worldbuilding-from-the-abyssals

[worldbuilding-from-the-abyssals]

Welcome! This is a blog for a little worldbuilding project of mine!

This isn't really for anything, this project is only for improving my worldbuilding, character design, and writing skills! Here's the main gist: The universe is made up of a billion different realms, each ruled by a handful of gods each. All the gods got together and made a single realm for them to share to battle and wage wars on, so they don't destroy their own realms. Humans showed up in the battlefield realm one day, gods agreed to create a paradise for them if the humans agreed to pretty much be soldiers in the gods' battles. Humans agreed, paradise was made but turns out that the presence of that many gods at once slowly changes inorganic and organic matter in unexpected ways. And the presence of hundreds in the paradises caused some pretty significant changes to the paradises. Humans still live in their little corrupted paradise, while still trying to play soldiers to the gods. This worldbuilding mostly focuses on those paradises, and the humans in them

[worldbuilding-from-the-abyssals]

Old intro! This was wayyy too long, but I'm keeping it here Hello and welcome! This is a blog dedicated to a little worldbuilding project of mine! I mostly made this world for the express purpose of getting better at world building, so keep that in mind.

Here's the main gist: there's a universe filled with gods, each pantheon having their own little dimension to rule over. Gods love to fight each other, even going as far as waging war against entire dimensions. But, these battles took place in these dimensions, where humans lived (and humans were almost always used in these battles in one way or another). Since killing another pantheon's subjects is heavily frowned upon, the gods made a new dimension void of human life, made purely for battles. This worked well for a great length of time, until a group of humans broke out of their home dimension and ended up in the gods' battlegrounds. After some great debate, the gods decided to strike a deal with the human group: if the group stayed and played pawns in the gods' games and battles, the gods will give the entire group the perfect life they could ever hope to achieve. The humans agreed, so the gods set aside some land, and founded a little kingdom of luxury for these humans. More humans arrived, an actual civilization was formed, technology advanced to become an industrial society, but the close proximity to so many gods at once started corrupting and distorting the environment and all living things (everything starts overflowing with divine energy, and that's what causes the distortion). Humans complained, gods gave the humans magic to channel divine energy into, but there weren't much the gods can do despite that. And that brings us to present day, an age after humans figured out how to live a stable life despite the corruption, but humans still have to deal with the rapidly distorting world and all sorts of corrupted and beasts, all while still trying to play pawns (or as it's called professionally, "Divine Mercenaries") to the gods. Hopefully that wasn't too long, so let's get into specifics. The land itself:

The lands set aside for the humans are islands, there's a bunch of them, but the biggest ones are called Haven, Respite, Refuge, Sanctuary, and Hideaway. Each are separated into different "Fragments," each ruled by a few gods. Each fragment has a few cities and towns, and a place for teaching new generations about combat called "Citadels". (When they were constructed, Citadels' main role was to protect their fragment from corrupted monsters and to provide shelter to civilians in case of an attack. Even when they were mostly turned into barracks, their name never changed.)

The islands are completely isolated from each other. Since the battlegrounds were originally made only for the gods, they shift constantly, making travel through the battlegrounds impossible. The islands instead connect to each other though portals. The only exception is Refuge and Respite. The residents of Refuge attempted to build a tram system into different afterlives, which eventually was stuck down, the wreckage of which ended up in-between Respite and Refuge, forming a travelable path between them. Also, I say islands, but the islands are about the size of the entirety of the Americas. They're not small by any means. The islands don't have water surrounding them either, they're surrounded by a honey/oil like substance. It's a pitch dark purple and cannot be swam in. Nothing floats on it, not even boats. Its main purpose is to avoid rust and tarnish on metal weapons that normal water would cause. Daily Life:

There are large pockets of land where the corrupted environment is favorable for human survival though, so there are clusters of cities in those pockets, and small villages and towns everywhere else. In the cities, most food is grown plants, the city centers have large farms, giant glass greenhouses, on top, which any citizen can get food for free out of. These farms only have the most common grown foods though; there are private businesses that grow some more rarer foods for profit. The villages and towns outside the pockets deal with livestock, where the corruption is too unpredictable to grow any sort of plants. The villages trade with the cities, the villages give meat and animal products, and the cities give plant-based products and food, and seed for feeding animals. Housing in cities are most commonly large housing complexes, although there are some examples of homes being built into industrial and business complexes. These homes are given out free to every resident of the city, but there are bigger and fancier homes that a person can pay to move into. Small businesses are often arranged like malls, stacking them on top of each other to save space. Bigger businesses have their own buildings, but most often outside of the safe pockets.

The gods' battles and games:

The islands and battlefields are kept in strict maintenance by a group of gods called "Wardens." Wardens pretty much deal with the paperwork, set-up, and clean-up for the gods' battles and games. The Wardens were put in maintenance as a result of a punishment.

With being hired as Divine Mercenary, humans receive a notice directly delivered to them, mostly through a warden. While being a Divine Mercenary, a human cannot die. If they do so, they simply are brought back to life and brought back to their homes. The battles and games vary a lot, so most Divine Mercenaries are specialists so a specific type of battle/game.

How magic works:

Gods' bodies are held together by magic ("divine energy" in fancy terms), and any living thing that gets close to them eventually starts to have magic build up in their bodies as well. Since this is harmful to anything that's not a god, the gods gave humans the ability to channel magic into spells. Eventually humans invented devices that are pretty much just magic bleeder resisters that they can attach to livestock and pets, so they aren't corrupted. (Wildlife have evolved and adapted to magic, with the cost of becoming unpredictable and dangerous)

Spells are divided into three tiers depending on their use. Domestic magic (everyday spells that assists in home life), combat spells (spells used in combat, banned in most places that aren't battlegrounds), and an "other" tier. Spells in the "other" teir are considered threats to the gods themselves. Humans must use magic often to dispel magic from their bodies, or else they will become corrupted by the magic.

That should be everything, thanks for reading, if you read it all.