, called that beacuse they are so large that their inside resembles the emptiness of space. Inside the rock live heat ghosts who are sentient areas of heat with animal-level intelligence. The movements of their biggest packs close to the surface are responsible for continental drift. Many descend into the depths to pray to them in hopes that their land moves in a desired direction. Halfway through the rock the gravity flips and caves that go through the middle often have a layer of water with 2 surfaces. As there is no solar energy deep underground the base of the ecosystem is formed by microscopic beings that feed on the ever-present magic.
The Other Side
Past all that lies the Dark Side. The few suns that float above it were painstakingly carried through the underground from the bright side and serve as oases for life. The Dark Side is blanketed by an ocean whose average depth is far greater that most trenches on the other side and only few natural islands poke out of it.
It should be mentioned that the world I’m describing is just one layer out of infinitely many ones separated by cosmic voids.
Why are the things the way they are?
I wrote this several months ago to explain the history of the world and it also includes other important details:
The start
Beings called the Primeval Ones emerged from simple life (oh my science!) in an infinite universe of liquid magic.
These beings were so ancient and perished in such a way that, save for a few exceptions dotted around the infinite universe, no subsequent consciousness knew of them. Their existence was only rediscovered millennia later thanks to glimpses into the past through spells.
They endlessly swam around each other and enjoyed unlimited control over the liquid they were submerged in.
As the time went by the Primeval Ones got into more and more conflict over territory, but none of them could figure out how to kill eachother. Eventually they made a deal that started the universe as we know it. A substance from outside universe was spawned and the ocean of magic was split with layers of dark emptiness. All of them still had an infinitely wide plane for themselves, but its height was reduced to a finite amount.
They didn’t anticipate what came next. Liquid magic, separated and exposed to the void, began to cool rapidly. The Primeval Ones, who besides their consciousness were just currents and chaotic flows in the ocean, began freezing to death as well. The last of them to die saw the birth of Void Entities, ontologically evil creatures born out of the emptiness in a way similar to how they were born out of magic.
How out world got lucky
Initially, our layer was nothing special, just a typical gray expanse of cold rock. Void Entities swarmed its surface and moved into the deepest holes of its porous inside. It were the layers around it that saved it.
In the layer above a Primeval One was experimenting with modifying liquid magic to make it freeze-resistant. He succeeded, but the new glowing substance spread uncontrollably and devoured the entire layer, him included. His consciousness was broken into smaller pieces creating the Star People - glowing demigod beings. Soon the layer was decorated with palaces and towns united under Star People kingdoms. War between them was rare as they had a much greater common enemy: the Void Entities. Glowing Star Matter was Void-repellent but if enough darkness gathered it could overwhelm them. Star People’s culture became defined by their struggle against this force. They began settling on the surface of our world because the solid rock gave some protection against their enemies and because they wanted to claim new lands for their kind. Massive amounts of Star Matter were sculpted into suns and made to flow above their colony. For billions of years that’s all what our world was, still a barren expanse, only now it was lit up and inhabited by explorers and settlers from space. Void Entities living in caves close to the surface became separated and over time the rock around them morphed them into more tangible monsters.
The other critical element came from the opposite side and from much farther away. Somewhere many layers away a Primeval One made a liquid with extraordinary dissolving properties. For an unknown reason it was shot in our direction melting everything its way. Due to miraculous luck by the time it reached us it was so contaminated with elements of millions of disintegrated worlds that it virtually lost its ability to dissolve and it just settled on the dark surface, creating a deep ocean of water.
From this point this story will concern only sections of our world, though so large that to a mortal mind its practically infinite.
Out of this mixture emerged our world’s first native life. While Star People were sitting on the other side it dug its roots into the dead rock and crawled onto the few islands in the First Ocean. The earliest intelligent species is best known as the Water Bringers. Life was not easy for them for they were completely blind, never knew the warmth of the sun and were constantly vulnerable to attacks from Void Entities, who swooped down on them from the starless sky and devoured their prey in the cold emptiness of space. In retaliation they invented dark magic, a vile practice born out of fear and anger. It shot glowing arcs into the dark sky illuminating it like sinister northern lights.
But they were still weaker. So Water Bringers turned to the ground and began digging. They dug away from the surface for thousands of years. Despite encountering expansive caverns filled with more Void Entities they finally felt safe in labyrinthine subterranean cities. Their tunnels had a very special aesthetic as the blind creators focused on sound and touch instead of sight. To this day touching an original Water Bringer plate can awaken the most unexpected and intense emotions and their musical halls play elaborate melodies at the slightest movement of cave air.
Water Bringers believed that rock was infinitely deep and if they dig deep enough they will reach a fully Void Entity-free stone paradise. Their surprise was even greater than Star People’s when they emerged on the other side of the layer and for the first time felt the suns. Mostly through magic they managed to establish communication with Star People. Their relations were friendly and mutual cooperation began. Water Bringers began creating oceans by carrying water to Star People. This is how they got their name. The Star People promised to bring light down to the other side and finally end the terror of the Void but transporting unstable and hard to control star matter through the tight twisting caves, stairways and vertical shafts of the subterranean world proved extremely difficult. For example it had a tendency to seep into the rock and stay there in the form of geothermal heat. To this day only a few stars exist on the other side of our world. Areas around them are known as light oases where native life and adventurers from our side congregate.
Water Bringers began migrating en masse to the sunny surface bringing animals and plants with them. But in addition to that life emerged for a second time - in warm pools under the caring light of infinite suns.
The First Period of Thriving
Millenia passed and the new lifeforms evolved intelligence. Water Bringers and to a lesser degree Star People changed with them adapting to the new world. In this period Star People adopted the custom of burying their dead underground from Water Bringers. This had a certain side effect. The bodies soaked into the rock similarly to how normal star matter turns into geothermal heat only this time this heat had a mind and moved around. “Heat Ghosts” as they became known were generally friendly and able to be tamed. For millions of years peace was kept between the three origins of life. The light side prospered: massive constructions were built, new ways of defending from Void Entities were developed, population boomed and magic advanced greatly, including major steps in rediscovering the past. Demons began to appear on the layer through portals in order to gather resources for an eternal war that was being fought in their distant, fire-engulfed home layer between two living Primeval Ones, but they never became powerful enough to disrupt the harmony. However it couldn’t be ignored that the descendants of Water Bringers (who from now on will be referred to as Dark Siders) had an “original sin”, a mark of their origin in a wretched world of darkness. While they could maintain cooperation and often wished to their souls were impure. Their bodies were ugly and their movements pathetic. Above all, their exotic magic rituals aroused universal disgust. An idea began maturing independently in the minds of both Star People and light side natives - an idea of genocide.
It started slowly, with sporadic incidents of settlements getting razed. Then entire kingdoms and later civilisations found themselves at war with their neighbors. Dark Siders couldn’t ignore this any longer. They aptly began seeing all other life as their enemies.
The Aeon of Weeping
The war went on for so long that for most generations that lived during it it seemed like an inseparable part of life. The Star People and life originating from the light side didn’t just want to eradicate intelligent Dark Siders, they destroyed animals and plants too, anything that came from the underground. Their enemies constantly received reinforcements from the subterranean world, a place fully under their control as other creatures were quickly overwhelmed and killed. From the depths they brought terrifying war machines and even giant, eldritch Void Entities who agreed to a truce. Here it should be noted that a Void Entity will only work with you if it believes that it has tricked you and its help results in more evil.
The Dark Siders started losing, mostly because the average Star Person was more powerful. However in the final decades of the war a Star mage found himself encircled in one of the few areas left where Dark Siders had dominance. He prepared a spell to cleanse the area from his enemies but he underestimated the forces he was playing with. Millions of suns saw the land below them transform under the influence of a terrible curse after the mage died in a half a mile wide explosion. Air and water became toxic. Trees and grasses died and got replaced by a layer of sickly lichens that spread by releasing clouds of spiky spores. People and livestock began dying. The Dark Siders who were already getting pushed back into caves found such land not worth fighting for and retreated underground never to return.
The Star People and the light side natives couldn’t follow them; waging war on that alien territory would have meant their end. Instead they found refuge in the sky high above the poisoned clouds. The Star People created floating palaces of star matter mixed with rocks where the natives of the light side could live alongside them. The palaces, called moons, were cursed to circle endlessly over the barren wasteland. Out of all those who remained on the surface, for example because the Star People did not deem them worthy to enter the sky palaces, the vast majority perished and the rest turned into repulsive degenerated versions of their species. One particular effect of the curse was that nothing on the surface really died - the soul left the dead body but the newly emptied thoughtless husk became filled with ferocious hunger. Bands of undead roamed the lichen plains until their corpses became so weathered that they were unable to move. However sinister magic stopped them from decaying further. Body parts and chunks of meat laid on the ground until sediments and volcanic rocks covered them creating buried 'layers of undead' waiting for an unfortunate digger to discover them.
This incredibly long epoch was known under many names, most common being “The Aeon of Weeping”.
Crowds of Star People decided to return to higher levels of sky where the battle against Void Entities was raging almost unchanged since the times of the first settlers on our world.
Most of those who stayed led a monotonous life together with light side natives. They regularly blasted the surface with spells that very slowly eroded the curse. Sometimes they sent expeditions to preserve ancient structures.
Their attitude towards degenerated beings was varied: in some places they were killed on sight, in some taken onto a sky palace to be “cured” with questionable success rates, in some they were left to live their pitiful existence unbothered. Other than that they pursued art and science but due to how demoralized everyone felt during this era very little progress was made and all the poems were sad and amateurish. In fact many ancient secrets were forgotten, preserved only in archives no one wanted to visit.
But not every moon was calm and peaceful. In some light side natives became lower castes and eventually slaves due to their alleged inferiority. In others, conversely, they rose up against their hosts. Some palaces fell out of the sky and crashed into the surface.
After a long time the curse was noticeably weaker due to ages of being showered with spells as well as natural fading. Light side natives requested to be sent to the surface and repopulated it. The Star People who were a much older race and much more absorbed with guilt after the War decided to distance themselves from surface affairs and stayed on the moons. The few who did come down settled on secluded mountain peaks above just above the lowest clouds. Instead of interfering in earthly affairs they became consumed by a subtle game of lunar dynastic rivalry.
The Second Period of Thriving
Light side natives managed to rebuild. They re-established contact with Dark Siders who after such a long time preserved memory of the war only in the oldest myths and didn’t want to continue it. Soon light siders joined them in the underworld. A new age of prosperity had dawned. The only major negative aspect of this period was that the Void Entities came up with a new trick - they had managed to hybridize with degenerated species living in caves close to the surface, giving birth to creatures that were weaker but much more resistant to light and carried with them a civilisation building element that the Void Entities lacked. They usually lived just below the surface in holds centered around a single sessile Void Entity, whose orders they could not oppose as long as they were in its presence.
The first great civilisation of the Second Period of Thriving was the Golden Empire. They found a way to exploit the Aether - the mysterious force that pushed the suns, the secret of which was forgotten in the Aeon of Weeping - and sail it the way a boat uses wind to navigate water. Flight was known by Star People since their beginning, but this method was much faster, free and available to anyone. The Golden Empire used this technology to establish many colonies, connecting lands that couldn’t have even comprehended each other’s existence. The Golden Empire eventually fell to decadence and the technology was lost but its achievements were preserved in mythos and legends under many suns. The Second Period of Thriving also saw the birth of Sun Followers and Origin Searchers. Many cultures and religions independently got the idea to either go with the flow of the suns and find out where they are going to or to wander the opposite way and discover their origin. Those who are cynical say that they are walking in circles.
The end
Not sure about the gods of this world. Maybe the Primeval Ones are the gods or maybe they are entirely different beings who orchestrated all of the events. Or maybe they are more pantheist “regions of being”.
There are also a few issues that I have chosen to ignore, like how light would realistically behave on am infinite flat plane or why and how gravity exists, but well, all of these can be explained by saying ‘magic’. Magic is like the magic in real life beacuse magic is real. There are other problems such as wtf is “the emptiness” and why the Primeval Ones didn't give everyone an infinitely wide layer, you can divide infinity into infinite infinities, right? Just don't question it okay.
There is no lore about specific regions and nations yet beacuse I already pour that part of my auism into a different but similar project. I am however writing a story set inside this world. By that I mean that I have a 2 thousand word ideas and plot document and I haven’t written anything in 4 months. It is about a supersoldier from the age of the Golden Empire taken out of suspended animation and forced through ancient magic to serve one of the factions fighting for control of an ancient megacity while looking for ways to free himself. As you can see it it a metaphor for us chuds being forced to exist in society. Then he will fight the bad guys and chase them through the underworld. I will not be publishing it on substack, mainly beacuse it is not being written in english :P.
Thank you for reading.