Smores over Felfire

I’ve got most of my outline done… I just hope I thought enough of it through in order to use a full 50k words without doing the “oh no! we’re stuck in an infinite time loop” trick.

I understand that doing NaNoWriMo means that by the end of the month, you will have a first draft, not a finished copy, but I’m trying to do something more than just create a story, I’m making a world. Most fantasy works stick their protagonists in a medieval-esque setting, ignoring the formative years of a civilization. If mankind were capable of magic, then we would never have come up with the catapult, cannon, bullet, or atomic bomb. We would have simply researched how to propel a rock through the air and, maybe, how to set it on fire. To paraphrase Mr. Vader, the ability to shoot a gun is insignificant compared to the power of magic.

Ignoring the technology problem, what about the religious one? Forgotten Realms/Faerun (the typical D&D world) has a pleathora of gods. Why have so many, which seem capable of giving power to their followers, and no one god(dess) has taken over the world! I mean, you have 1 evil god who promises their minions power and immortality. The god then goes around making allies with other like-minded gods while the minions slowly convert, pillage, and/or burn the world to the ground. Yes, it makes for a somewhat one-sided world, but if the out-of-game creators of said world have to hobble their creation just to make it functional, that makes for a somewhat sub-par world.

WoW has a similar problem. Ask any lore nut and they’ll happily tell you all about the retcons, the hanging questlines, etc. present in this game we all know and love. Where did the Naaru come from? Are they “angels” for the light? Why is the Scourge’s version of undeath so much worse than others? Does it keep the soul of a person from going on while it’s “undead?” How does it do that?

The tentatively titled Junato’s Legacy is my attempt at creating a world that is unique and complete. Yes, it will be borrowing heavily from the real world in that I can’t spontaneously create a bunch of new languages (and even if I could, who would understand it), so it will be in English, but I will be doing my best to make each nuance intentional, instead of taking things like personality, gender, and geographical placement for granted.

And come November 1, we’ll see how far we get along with it.

I’ll be reposting all the stuff I come up with here in the hopes that someone will see something I didn’t. I likely won’t be reading the comments until Dec 1, but in the off-chance that I do, know that your commentry (especially constructive criticism) is much appreciated.