Fantasy worldbuilding : society / history / warfare

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Starglider
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Fantasy worldbuilding : society / history / warfare

Post by Starglider »

I am currently finalising the script for a video game project, and I would appreciate worldbuilding suggestions for the fantasy setting. The project has a fairly serious tone - not a parody / retro / remake / arcade / abstract concept like most Xbox indie games. It isn't a roleplaying game, but it does have a story focus with about a hundred panels of art and a couple of hours worth of voice acting in it. I will incorporate any good suggestions into the final script and remaining artwork. In particular I am interested in;

a) The social & political implications of the geography, technology and magical abilities.
b) The likely differences between warfare in this setting and 19th century historical conflicts.
c) Any setting detail likely to influence the personal history / occupation / outlook of the main characters.
d) The plausible military and poltical responses to the extinction-level event in the main story.
e) Best rationalisations for the most suspension-of-disbelief threatening elements (e.g. the airships).

Generally if anyone has neat ideas for fantasy elements that fit with the setting, I will try to include them.

Geography

Windhaven has significantly more ocean cover than Earth; both poles have landmasses somewhat larger than Antarctica, but the rest of the land consists of endless chains of small islands. Climate is similar to earth but storms are somewhat more common, and the atmospheric dust loading is higher (insolation might be higher to maintain the same temperature?). There is a moon similar to earth's but somewhat smaller, so tides are about half as strong. Plant and animal life is very similar to contemporary Earth; my background notes have the planet terraformed about ten thousand years ago, though this is not known to the characters and never referenced in the story. The game takes place in a chunk of the northern hemisphere;

Image

The story visits four locations;
Taahay - a western temperate island settled in the last 100 years with a 'frontier' feel to it.
Kyvitoya - a snowy, rugged island in the far north, close to winter extent of the ice pack; lots of jagged peaks and deep valleys
Atieu - volcanic island near the equator, with tropical climate and central lagoon
Fillicoudi - one of the most populated islands, split roughly equally into city, fields and marshy badlands.

Magic

Roughly one in three thousand humans on Windhaven have an innate ability to use magic. The trait is not directly inherited, but the incidence of the children of magic users having the ability is much higher, roughly one in one hundred. Recently this has been proven to be caused by the child being conceived on an island with the ancient enchanted monuments, as distant outlying islands with no such monuments have been colonised and no one born their has magical abilities. I am not sure what the best terminology (formal and slang) for these people is.

Image

All such individuals have the ability to transform themselves into a specific kind of bird; the species seems somewhat related to personality. This is the first ability to manifest, in the early teens. Transformation takes a couple of seconds, is painless and has assorted lightshow visual effects. It initially doesn't include clothing/equipment, but with experience shifters can take along anything they can carry. If killed while transformed the person returns to human form about ten minutes later. Aside from natural abilities in bird form shifters have supernatural resilience and fast healing; being hit by an arrow or a musket ball will cause minor bruising, being ten feet from an exploding naval shell will cause severe lacerations and internal bleeding that heals after ten minutes or so, a direct cannon hit is still instantly fatal.

Each magic user also gets a set of abilities with a particular theme, that they can develop with practice and training. These magical abilities require only an act of will to use, although many practioners find words and gestures make it easier. The effects achievable are the same in human or bird form and all of these abilities are mentally fatiguing, which would restrict use to half an hour or less per day. However in bird form shifters can make use of shrines; these are a particular kind of monument found in large numbers around all the inhabited islands. Flying through these instantly heals the shifter, removes all fatigue and charges them with some kind of energy that dramatically reduces the 'casting time' to trigger an ability, from a minute or more to a few seconds. This energy lasts for a dozen or so uses of an ability, or until the shifter returns to human form.

Abilities seen in the storyline; probably near the high end of abilities, but it's implied that these are just some of the most useful expressions of the basic ability, not the only things the characters can do;

(video with all the player character abilities in it)

* All magic users seen in the story have the ability to communicate telepathically with each other, in human or bird form. This works like speech, no apparent way to communicate images, complex thoughts etc. Range seems to be about ten kilometers, not enough to reach between islands. In bird form all shifters can also sense flying objects, large moving objects on the ground, terrain topography and magical effects out to several kilometers. This is a 360-degree 'always on' ability, although shifters can miss details they aren't specifically concentrating on just as with vision. These basic abilities can be used concurrently with anything else, however active abilities can't be combined and it takes some time to switch between one effect and another.

* Creating a glowing ionised channel out to 200 metres, and then shooting 'ball lightning' down it, which will stun or kill a human on impact. This is a very common and quite easy to use ability (it's the starting attack for all characters in the game). Effectiveness on the ground is limited by the fact that the lightning will arc to earth, so practical range is only 10 to 50 metres depending on ground conductivity. Full range is always available for air-to-air and air-to-ground attacks. Sustained fire rate is approx every two seconds, which can be maintained for half an hour plus even without charging at shrines.

* Deajan can create magical crystal barriers that pass airflow and light but stop all physical attacks up to a naval shell. They ablate (shatter) on impact but then regrow as long as he concentrates. He can either mentally hold them in a position relative to his body or shoot them forward as projectiles. On foot they take minutes to form and grow, as a bird with a shrine charge they take seconds. Max surface area seems to be about 10 m2 for a constant shield, at least 100m2 for a fired projectile. Deajan can also create basketball sized lumps of red hot rock and shoot them at 100 metres/second or so. These contain pressurised volcanic gas that makes them explode on impact (or after travelling a few hundred metres). Without a charge it takes a minute or so to make one. With a shrine charge he can make twelve at once in a few seconds, telekinetically hold them until firing, and shoot about ten salvos before needing to recharge. In the cutscenes Deajan says that he uses his abilities (in unspecified ways) to help with mining and construction, formerly he used them for military purposes.

* Sakoti can shoot gouts of flame out to 50 metres sufficently hot and dense to set several trees completely aflame with a two second burst. Cutscenes imply that in human form this is limited to more like 10 metres and covering one or two people. She can create dense balls of flame that home in on a particular target, travel up to a kilometer (taking ten second to do so) and explode with the effect of a 500lb napalm bomb. The homing is not very effective and the shots can be dodged by other fliers, cavalry or anything similarly agile. With a shrine charge she can make about thirty of these fireballs taking two second to charge each one. Sakoti seems to have remote sensing abilities beyond the usual 'radar vision'; she is able to do a superficial analysis of the anatomy and biology of extradimensional creatures by concentrating on them for a few minutes.

* Alaysia can create dense pre-nucleated rainclouds that drench a roughly 200m x 200m area with 'holy rain' for about thirty seconds. This stuff burns extradimensional creatures like acid, improves crop growth and
seems to partly heal and regenerate burned-out trees; other than that it's like normal water. She can also create tornados, which only last for twenty seconds or so unless the right weather conditions are present
to sustain them naturally. These abilities take a minute or two to use in human form, seconds in swan form with a shrine charge, ten to twenty such uses per charge.

* Lyozar can create strong electrical charges on objects in the vicinity; the charges are randomly positive or negative, so the result is huge arcs of electricity leaping about and burning/stunning/vaporising the
targetted objects. This seems to affect everything in a cone out to fifty meters or so, with some control of range and spread. With a shrine charge this is 'instant on' and can be maintained for thirty seconds or
so. As with the basic lightning attack range is greatly reduced on the ground. He also has an 'ether flight' ability that increases his flight speed to high subsonic (at the cost of near-zero maneuverability), for up
to ten minutes or so.

* We meet a woman who can heal severe trauma and pretty much any illness by touching the patient and concentrating for a few minutes. When the island is under severe attack, she uses a shrine to charge up
and completely heals a string of badly burned people by hovering over each for a couple of seconds and glowing (as an albatross).

* Later a densely populated island is being protected by a flock of pacifist owl-shifter monks projecting 'fire shields'. These are glowing hemispheres about a kilometer across that burn monsters to ash on contact
and are able to withstand the equivalent of a light artillery barrage for about ten minutes before collapsing.

* Large numbers of vulture-shifters come after the protagonists. Most of these are criminals who have been given the ability recently by a bizarre alien process (that also gives them incurrable cancer). Most of the
ones who were previously shifters had their bird form change species to griffon vulture, which implies that sufficiently deep belief/personality changes or some kind of ritual can do this. Some of them have the ability
to weaken dimensional barriers enough to allow monsters to cross to Windhaven.

Teleportation, mind-reading/control and time travel abilities do not exist in this setting.

Magical weapons exist, such as impossibly sharp blades and cannon balls that create an incendiary explosion around themselves on impact. These are created by shifters with a talent focused on enchanting items, none of whom are currently seen in the story. They are too expensive for everyone to have one but it is practical to equip every soldier in an elite unit with scale armour that is magically proof against musket balls, so I assume they take days to months to make (depending on the item). Once enchanted the effect seems to last indefinitely, expect for one-shot bombs and ammunition. Magical steam engines also exist that require no fuel; due to the very limited supply, these are almost entirely reserved for powering airships. There is a general theme of magical items being impossibly strong and able to create and destroy heat and electrical energy, but not able to move on their own or exhibit any kind of intelligence. Other than enchanted items, magical effects never persist beyond when the caster stops concentrating on them.

History

The defining event of Windhaven's history is the near-total destruction of planetary civilisation nine centuries before the present. Humans on Windhaven had achieved a population over one billion and technological advancement comparable to mid 20th century Earth, but augmented sophisticated magical abilities used by both individuals and created devices (with a feel similar to the atomic super-science of 1950s sci-fi). Contemporary historians have three major theories for this; a deadly plauge, a global war with devestating weapons and an attack by demonic creatures. All of these have some supporting evidence and the truth is a combination of all three.

Cities were reduced to rubble, large concentrations of humans consumed, many more died from starvation and finally a deadly virus killed over 90% of the survivors. In the century following the cataclysm, global population dropped to barely a million and society regressed to something comparable to dark ages Europe. I haven't detailed the following half-millenium, but it presumably consists of warlords carving out kingdoms, ongoing intermittent warfare (island-hopping along chains), rise and fall of noble families, the rediscovery of isolated communities etc. In the past three hundred years there has been a rise of nation states, increase in population and surge of academic and technical development equivalent to the renaissance. The most advanced areas are well into an industrial revolution, although rail has not developed beyond a few mining installations due to the massive trade fleets, canal networks and lack of long land routes.

I have some very rough sketches of assorted nation states that exist in the world, but I'm refraining from posting them because I'd like to see if anyone has interesting ideas for late-18th/early-19th century fantasy nations. The storyline includes three particularly large nations in a tense three-way standoff, with an alliance about to be formed between two of them and the third paranoid and desperately searching for smaller allies to maintain a balance of power. The lead character played a major role in an attempted invasion of his own mid-sized kingdom four years earlier, so there are definitely plenty of land grabs and flare-ups going on. Presumably there is plenty of piracy, raiding and corsairs going on as well, although this doesn't feature in the story. The main villain in the story is a discraced politician, possibly survivor of a failed coup d'etat before becoming a cult leader; still looking for ideas for his backstory.

I would like to have the relationship of magic users/shifters change from taking positions of personal power themselves, to being more of their own social class, considered a valuable resource by national leaders and coexisting uneasily with the various forms of nobility and merchant classes around the world. Since they frequently come from peasant backgrounds and are uniquely gifted and mobile, they should be somewhat mercenary and insular, with their own factions and training academies. The relationship with the common people should be a tricky mix of respect, jealousy, fear and hero worship, considering that bird-shifters are the only means of rapid communication and the only source of really effective medical treatment. All the characters seen in the story are non-sexist by author fiat, but one can presume that since 50% of the rare and valuable magic users are female, an exception is made to historically typical sexism in this case.

Technology

We don't see a lot of this in the story, and what we do see has a rather wide range of sophistication, a possible plausibility issue. The navies of Windhaven are composed mostly of multi-masted cannon armed ships similar to late 18th century ships-of-the-line. The major nations have a dozen or so ironclads each; the ones we see look like enlarged (three times the displacement) versions of the Monitor and the Virginia. Deajan commanded a unit armed with rifled muskets; at one point Lyozar mentions stealing blueprints for a prototype 'self-loading volley gun'. In various interiors we see candles, globes, pickled specimens, in the richest areas gas lights. The nations of Windhaven seem to have made less progress on global mapping than Earth did with the same technology; possibly because the stronger storms make crossing the wider stretches of ocean more hazardous (for both ships and bird-shifters). From the ease with which they start shooting at flying monsters, it seems that Windhaven navies are used to having to open fire on enemy bird-shifters, although the prospects for bringing one down with grapeshot out of late 18th century naval artillery seem somewhat limited.

Image

By far the most advanced things seen are the airships, which look like first world war Zepplins. They are powered by lightweight steam engines, filled by hydrogen, exist in relatively small numbers and are considered
valuable enough that major nations hesitate to risk them rescuing populations from monster attacks. They are able to carry hundreds of people and probably use lots of magically enhanced components beyond the engines. In the final mission we see a couple of prototype airships equipped with 'lightning shields' and 'death rays', which work pretty much the same as they do in Flash Gordon. This is presented as directly reverse engineered from the ancient rings/obelisks based on the work of Sakoti and other magical & engineering luminaries.

The defense monuments are technomagical artifacts from the former Windhaven civilisation. Three types of artifact exists; the shrines, rings and obelisks. There are many thousands of these across all the major islands in the nothern hemisphere. These structures are about 20 metres tall and appear as carved granite. They have an intricate metal and crystal structure inside. The shrines charge up bird-form shifters with energy as mentioned above, the obelisks and rings seemed to do nothing prior to the storyline. The characters discover that by flying through a ring and then under an obelisk, the two become connected and the obelisk fires automatically at extradimensional creatures that come within its range (of several kilometres). They can fire a continous particle beam in the 100 megawatt class (2 second burst every 12 seconds), guided projectiles that fly at high subsonic speeds and explode with enough force to destroy several close-packed enemies, starburst projectiles that split into forty small highly maneuverable bolts with the force of a light mortar, or draining rays that neutralise incoming fireballs and plasma bolts. Obviously everyone and their enchanted dog has tried to reverse engineer the shrines and find out what the obelisks & rings are for
with very little success prior to the story.

(will post more details if there is interest)

Bonus RAR question : what ability set and bird species would you want if you were a shifter / magic-user in this setting?
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Re: Fantasy worldbuilding : society / history / warfare

Post by Ahriman238 »

I like the idea of all magic users being able to turn into a specific bird. I'll have to think more about the rest.
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Re: Fantasy worldbuilding : society / history / warfare

Post by Starglider »

Ahriman238 wrote:I like the idea of all magic users being able to turn into a specific bird.
That was possibly inspired by 'The Shining Falcon' by Josepha Sherman, a childhood favourite of mine, also to a lesser extent the widespread use of it in the Mallorean cycle (by David Eddings - the bad guys all turn into ravens).

There is actually an early-80s sci-fi novel called Windhaven, which I discovered a few months after I started making this game. It is also set on an ocean planet dotted with islands and has a lot of flying scenes, although there are no other similarities. The geography here is dictated by the technical limitations of Xbox Indie Games and the impracticality of having the terrain continue to the horizon.
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Re: Fantasy worldbuilding : society / history / warfare

Post by Broomstick »

I was going to ask about George R.R. Martin's Windhaven, as that novel was the first thing I thought of when I read the name of your world.

Perhaps you should look into South Pacific history - that's the closest Earth has come to such a civilization of island chains. Island civilizations frequently have very strict and hierarchical societies, strict population controls (from elaborate marriage rules to human sacrifice to infanticide to simply putting excess members in a boat and shipping them out), and extremely stringent controls over resources.
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Re: Fantasy worldbuilding : society / history / warfare

Post by madd0ct0r »

the ring of little islands looks almost like the debris around an huge impact crater.
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Re: Fantasy worldbuilding : society / history / warfare

Post by mr friendly guy »

Roughly one in three thousand humans on Windhaven have an innate ability to use magic. The trait is not directly inherited, but the incidence of the children of magic users having the ability is much higher, roughly one in one hundred. Recently this has been proven to be caused by the child being conceived on an island with the ancient enchanted monuments, as distant outlying islands with no such monuments have been colonised and no one born their has magical abilities. I am not sure what the best terminology (formal and slang) for these people is.
If you are looking for a term to describe people being born a certain way with no genetic basis, try congenital. Some diseases are congenital but no due to genetic inheritance, eg spina bifida.

If you are looking for a term to describe magic users who change into birds, whats wrong with variations of shape shifters, eg skin shifters, shifters, etc. Or how about Flyers?
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Re: Fantasy worldbuilding : society / history / warfare

Post by OmegaChief »

If you're wanting to have the Shifters be more an entirly seperate class, you could have them show up to wisk away the magically gifted children they discover/are told about to thier academies as soon as they can? Perhaps with some payment to encourage the parents?

Though if more then one Acedmy finds the same child, this could lead to an amusing bidding war type scenario.

Anyway, onto the list.

a+b) The main difference that springs up between this world and classic 19th century combat would probably be army size, so it's very likly the land battles/invasions would consist of far fewer men then it would historically, perhaps those magical item equipped special ops teams?

Though Land Battles might be rare occrances, with islands surrendering under the threat of naval bombardment or just flat out surrendering on defeat of thier navy (Perhaps some kind of international code for how they're supposed to do this?)

c) Well, I'll think on that some more and see if I come up with anything.

d) You're probably going to get a wide range of responces depending on the individual, with some wishing to focus on saving thier own people islands to the exclusion of all else, while others focus on a bigger picture, so ultimatly it'll probably be sheer chaos, though individual military units and formations will probably stick together and go with thier commanding officers opinions, probably.

e) *shrug* They don't seem that out of place to me, and seem fairly justified with what you've mentioned already.
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Re: Fantasy worldbuilding : society / history / warfare

Post by Simon_Jester »

One important question to ask yourself is: where do resources come from? Windhaven has very little land on which to grow wood or food other than fish. Fresh water will be at a premium, unless the planet experiences very heavy rainfall on average- and large oceans in an energetic climate such as produces so much rain have other problems, like monsoons and typhoons.

Minerals will be a problem too. If we imagine the map of Windhaven as being an Earthlike world with sea levels increased by several thousand feet so that much of the continental landmasses are submerged, the sites of most of the great mines in the world we know are underwater, at depths that on Earth would place them off the continental shelf. Where do your civilizations get iron, or copper, or combustible fuel for steam engines, from? Are these minerals unusually common on the major island landmasses? Is combat over the mineral deposits common?
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Re: Fantasy worldbuilding : society / history / warfare

Post by Starglider »

Simon_Jester wrote:Fresh water will be at a premium, unless the planet experiences very heavy rainfall on average- and large oceans in an energetic climate such as produces so much rain have other problems, like monsoons and typhoons.
It does have a lot of rainfall and yes storms are a problem.
Where do your civilizations get iron, or copper, or combustible fuel for steam engines, from? Are these minerals unusually common on the major island landmasses?
How about a much higher incidence of ocean floor nodules than Earth? On Earth the number of hydrothermal vents is relatively low and they tend to occur at large depths. If Windhaven's overall topography is flatter and there was a historically high level of undersea vulcanism, then there could be a lot of extinct vents in shallower waters, such that dredging for polymetallic nodules is a practical way to get metals. I lack the knowledge of geology to know if this is feasible.

Given the problems of deforestation in island cultures the established magical ability for causing rapid tree growth may in fact be vital to sustaining production of charcoal sufficient to support industry. That would be a nice piece of background to slip in somewhere.
Is combat over the mineral deposits common?
Yes it would be. Windhaven has lots of inhospitable islands that are little more than jagged rockey spires, which nations establish mining outposts on. I'm expecting these to be raided a lot; there will be constant pressure to build large navies to defend trade and mining. Since avians are the only viable source of aerial reconaissance and can individually sink ships of the line, having a many as possible on your side should be a vital factor in naval dominance. I should probably write more backstory on how nation states try to build up their own shifter forces and how that competes against their own culture, I expect there would be a lot of codified law and custom about rules of engagement, ransoming when captured (since you don't want to kill vital economic and military resources if you can help it) etc.
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Re: Fantasy worldbuilding : society / history / warfare

Post by Simon_Jester »

Starglider wrote:How about a much higher incidence of ocean floor nodules than Earth? On Earth the number of hydrothermal vents is relatively low and they tend to occur at large depths. If Windhaven's overall topography is flatter and there was a historically high level of undersea vulcanism, then there could be a lot of extinct vents in shallower waters, such that dredging for polymetallic nodules is a practical way to get metals. I lack the knowledge of geology to know if this is feasible.
The problem isn't so much that this is impossible, it's that getting at the nodules would be prohibitively difficult for a Steam Age civilization.
Yes it would be. Windhaven has lots of inhospitable islands that are little more than jagged rockey spires, which nations establish mining outposts on. I'm expecting these to be raided a lot; there will be constant pressure to build large navies to defend trade and mining. Since avians are the only viable source of aerial reconaissance and can individually sink ships of the line, having a many as possible on your side should be a vital factor in naval dominance. I should probably write more backstory on how nation states try to build up their own shifter forces and how that competes against their own culture, I expect there would be a lot of codified law and custom about rules of engagement, ransoming when captured (since you don't want to kill vital economic and military resources if you can help it) etc.
I'm a little vague on the tech level here, should I be thinking more Napoleonic, more 'mid-Victorian' along the lines of the 1860s and '70s, or more 'late Victorian/Edwardian?'
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Re: Fantasy worldbuilding : society / history / warfare

Post by CaptainChewbacca »

In shallow water, the harvesting of seafloor nodules is very possible. The difficulty comes from the fact that nodules don't really stack to a great thickness, so once you've 'harvested' an area in a short amount of time you have to move your operation. It isn't like mining where you can work the same land for generations, I'm afraid. It could be, though, that you have very large plateaus (uplifted abyssal plains) and shallow lagoons stretching hundreds of square miles, with floating barge 'foundries' where divers live and work for months or years at a time, bringing up maybe only ten nodules an hour.

Kinda like a combination of mining and pearl diving, the most industrial nations would be those which found themselves near large 'meteor pools', even though nodules have nothing to do with meteors.

I should point out that the primary metal in seafloor nodules isn't iron or nickel, but MANGANESE, which was mostly used in antiquity for treating glass and then later as a laboratory reagent. That means that your node-utilizing civilizations would likely have;
1. A great cultural affinity for glass in art and construction.
2. More ease creating basic chemicals like acids and chlorine.

You can find out what else they contain from the wiki page but the general breakdown is;
manganese (27-30 %)
iron (6 %)
silicon (5%)
aluminium (3%)
nickel (1.25-1.5 %)
copper (1-1.4 %)
cobalt (0.2-0.25 %)

A civilization which uses nodules as its primary metal source is going to develop very differently, and might end up using a lot of aluminum in those airships you've designed.

Edit: Note that ancient pearl divers couldn't go more than 40 feet without risk, though in some parts of the world divers would go as deep as 125 feet. At that depth, you'd need either dozens of divers going at a time, or some magical diving bells to allow quicker/safer access to the nodules.
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Re: Fantasy worldbuilding : society / history / warfare

Post by Simon_Jester »

Remember, they're not medieval, so 19th century style diving suits are not out of the question.
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Re: Fantasy worldbuilding : society / history / warfare

Post by Vejut »

Well, yes, but first they've got to be able to get the metal to develop and build those diving suits, unless they're some sort of decayed and rebuilt post-icecap-melting world or something. Also, if we were really combing it over...are those islands capable of supporting enough people to generate 19th century technology, and would 10-nodules-an-hour be enough to supply that level of metals? If the nodules aren't enough, you might still have ironclads, but it'd have effects on what ordinary people carried and used tool and weapon wise.
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Re: Fantasy worldbuilding : society / history / warfare

Post by Starglider »

How much useful material could 18th century miners get out of the 900 year old ruins (heavily weathered) of a contemporary city? I would think lots of aggregate and useful amounts of oxidised steel and copper, digging into the rubble piles of the central high-rise area. Nations might be based around the best salvage sites.

If the ability to make new metal ships is lacking, what is the feasibility of raising and refitting old wrecks? Are there any shallow-water conditions that would preserve a metal hull for that long?
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Re: Fantasy worldbuilding : society / history / warfare

Post by CaptainChewbacca »

Well its some number of nodules per miner per hour. I imagine that diving in deep water unassisted, a worker could bring up 20-30 pounds of ore an hour, but keep in mind that what he's finding is far more rich in metals than any ore you'd mine. If we're allowed to invent the geology of the planet, there could be large expanses of abyssal plain which have been uplifted to relatively shallow water, and over time pearl divers became ore divers. Then, as the 'easy' places to gather nodes became depleted the need for technology to sustain deeper and deeper diving activities drove industry in the same way oil drilling or mining technology developed on earth.

BTW, this is the kind of distribution you're talking about with a manganese nodule field;

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The nodules are mostly in the 5-10 centimeter range. So if we take a node that's 8 centimeters across and assume a rough sphere, we get a volume of 270 cubic centimeters. Running at the assumption of approximately 7% iron (and we could handwave a higher iron content if we wanted) you get approximately 1/5th of a pound of easily extractable iron in an 8-centimeter node. And that's not considereing the magnanese (which our world didn't get to find in an elemental form until the 19th century), nickel, and aluminum.

So imagine a contract miner, working for the Imperial Mining Company. He lives on Mining Barge 'Gistlyn's Fortune', anchored off the eastern edge of the Tukkuni shatter. He wakes up every morning with the rest of his shift (400 miners on this barge, half in the water at all times), takes a breakfast of fish and stewed kelp, and goes to work. He gets rowed out to a platform situated a half-mile from the barge, grabs his dive bladder and stones, and goes to work. He started out as a gatherer, a young man who would simply swim near the base of the platform and pile stones on the lift wheels, to maintain a constant supply to sink the miners quickly to the seafloor, but for the last 8 moons he's been a seeker.

First into the water, he dives feet first to keep his bearings. Eyes protected with rubberized glass goggles, they're new. Just five years ago, miners squinted in the briny seas and often went salt-blind after ten or twelve years. Working his jaw to equalize pressure and flooding his sinuses, he quickly arrives at the bottom, eighteen spans below the surface. The platform is new to this area, and the seahearts are plentiful. He dumps his stone weights in the pile at the base, avoiding the turning wooden gears, and gets to work. Expert fingers pick among the nodes, scooping up handfuls of palmnut-sized hearts while grabbing an occasional heart the size of his hand. Slowly, methodically, he seeks the precious earthhearts, taking occasional puffs on his bladder as his lungs begin to ache. He's about to kick for the surface when a shift of sand exposes a rare sight; a giant seaheart. Bigger than his head, it is immense and tempting, but he knows how heavy it is.

His lungs are truly burning now, and the sea weighs on his chest. Undaunted, he grips the heart firmly; it shifts freely in the sand. Planting his feet, he makes a mighty push, kicking and straining with all his might. The single heart in his hands weighs more than his entire harvesting pouch, but he struggles on, knowing the bonus for such a prize would bring sorely needed money to his family. He kicks, and struggles, but as he nears the surface his blood roars in his ears and he begins to falter. Suddenly, strong hands grab him, as two other seekers recognize his shaky movements and pull him up to ear. His head breaches and he sucks in sweet life. The foreman frowns at the reckless behavior, but grudgingly nods as he looks at the heart. It is massive, the iron alone in it would be almost two full weights. Proud, but tired, the miner strips off his goggles rolls into the shade; seekers are allowed to rest when they feel the need. Grabbing some water and a handful of palmfruit, he takes a few minutes to rest before going down to the seahearts again.
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Re: Fantasy worldbuilding : society / history / warfare

Post by CaptainChewbacca »

Starglider wrote:How much useful material could 18th century miners get out of the 900 year old ruins (heavily weathered) of a contemporary city? I would think lots of aggregate and useful amounts of oxidised steel and copper, digging into the rubble piles of the central high-rise area. Nations might be based around the best salvage sites.

If the ability to make new metal ships is lacking, what is the feasibility of raising and refitting old wrecks? Are there any shallow-water conditions that would preserve a metal hull for that long?
If there are modern cities around and they had more land to originally mine metals from (i.e. sea levels have risen) then they'll be ready sources of metal if one sifts through the layers of topsoil. I imagine anytime an ancient city-site is found, there will be a 'gold rush' of people to the city to sift through for metal as well as any preserved artifacts.

As far as refitting sunken ships, except in very rare locational conditions anything that's been underwater more than 100 years will be pretty much lost. I know there was an Australian steam-ship SS Xanthos which was somehow spared this to the point that its' engine was salvaged in the 1970's and after 2 decades of restoration you can actually turn the motor by hand. This is, to my knowledge, just about the only time that metal has survived underwater.
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Re: Fantasy worldbuilding : society / history / warfare

Post by Starglider »

CaptainChewbacca wrote:So imagine a contract miner, working for the Imperial Mining Company.
Thanks for that, I will add it to Lyozar's family backstory.
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Re: Fantasy worldbuilding : society / history / warfare

Post by Broomstick »

If there are avian shifters might there also be "amphibious" shifters who can shape-change to a more sea-adapted form? Such people might specialize in recovery of sea resources, not just ore nodules but wreck recovery and particular forms of deeper sea life, and become just as valuable as the flyers. They wouldn't have to transform into fish, a seal or sea-lion form might work just fine.

Use of glass could replace many types of metal for certain items. Glass could make effective points for arrowheads, spears, and harpoons. Glass in the form of obsidian has been used for knives since before written history. I have glass baking and cookware in this world, it may be that it's more common than metal cookware on Windhaven. Presumably, these folks would have things like tempered glass, and glass/ceramics which can be used for various sorts of knives and cutting implements.

If this place has extreme weather you might want to consider the effect on architecture. Do they utilize caves on the islands as emergency shelters? Do islands have very strongly constructed "bunker" type buildings? It is unlikely that every home would be build to withstand the extreme weather due to costs, more typically in such circumstances most buildings are fairly lightweight so they tend to get swept away but rebuilding costs are low - people and valuables duck into caves or specific shelters.

This would also be consistent with old-style castle communities - the outlying areas are not particularly strongly built, when the Bad Guys invade you run to the central keep with your valuables and take shelter there, then rebuild after the raiders leave.

Bamboo is fast-growing and may take the place of wood in many instances. Islands unsuitable for human habitation due to size or lack of readily available fresh water but capable of growing useful plants (trees, whatever) may also be fought-over resources. If you have "sea monsters" - whale sized critters - their bones may also be used in building materials and so forth in place of wood as well.

Intensive use of the little available arable land is going to be an issue - another resource to fight over would be, of all things, bird shirt. Prior to petroleum-derived fertilizers the mining of guano from islands where sea birds nested was an important activity on THIS world, it would be even more so on Windhaven. On top of that, it can also be utilized in the making of gunpowder. Little rocky nubbins in the ocean covered with nesting seabirds are the equivalent of gold mines for these people - food (mm - chicken for dinner!) and a useful resource for both food production and war.

These folks will, of necessity, be heavily into reduce/reuse/recycle - wreck recovery, composting for fertilizer, re-use of every scrap of wood or metal... Island societies also tend to be rather ridgid for both resource control and human behavior. If they aren't, things tend to go to hell and the die-off events are pretty ugly.
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Re: Fantasy worldbuilding : society / history / warfare

Post by Starglider »

Broomstick wrote:If there are avian shifters might there also be "amphibious" shifters who can shape-change to a more sea-adapted form?
The ability is an engineered one, the details of which are deep background only hinted at in the story, but essentially the avians have bird forms and an 'intuitive' ability to use magic because it was judged the best chance for defending against a future incursion post collapse. In another fifty years or so scholars will discover that it is possible for ordinary people to achieve 'magical' effects, but only with specialised tools and extensive training.

As such there are no mammal shapechangers although it some dialog implies that penguin shifters are not unknown. :)
Use of glass could replace many types of metal for certain items. Glass could make effective points for arrowheads, spears, and harpoons. Glass in the form of obsidian has been used for knives since before written history. I have glass baking and cookware in this world, it may be that it's more common than metal cookware on Windhaven.
I imagine sharpening bits of ancient scrap would be preferable for weapons but I agree that mass-production of ceramics should be an even larger part of the industrial revolution than it was on Earth.

Are there also practical oceanic sources for fabric fibre? I know kelp-based fabrics exist but not how practical they are. Given the high incidence of storms, all these nodule and kelp collecting barges would need to be towed to back to safe harbors often. Avians delivering weather reports and (for those with the right talent) creating winds and currents to push ships along would be vital services.
If this place has extreme weather you might want to consider the effect on architecture. Do they utilize caves on the islands as emergency shelters? Do islands have very strongly constructed "bunker" type buildings?
Yes, both, this is referenced in gameplay several times. Villagers on the more primitive tropical island hide in caves whereas town dwellers on another island crowd into 'typhoon shelters'.
It is unlikely that every home would be build to withstand the extreme weather due to costs, more typically in such circumstances most buildings are fairly lightweight so they tend to get swept away but rebuilding costs are low - people and valuables duck into caves or specific shelters.
That fits with the art given that we see either solid stone construction or bamboo and straw, I will add that justification. This means construction of intermediate strength and permenance e.g. wood-frame wattle+daub and mud brick buildings would be less common.
If you have "sea monsters" - whale sized critters - their bones may also be used in building materials and so forth in place of wood as well.
Currently all biology is transplanted from earth with only minor radiation and adaptation, but I imagine a lot of whaling goes on in the more northern areas. I should put some explicit references to that in around Kyvitoya.
Little rocky nubbins in the ocean covered with nesting seabirds are the equivalent of gold mines for these people - food (mm - chicken for dinner!) and a useful resource for both food production and war.
It would be fun for some avians to get annoyed about that and enforce religious / cultural restrictions on eating / exploiting birds (PR plus insecurity). Get caught eating chicken and no crop enhancement, miracle disease cures, air mail or weather mitigation for your island!
Island societies also tend to be rather ridgid for both resource control and human behavior. If they aren't, things tend to go to hell and the die-off events are pretty ugly.
Historically yes but most such communities on Earth existed without large merchant ships and/or isolated at extreme distances. In this case where islands occur in large numbers in groups and chains, and seafaring is highly developed (relative to the general level of civilisation), I would expect a massive amount of ocean trade between specialised islands. The nations that develop the trade infrastructure to allow such regional specialisation would advance much faster; again similar to regional specialisation in the historical industrial revolution, but even moreso. Having access to relatively fast airmail (50 mph sustained for many species, 500 mph in bursts for a small fraction with the 'ether flight' ability) would be useful here too in that you can get timely news about market conditions before sending a loaded merchantman off to a distant port. Certainly you'd expect avians as a group to be very wealthy given the economic value of their services, which would of course create some resentment and jealousy.
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Re: Fantasy worldbuilding : society / history / warfare

Post by Simon_Jester »

Vejut wrote:Well, yes, but first they've got to be able to get the metal to develop and build those diving suits, unless they're some sort of decayed and rebuilt post-icecap-melting world or something.
Yes, but that really doesn't take so much material. Especially since those diving suits were often made largely out of leather and stuff.
Also, if we were really combing it over...are those islands capable of supporting enough people to generate 19th century technology, and would 10-nodules-an-hour be enough to supply that level of metals? If the nodules aren't enough, you might still have ironclads, but it'd have effects on what ordinary people carried and used tool and weapon wise.
I think it's the other way round. A rifle barrel or hand tool uses at most a few kilograms of metal; a seagoing ironclad will use hundreds of thousands of kilograms. Making metal even marginally more expensive makes it almost totally impractical for heavy construction- ship armor, ship *hulls,* iron bridges, that sort of thing.

In some parts of the world, wooden hulls (even on steamships) were competitive up until 1900 or so; here, the expense of metal makes them all the more desirable. Anything that can be made of wood or stone (or glass- thank you Broomstick), will be.
Broomstick wrote:If there are avian shifters might there also be "amphibious" shifters who can shape-change to a more sea-adapted form? Such people might specialize in recovery of sea resources, not just ore nodules but wreck recovery and particular forms of deeper sea life, and become just as valuable as the flyers. They wouldn't have to transform into fish, a seal or sea-lion form might work just fine.
My impression is that shifters of any kind are rare enough that they can't really provide the population base for any significant industry.
This would also be consistent with old-style castle communities - the outlying areas are not particularly strongly built, when the Bad Guys invade you run to the central keep with your valuables and take shelter there, then rebuild after the raiders leave.
This also helps as a collective social response to the threat of naval bombardment...
Starglider wrote:I imagine sharpening bits of ancient scrap would be preferable for weapons but I agree that mass-production of ceramics should be an even larger part of the industrial revolution than it was on Earth.
In real life, the industrial revolution was in large part a shift away from wood, stone, and ceramics toward metal and cement- materials that can be produced on the required scale only using industrial facilities, whereas individual tradesmen with hand tools can turn out acceptable quantities of the first three.

As to sharpening scrap- that's usually a last resort. There have been knives recovered from the Greenland Norse colony after its isolation from Europe that appear to have started out the size of a dagger and been slowly sharpened down to a tiny stub, but that's an anomaly.

Also, would there be that much scrap metal around?
Are there also practical oceanic sources for fabric fibre? I know kelp-based fabrics exist but not how practical they are.
Leather from the hides of large sea creatures seems more probable.
That fits with the art given that we see either solid stone construction or bamboo and straw, I will add that justification. This means construction of intermediate strength and permenance e.g. wood-frame wattle+daub and mud brick buildings would be less common.
Well, they might not be so uncommon- wattle and daub can't survive hurricane force winds well, but mud brick probably can if you build heavy and bunkerish enough.
Island societies also tend to be rather ridgid for both resource control and human behavior. If they aren't, things tend to go to hell and the die-off events are pretty ugly.
Historically yes but most such communities on Earth existed without large merchant ships and/or isolated at extreme distances. In this case where islands occur in large numbers in groups and chains, and seafaring is highly developed (relative to the general level of civilisation), I would expect a massive amount of ocean trade between specialised islands. The nations that develop the trade infrastructure to allow such regional specialisation would advance much faster; again similar to regional specialisation in the historical industrial revolution, but even moreso. Having access to relatively fast airmail (50 mph sustained for many species, 500 mph in bursts for a small fraction with the 'ether flight' ability) would be useful here too in that you can get timely news about market conditions before sending a loaded merchantman off to a distant port. Certainly you'd expect avians as a group to be very wealthy given the economic value of their services, which would of course create some resentment and jealousy.
There might be plenty of ocean trade, but the raw materials still have to come from somewhere- not least to build the ships, you need either iron for steam engines or big damn trees for ships' mainmasts. And population control is still a major issue- unless finding livable uninhabited islands is trivially easy, there's just no room.
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Re: Fantasy worldbuilding : society / history / warfare

Post by CaptainChewbacca »

I would encourage you to learn more about the Tanka, an ethnic group of southern China and southeast asia wherein its people traditionally lived their entire lives in boats and in houses build on stilts over the ocean, sometimes never setting foot on land. They may be your prototypical 'commoners' in your world.

Edit: Also, with respect to glassmaking, the abundance of manganese you'd get from nodules means that you'd be able to do some rather aesthetically sophisticated things with glass a lot earlier than we could on earth.
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Re: Fantasy worldbuilding : society / history / warfare

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Starglider wrote:As such there are no mammal shapechangers although it some dialog implies that penguin shifters are not unknown. :)
In which case their ability to dive might become EXTREMELY valuable... not so much for routine diving operations, but as surveyors, locators, scouts...

Question: what portion of these islands are volcanic, and which are "continental" type "mountain tops"? And how large are the largest islands? These are significant questions.

England, for example, is an island but it's not volcanic, and it has (or had - many have been mined) significant mineral resources. Enough that the Ancient Romans exert military effort at considerable expense and distance to secure some of those resources.

I'm guessing you'll have a mix of island types, from mountaintops to volcanoes to coral atolls. The resources provided by each sort varies considerably, but I'll leave it to our resident geologist(s) to detail them.
Use of glass could replace many types of metal for certain items. Glass could make effective points for arrowheads, spears, and harpoons. Glass in the form of obsidian has been used for knives since before written history. I have glass baking and cookware in this world, it may be that it's more common than metal cookware on Windhaven.
I imagine sharpening bits of ancient scrap would be preferable for weapons but I agree that mass-production of ceramics should be an even larger part of the industrial revolution than it was on Earth.
Hmm.... no, I think metal will be reserved for applications where there really are no alternatives (or as display objects for the extremely wealthy). Ceramics, glass, bone, shell, wood, and stone all make quite adequate weapons.

Consider, too, that given that everything is on islands everything will likely be decentralized in production.
Are there also practical oceanic sources for fabric fibre? I know kelp-based fabrics exist but not how practical they are. Given the high incidence of storms, all these nodule and kelp collecting barges would need to be towed to back to safe harbors often.
Um... I don't think so. On earth, islanders use land plants for fiber. The closest thing to seaweed "paper" is that nori stuff they wrap sushi maki with - sea plants just don't need the same amount of support structure as land plants due, so they don't develop the quantity of fiber land plants do. Even today you can get rope made from plant fiber: manila rope has been used for centuries on boats (it has some salt water resistance) and is from a relative of the banana. Linen comes from flax, Growing cotton might be an issue but there should be some. Heck, if the original colonists brought mulberry trees they might have silk as well (mulberries are also a source of food - mulberries, of course - and paper) although I expect it would be extremely expensive. Tapa cloth is a traditional polynesian textile made from pounded bark (it does tend to fall apart when it gets, wet, though, so applications are limited). They should also have wool. Spinning human hair (as well as that of other domestics) is also quite possible.

Fish-derived leather should be popular. For one thing, they're going to have a lot of it. Sharkskin, eelskin, hagfish skin (which is often labeled "eelskin")... not to mention sea mammal leather. Sharkskin has been used as sandpaper by many peoples, it's that rough.
If you have "sea monsters" - whale sized critters - their bones may also be used in building materials and so forth in place of wood as well.
Currently all biology is transplanted from earth with only minor radiation and adaptation, but I imagine a lot of whaling goes on in the more northern areas. I should put some explicit references to that in around Kyvitoya.
Prior to the Petroleum Revolution, whale oil serve many of the same purposes as petroleum derived oils, from heating to power to light to lubrication and so on. Not to mention the utility of the meat and bones. There should be a LOT of whaling going on.
Little rocky nubbins in the ocean covered with nesting seabirds are the equivalent of gold mines for these people - food (mm - chicken for dinner!) and a useful resource for both food production and war.
It would be fun for some avians to get annoyed about that and enforce religious / cultural restrictions on eating / exploiting birds (PR plus insecurity). Get caught eating chicken and no crop enhancement, miracle disease cures, air mail or weather mitigation for your island!
I have trouble thinking that birds wouldn't be exploited at all - eggs and guano if nothing else, but feathers as well. They're just too damn useful.
Island societies also tend to be rather ridgid for both resource control and human behavior. If they aren't, things tend to go to hell and the die-off events are pretty ugly.
Historically yes but most such communities on Earth existed without large merchant ships and/or isolated at extreme distances. In this case where islands occur in large numbers in groups and chains, and seafaring is highly developed (relative to the general level of civilisation), I would expect a massive amount of ocean trade between specialised islands.
Read up on South Pacific history. It's people in outrigger canoes undertaking voyages on a regular basis that the more technologically advance Europeans found daunting. These folks didn't have merchant ships as large as the Europeans, but there was considerable inter-island trade, some islands were highly specialized in output, and they weren't nearly as isolated as you might think.

The societies were were tightly controlled in order to prevent resource depletion (islands that didn't ran out and the islanders didn't survive - there are many accounts of people settling uninhabited islands and finding the ruins/remains of predecessors), and to limit population. Infanticide and human sacrifice were both common in the islands prior to European arrival, and island overpopulation is still a problem even today. In the old days, excess population might put to sea in hopes of finding a new home but also with the knowledge finding such a place might be unlikely. Nowadays, some islands force excess population to emigrate elsewhere, some having agreements with land-based nations to take their excess. That option won't be open to your islanders.

How do they control population? Strict control over sex/marriage? Infanticide? Birth control? Magical intervention? Or do they have sufficient warfare to kill off "excess" people?
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Re: Fantasy worldbuilding : society / history / warfare

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BTW, if you're wondering about clothing, I'd go with Barkcloth and Tapa, and perhaps even Ramie for special, tough fabrics. As far as I have been able to find, any clothing purporting to contain seaweed is a scam. I'd also second fish leather, there may be farms where saltwater crocodiles are raised for their leather and meat.
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Re: Fantasy worldbuilding : society / history / warfare

Post by Starglider »

Thanks for the suggestions everyone, I will research the topics mentioned and try to incorporate all this in the final script.
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Re: Fantasy worldbuilding : society / history / warfare

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For an example of a successful small-island economy look into Tikopia, an island of about 5 square kilometers which supported a population of 1,000-1,200 for centuries without boom-and-crash cycles and without stripping the island bare. VERY structured society, but also willing to look objectively at matters - which is why around 1600 they decided pigs were too expensive to keep and slaughtered all of them.

The wiki is just a start, of course. They are a fascinating society.
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If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich. - John F. Kennedy

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