cornerofmadness | Worldbuilding blog hop #1 Geography and climate

I could have done any of a number of worlds for this but I picked the fantasy (dieselpunk?) world from one of my nano's (2011 I think) Voluntary Nightmare. This world is the one that stumps me the most so I thought this might help me to clarify a few things or finally drive me around the bend into full on insanity, whatever comes first.

In true confessions time, I still haven’t fully imagined the land yet. It varies in my head from day to day from a large island like New Zealand to a smaller isolated continent like Australia. The royal city is coastal but mountainous, which quickly levels into thick forest to the south east of it. While the kingdom encompasses all of the land from the sea over the mountains and to the forest and beyond into the small grasslands and interior desert, after the war, the Tasiana members of the kingdom tend to live either the grasslands or, more preferably, the coast/mountainous regions. The Yaarians are left in the vast woodlands. Almost no one lives in the desert.

The coast enjoys a temperate oceanic climate giving way to a ‘Mediterranean’ climate with good seasonal rainfalls and snowfalls in the higher points of the mountains. The forests range from temperate deciduous, which is the bulk of them, to temperate rainforest to taiga as one goes north. (If the country goes north enough to have a tundra or south enough to have a sub/tropical area, it has yet to inform me thusly). Spain, Italy, France, Germany or even Chile would all be good references for the bulk of the country. The grasslands are put to good agricultural use with both cattle and grains being raised. Sheep and goats are kept in the mountains. Very little is done with the interior desert being a bleak place for most life forms. The king would have pushed the Yaarians there if he thought he could have done it without destroying his crop lands.

The coastal region is not particularly prone to hurricanes or tsunamis, but it can’t be entirely ruled out. The more severe weather happens either high in the mountains during snowfall or out in the grasslands where tornados are a possibility. The temperate rainforests in the more northern reaches does tend to live up to its name with daily rains (ala Seattle).

The highlights of the kingdom are the 13 star cities, each named for and housing one of the thirteen Living Goddesses. The majority of the star cities are coastal/mountainous with two in the grasslands, one north and one south and one in the woodlands, which have always been ancestrally the Yaarians who do not follow the Living Goddess faith. The desert holds no star city. Each star city’s main feature is the temple complex for the Living Goddesses and the temples are the main tourist designations. All of them have major train routes to and from them (with the three outliers being more difficult to get to but there is still a train), especially as it is a common thing to make a pilgrimage to the goddess who governs whatever a person is having trouble with.

A decade ago where someone came from didn’t matter all that much with the kingdom at harmony but even then those following the Living Goddess faith (The Tasiana) were still found in along the coast, mountains and grasslands and the Yaarians have always been more prone to make their homes in the woodlands and grasslands. They’ve been driven into the deep woods since the war with some exceptions. There is a village not tremendously far from the royal city (Militant Star City, named for the Savaria-Militant, the war aspect of the goddess) but it’s left alone, considered thoroughly broken by the military. In the last ten years travel is very restricted for the Yaarians (who tend to look more Nordic and stand out among the Tasiana who look more Mediterranean or Indian). They tend not to travel out of their town at all but have foot paths through the woods that interconnect their villages.

I wanted to draw a map. Three things stopped me. 1. I can’t draw 2. I ran out of time to pretend I could draw 3. Of all the things eluding me in this story, the geography is the worst offender. I’ll just flat out admit it. I tend to impose the geography in a post hoc fashion. It will come to me, probably about the time I start revisions on draft one.

worldbuilding blog fest

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Music: Sonata in E major - Scarletti

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From:

masqthephlsphr.livejournal.com

Sigh, a writing blogfest I'd love to participate in and can't, since my world is the putative real world. San Francisco, just with a hidden subculture or two. I am working on world-building, but it's a different sort of challenge than making your world up from scratch.

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Worldbuilding blog hop #1 Geography and climate

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