#wip lore

[cb-writes-stuff]

Because of this post, I’m gonna be dropping some info about my WIP, which is currently going by the codename…

Project Opal

…because I can’t think of a proper title. (Now that I’ve shared this, I can finally start tagging stuff with it.)

Synopsis

Nauth never understood why things happened. Why the wind comes alive at noon and dies in the evening. Why some moons in the sky are smaller than others. Why he lost his parents. Why an ordinary man’s life is thrown into chaos.

Things had been going well. He had good friends, a home, and even prospects of a better job. Everything turns upside down on the Night of Wyrd’s Watch, when an attempt on his life forces him to flee the city.

As far back as he could remember, Nauth has always had why’s. Is this the time to find a because? Or is it merely the start of a life constantly on the run from death?

Character descriptions below the cut.

Character Descriptions

Nauth - A second-generation native of Kem lon-Dalan, Nauth currently lives alone, working as a stablehand at the Fox and Rabbit alongside Ven to provide for himself. He’s rather reserved about himself and his past, but still quite outgoing. He’s playful, but also has a hard line of what he will and won’t put up with (even if that line does move around a lot).

He’s not especially tall, usually an inch or two shorter than the average man on the street. Granted, people in the Vandeth Desert are generally taller than usual. Compared to Delgane people, on the other hand, he’s around average height. His skin and eyes are darker than a native, but he hardly stands out in the wide array of nationalities in the city.

Ven - Ven fits the typical idea of a shodathi*. Sun-tanned, light on his feet, and a little cheeky. Ven’s family took in Nauth many years ago after his parents died, and he and Ven grew up as brothers, almost from birth. Even after Nauth moved back to his family home, they remained quite close. Now, they work together at the same job.

*The Vandeth word for “person”; also used to mean a native of the Vandeth Desert, typically by heritage as well as citizenship.

Lynn - For reasons unknown, Lynn moved to Kem lon-Dalan with her younger sister almost seven months ago, leaving their homeland of Delgan. They both took jobs at the Fox and Rabbit, Lynn working in the stables with Nauth and Ven. The three of them quickly became friends. With their help, Lynn learned the Vandeth language, though she still struggles to speak it. Her peachy complexion and long honeygold hair made her an exotic sight in the desert, landing her a job serving wine inside. She also sings for tips.

Lynn is typically very easy-going and fun. At times she can be possessed by self-righteousness and haughtiness, courtesy of her Delgane upbringing. She can appreciate a good joke, though. A good joke.

Fun fact: Lynn was actually male in earlier versions of the story, and will likely be male again in future drafts. For reasons.

Other Things I Wanna Say

So, Nauth’s storyline isn’t the only one. There’s also gonna be one that follows Ven and Lynn, and at least one more following another character. But if I had to pick, I would say that Nauth is the main character. But Ven and Lynn are important too.

[autism-purgatory]

WIP tour tag

thanks for the tag @the-golden-comet! I’ll pick OLO, here’s a map of Neretia for reference :)

Let’s start off with the main island…

⛵️Gorga🎋

Ah, gorga, home to the kingdom’s capital, also named Neretia. If you’re looking for a more urban, populated city with lots of things to do, Neretia is the place! It’s also the biggest place of trade in all of Ouria! Plenty of cultures across the lands have called this island their home (except for the Fae Empire). You might not want to go out of the city, though. If you want to visit Perka or Styx Bay, you’ll have to get there by boat. Plenty of incomprehensible horrors lie in the jungle of towering trees and bamboo. Also the massive sprawling primeval chasm but shhhhh

Next up…

🏔️The Shield! 🗡️

The Shield is known for its beautiful mountainous sights and lack of monsters due to its rocky terrain, perfect for hiking! You might not want to go near any of the forts or too far from Iris bay, though. Legend says that before the Dragon gods of rain and thunder left, they created the shield to protect Neretia’s inhabitants from the sirens.

Speaking of…

🌴Pheroma🎶

Pheroma is the home of the sirens, don’t go to it. It’s never been fully mapped out. If you hear a choir of women singing in an unknown language, RUN.

Next…

🌊Ponta🗻

The tallest mountain in all of Ouria. Many adventurers and explorers have died trying to reach the top. Many primeval structures and even ones of unknown origin lie everywhere. Only two coastal cities lie at the bottom of the mountain. It’s also known for its chilly climate and diverse animals! All of them are docile and friendly towards humans. Blue penguins, turtles, arctic foxes, yeti crabs, etc. It’s recommended to leave them be. Blue whales are known to encircle the island as well, hence why no sea serpents go near it.

Next up…

🌋The Ashen Islands🔥

Don’t go there. Just don’t. You’ll last about an hour before suffocating from the ash and smoke from the constantly fuming volcanoes.

But don’t worry, you’ll have better luck with…

☀️Typhona ⛰️

Its namesake, the massive mountain, was originally an active volcano, and its theorized that Neretia used to be one landmass, but split apart when Typhona activated. Its dark, sandy beaches and many vistas are perfect for a small getaway! Minus the magma spewing demons and lizards- what who said that? Oh, and the dozens of dragon fossils in the mountain, that’s a cool sight too!

Tagging @willtheweaver @moltenwrites @illarian-rambling + open tag!

[theaudiofiend]

The Veils

I want to give a little overview of the world all my WIPS take place.

A place where monsters walk among men, where magic meets the mundane, and mystery shrouds everything in the veils of night.

“The Veil keeps your eyes closed to the truth. But be careful for once they are open they can never be closed.” - Dreizehn

The Veils

The Veils, also known as “The Abyssal Gates” or “The Shade of the Sleeping” (also sometimes simply known as “The Walls”).

To further explain: you can think of reality as a whole as concentric circles, with veils being the line between the expanding circles.

The Veil is thought to be The Abyss seeping in between the gaps of the worlds, consequently creating other levels and hiding them from the slumbering humans. Those who have opened their eyes to the truth can see past the veil… Or at least the first one. The majority of Fiends also live past the first level of the veil but below the second.

The first veil is the thinnest, it separates the physical from the metaphysical, and it works on the vast majority of humans. It obscures the next level of the world from them, but to an extent, also protects them as it obscures them from the inhabitants of the next level.

The second veil separates the metaphysical from the purely spiritual. As an example, a Metaphysical being like a vampire might not necessarily be able to see purely spiritual beings like ghosts or demons.

Past that lies the third veil, which separates the spiritual world from the abstract world. Most fiends are not even aware of the abstract realms' existence. Deep within the Abstract Realm exist beings and concepts that are incomprehensible, Gods or Eldritch Horrors, call them what you like as there are no words of any language that can truly describe them.

And beyond The Abstract lies The Abyss, which acts as the final and unsurpassable veil.

[sm-writes-chaos]

The Origin of Westwend

This is how the city Westwend came to be.

-

During the Season Dragon Wars, before the seasons were created by Erdue the ice and fire dragons had no order. Chaos was everywhere, fires raged and the air was always chilling.

A large successful city called Gorond was caught right in the middle of it, the fires burned down and the city to ashes and the people of the city were forced to evacuate.

They had to climb up and through the mountains for days before finding a clearing at the edge of a long forest. They called this new city “Westwend,” after the direction of their now burned city, which was west from where they stopped. They vowed to always look west-wend as to remember their origins. The middle of Westwend is called Gorond circle, also in remembrance. 

-

Most of it at least? Still lots of pieces to figure out but it was cool to suddenly come up with this today!

[maybeamiles]

Okay so you know how I said I was gonna do some worldbuilding? Well HERE IT IS. A very rough version of the founding myth of Illios (aka the nation where my story takes place). If you want some author's notes they're below the cut.

The archipelago of Illios is an unusual formation. Shaped like a crescent moon and surrounded on all sides by much larger powers, two of its three largest cities lie at the ends of each point of the crescent. It is said that long ago, before the mythical flooding of the (name) sea, the region was the tallest of a set of impassable mountains. Then a seafaring people driven from their homeland settled there, and became the people of Illios we know today. 

Of the many myths that tell of the nation’s history, perhaps none is more important than the tale of its founder, King (whathisname). It is said that when he was a child, he slew a great mountain lion that had wandered into his home village. He grew to become the leader of his home village, and half the children born in the village had to seek spouses outside their hometowns because of the risk of inbreeding caused by his promiscuity. 

His village grew to great renown and prosperity under his rule. It is said that he was the first to encourage Illios’ seafaring trades, and when his youngest daughter was set to be married, he called all the neighboring kings to his city. The young girl was an unparalleled beauty, with eyes and hair that matched the gold her father had amassed. She was believed to be the most beautiful girl in the world.

As the neighboring kings began to argue and bicker, saying that their sons deserved to marry the princess, offering gold and jewels as bribes and promising their undying loyalty should they be the object of her father’s favor. But when one young man was found murdered, things took a turn for the worse. 

To keep the peace, the king made every man swear a blood oath. His daughter would choose her husband from among the men, and if anyone ever took her from her chosen beau, the others would come to her father’s aid to retrieve the girl. And of course, a king from another island kidnapped her. 

The war raged for years, until the king had conquered every last piece of the islands that now make up the nation of Illios. He instated himself as its high king, and his rule brought about a new age of prosperity for the people of the land. Many tales are told of his conquest, and it is said that, at the end of his life, he ascended to godhood. 

Of course, historians believe that the man was far more complicated than the myths suggest, but you will find in Illios that the royal family tends to have children with golden hair or golden eyes, and throughout the country, children born with those features will often be said to be descendants of the old king, and blessed with carrying the nation’s future. As for what the king himself would think of his country? Who’s to say?

More wip-notes below the cut.

Okay so I'm tempted to name this guy Priam, cause he's inspired by both Priam (with his MANY kids) and agamemnon (with the whole conquering thing). But also ehhh I've got too many troy references already and at this point it's starting to feel a bit disrespectful. Like I am a thief and I like stealing names from pre-existing things for my own worldbuilding but everything I engage with that does steal is a bit more tasteful about it than I am. So I want to work on that.

The concept of ascension is something I just dreamed up recently, and I wanted to come up with a myth that might be told about the founding of the nation most of the story takes place in. I might have some time to explore what this King was actually like, what his motives might've been, and what he thinks of his country now. Playing into a rough concept of gods walking invisibly among their people. I'm also NOT a mythology person or a historian, or a religious studies scholar, or anything else like that, so a lot of this is like, my personal philosophy + what tickles my brain + what I get from reading things in my spare time.

Lots of stuff might change so I don't mind posting this before the story actually releases cause it's not really spoilers at all.

Also gold and divinity are gonna be HEAVILY associated in this story cause I think it's really fucking pretty, so yeah. That's a thing. Enjoy.

[light-and-shadow]

Current OC lore mess I guess:

Mahonge, the Tsandjo of Shadow, and her brother Chianne, Tsandjo of Light, both had cult followings at one point in history. The War of the Radiant Darkness ended with both cults defeated - scattered to the winds - and Chianne entering a several thousand year slumber.

Laid to rest beneath the oldest mountains, Mahonge assigns Alura to guard her brother's resting place - her first and recordedly only Chosen, an Entsandjo, granted the gift of immortality by the goddess.

By Chianne entering a potentially eternal slumber, and Mahonge no longer being threatened by the cult of The Ember, neither the light nor darkness of the world has taken over.

[janedoeaart]

wip from today!

[cutepotatook]

bruh *explodes*

[the-maw-consumes]

[aegisofworms]

DREAM-OF-TEETH, a mech made from the hollowed-out corpse of one of the old gods, has killed each one of its previous pilots. You are the "lucky" 13th to try, a pit-fighter made a porcelain. Together, they will break the world before it breaks them. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

This started as one part of a larger zine wip I wanted to share but I went a little overboard with the presentation haha. Said wip below: (Currently working on making headway on another project so it'll be a bit before I finish this up but I like the layout so far!)

[cb-writes-stuff]

SO I went through the Project Opal tag and WOW. Great worldbuilding, I can picture it. How do you come up with names and words in the language? I focus on the real world with my writing so not much is left up to me to decide.

I’m glad you asked! Which I’m realizing is a phrase I use a lot!

Loredump time~!

And also

Linguistics time~!

So! The language spoken by people in the Vandeth Desert is called Vandeth. You asked about names and words, so I’ll talk about names and words.

I knew I wanted to use a constructed language (or conlang, for short) for the Vandeth people. After a previous project proved extremely time-consuming and not at all worth it, I decided to create Vandeth using a top-down method. I started by just making up words, then seeing what they had in common, finding rules they follow. Every word I made after that would follow those rules. And when I needed grammar rules, I made those up, and continued following them.

Some of the most important things are vowel inventory, consonant inventory, and phonotactics (what sequences of sounds are allowed to go together). Vandeth uses the standard /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, and /u/ vowels, and that’s it. (They’re pronounced consistently, unlike in English.) I won’t write out all the consonants, but at this point I’m no longer adding any new ones.

Now, the phonotactics. This is mainly about syllable shapes. In Vandeth, the most common vowel shape is CV. After that is CVC. A very rare syllable shape is VC. Even rarer is CVV and CCVV. I also try to have a good balance of how often certain sounds appear and where. Hard, sharp sounds are more common, while soft, round sounds are rarer. What makes a sound hard, sharp, round, or soft is kinda vague. It’s a bit of a kiki/bouba situation. But to me, a word like “luvimo” doesn’t sound like Vandeth at all, but “shivaki” does.

But how do I even come up with new words? Well, I first look at the words I have and consider if it can be derived from any of those. At one point, I wanted a word for “gossip”. I looked at the words I had, and I noticed blai, “stain” and saksa, a verb stem meaning “to talk”. In Vandeth, words go after the word they describe, and when a word is derived from two others the words swip-swap. So the word for “gossip” ends up being blaisaksa. As another example, the word geital is a combination of gi, “two”, and keital, which used to be “gikeital” before it was shortened to be easier to say. The reason for this is that a geital is the same length as a keital but twice the length. The word keital itself actually comes from the verb stem kei, “to wear”, and the noun tal, “shadow”.

And what about names? Well, usually it’s just a word. Or it should be. I gave a throwaway character (an infant) the name Kimi, which in Vandeth means “pearl”. It’s kind of a cutesy name. Most often I just pick sounds that are Vandeth-y. It’s really important to me that Vandeth names (Vennem, Kalami, Mela) sound distinct from Delgane names (Lynn, Elvi, William, basically any English name) and names from other languages (Sóf, Markhi, Lili).

Don’t even get me started about grammar. There’s lots of linguistics and affixes involved, and admittedly, I haven’t made a whole lot of full sentences so the grammar is actually not super fleshed out. There’s enough for deriving words, though. Maybe I should just start translating random things, or have people send things to be translated via asks. Hmm… Anyway.

[girlboyburger]

mmilo... milomilo... mmmmoilo...

[vynnyal]

I've been having a delightful time stumbling over my emojis being used in random servers, so here's more

[sm-writes-chaos]

Gods in Hearts of Fire

This post explains God's that I have thought of so far, I will edit as I think of more.

Including their calendar and how the seasons work with time.

First God: Ezerk, creator of life

Ezerk is their main God. The one who crafted the trees and mixed the seas. She’s the one who painted the leaves patterns, sculpted the snowflakes designs, carefully crafted every animal, and everything else in life as we know it. 

She was born from a tiny light, a light that shone in a newfound darkness. The light grew and grew until it exploded into Ezerk herself. A flowing symbol of light that no one has laid eyes upon, for she is so bright that you would not be able to see her. 

Her light feeds life, blooming the flowers, and growing the trees. When it is time for a life to pass on to Heaven, called Junnic (June-iss), a piece of her light breaks off and carries that life to Junnic. When a life is born, a piece of light is brought back to her. Thus keeping herself alive. 

However, when a life is pulled into hell, called Korro (core-o), that light can never be brought back during a birth. In times of great unrest like the Season Dragon War, Ezerk becomes sick and life on Alias doesn’t thrive as it usually does.

She is often depicted as the sun or sun-like. Some depict her as a woman with a long dress made of light, fewer some depict her as always pregnant with life.

--

Second God: Erdue (err-due), creator of time and balancer of seasons

Erdue is the daughter of Ezerk. The dragons were in a constant war of winter and summer, and were both growing tired of having no time to sleep. So Erdue gave them set amount of time to awake and sleep.

She created the six months, called Erisis (airy-siz, plural). Three for summer, three for winter. Two weeks between the shift from summer to winter is called the 'shift period.' A time where the lines between summer and winter are blurred as the fire dragon starts to drift to sleep and the winter dragon begins to awake.

She oversees the shift and keeps the Erisis and dragons in balance making sure they never cause destruction again.

This is basically what their calendars look like, they're all vertical like this. Each Eris (air-ees, singular) has 15 days.

Erdue is often depicted as a young girl and always by Ezerk's side. She is associated with the colors of summer and winter, those being orange and blue respectively.

--

Third God: Halrik (hall-reek), overseer and controller of Korro

In the darkness when Ezerk was born from a light, Halrik came from her shadow. Since then being attracted and tied to darkness he often hid himself away from Ezerk, who was too bright for his liking. Ezerk didn't like his distaste for the light and tried to show him how wonderful it was.

He was so taken aback by the light that he flew down into the darkest darkness he'd ever seen. He soon found his way into Korro, a place that was just to his liking.

He soon took control and has been overseeing it ever since. Whenever Ezerk's light follows someone down into Korro he steals it and hides it away, being bitter against Ezerk and not wanting the light to be near him.

He is often depicted as a shadow, often behind Ezerk hunched over in bitterness. Dark blues and blacks are associated with him.

--

The overseers, the first true God’s: Thanas and Thonar, keepers of balance and creators of all opposites

In a void of darkness two beings shifted into consciousness. They were born twins, Thanas and Thonar, they were complete opposites. The void was unbalanced and unstable, it needed something to balance out the darkness, in which Thanas was created to keep that balance. Though her light was too strong for the darkness, so Thonar was needed to balance out the darkness's side. 

Thanas was overjoyed to be able to do what she pleased and would spend eternities perfecting her ‘projects.’ Thonar was forced to follow along and create his own things in order to not throw off the balance again.

Thanas would create life, and in turn Thonar would create death. And so the cycle continued and we got the polar opposites of the world. 

Humans and beasts.

Heaven and hell. (AKA Junnic and Korro)

Ezerk and Halrik.

This is how the two smaller main Gods were created, Ezerk from Thanas’ light, and Halrik from Thonar’s darkness.

They are always depicted together, often in swirling patterns as they intertwine in knots, unable to escape the other. Forced to keep a balance forever. 

Thanas is depicted with soft yellow colors, while Thonar is depicted with harsh black colors.

Many do not remember these two despite their importance, believing Ezerk created life when she is merely the one who feeds it and keeps everything alive.

--

@delusionisaplace

[oooocleo]

have a peep.. ill make a proper post about it when i have time, but i'm very much hoping to be able to make regular bug fae lore updates part of my patreon perks in the coming year.. i hope thats something folks are interested in! & it'll also help me make steady progress w/ it haha

[ohitslen]

*Vampirizes your Vashwood*

keep reading for more :)

If there needs to be much closer close-up please let me know!