Holy haberdashery, Batman! There’s a whole new world down here!

[Marky Lazer]

So, we have all decided to write Sci-fi or Fantasy. I’ve been told there’s only one rule in the writer’s world of these genres. There are no rules. The sky is the limit!

These genres differ from the other genres because they play in worlds and universes that are totally made up. And even though everyone knows it; we love it. We like Spock’s ears, we like Frodo’s feet. We like Mr. Tumnus and some of us even like Jar Jar Binks… These are all extraordinary creatures living in extraordinary worlds using extraordinary technology or magic. And we know it’s a bunch of poo. And we LOVE it.

J.R.R. Tolkien invented an enormous new world. He wanted people to believe it, create the biggest sense of authenticity humanly possible. For example, as far as I know, all the names of his characters have a meaning.
Frank Herbert invented the spice mélange and the rites involving water… Whole rituals, just to create authenticity.

Two examples how to make an unbelievable world believable.

Assignment 1
Build a ‘community’ that doesn’t exist. Generate a race for on this planet, with its own flora and fauna, and recourses only to be found in this particular world. Create a religion with its own rites, rules and rituals. Invent powerful artifacts and weapons, carried by heroes of the past… Go nuts!

Build your own world or community or city in 1,500 words. This needn’t to be an exciting read per se, it needs to be believable. Make us believe little creatures with big hairy feet aren’t weird at all…

[Saeltari]

I am in the middle of finals, but I saw that you wrote in the 'Setting the scene' post , so I shall get this assignment done and posted as soon as I finish my finals, which should be this week. Just wanted to let you know I wasn't cutting out on the deal

[Marky Lazer]

You don't need to join to do me a favor, mate. This is so everyone can improve his or her writing skills together with peers.

[SJAB]

Only 400 words;

If the land of Haflen had, at present, no anointed King, it did have a Queen; Volesford. Largest of all the great Guild run cities.

Autumn’s distinctive colour had painted the trees on the city’s edge with the same shades that lived within its blast furnaces. The air of the western quarter was thick with the tang of ore and charcoal smoke. Narrow soot-grimed streets rang to the sound of metal hitting metal. Gold, tin, silver, iron and copper - miners have carved out of the Gfwyrdd Mountains and sent down river, to be worked in alleys and streets of the smith’s warren.

In Mark Street, the goldsmiths, with deft fingers, teased the valuable yellow metal into objects of beauty and adornment. Copper smelters at the end of the Tuck, muttered oaths and sweated, as they poured the bright metal out to cool in the bright early morning air. The sound of tin hammers rapped around Clover End, deafening master and apprentice alike. In the large workings in Tap Street, the master swordsmith smiled; as he watched the men complete the rekindling of the hearths. This was achieved swiftly, for this morning, more than one blade would be baptised in the quenching baths. The country was torn by civil war and swords were a currency all there own.

But the mighty Metal Workers’ Guild was not the only one that plied its trade in the city. Weavers of cloth, clay potters, glass workers and many more, worked and lived within the city’s sandstone walls.

Merchants also traded in wares from far-flung countries. Mountains of silks, spices and carved mother of pearl travelled up from the southern sea on brightly painted river barges. Fine wools, ivory and gems came over the plains from the east. And from the north, came furs and the fine metal craft of the Gweithiwr Haearn clan. These were carried on mottled pony-back over the high pass. Dark-skinned traders, dealing in rare oils and perfumes, bartered the contents of caravans, which had crossed the perilous Penglog Desert, in ill-lit reed strewn rooms, far from their tented villages.

Volesford was considered by many to be the greatest of the Free Guild cities. The metropolis was said to stand above the petty strife and politics of the Kingdom. It was also said by many a wag; only a fool thought a King could rule Volesford.

[Saeltari]

Originally Posted by Marky Lazer

You don't need to join to do me a favor, mate. This is so everyone can improve his or her writing skills together with peers.

I know, but the motivation helps .

[Marky Lazer]

To follow SJAB's example, I cut my world to 400 words as well.

Far from the sunlight, deep under the Cold Mountains lives a people in the town called Argath – The Lightless City. Ruled by the immortal King Mauglín the Proud and his Queen Shari, Argath is the only place to find shelter from the Evil Wind, who chants Her hymns to drive man and troll to madness in the arctic lands of Pehr. But not the people of Argath for they are the very children of the Wind.

Long ago, when Mauglín and Shari were still children, the Wind spared their lives. In trade for their humanity and allegiance to the Wind, She gave them… immortality.

The Wind dropped them in an immense deep chasm in the Cold Mountains. At first, it was darker than a winter night in this depth, but with touch and the draft of a breeze they found a tunnel that was leading westward; it was however too small to crawl through. The children used their bare hands to carve a path true the stone mass, finding ore, coal, gold, silver and other recourses on their path. After what seemed minutes to the young children, but in reality was more than years, they found out the labour didn’t tire them, nor did they grow hungry or thirsty. Once they managed to crawl through the enlarged tunnel, they found their way into an immense cave, illuminated by more tiny, sparkling lights than stars set in the sky.

In the sparse light, they hadn’t been able to see the metamorphose of their own little bodies, but now they could. They had turned… into Shadows.
Years and years they worked, carved, restlessly. Every day the underground city drew closer to its completion; a Great Hall, houses, stables and a temple to worship and praise the Wind, and barracks, archeries, alchemists, blacksmiths, leatherworkers, engineers... Until whole a granite city had risen from within the deepest of the Cold Mountains.

Millennium after millennium passed until one day, Shari bore a son, and they named him Hargath – Vengeance. Mauglín, now called Mauglín the Proud, took his son in his arms and walked to the balcony of the Great Hall that viewed over the large city square to praise the Wind for this unforeseen gift. To his own shocking surprise it was filled with his kind, cheering at the sight of their Prince; all equipped with the finest armours and armed with the strongest of all weapons. The Age of the Shadow was about to be unleashed…

[Marky Lazer]

General Comments on SJAB’s world:

Why is the story of your community, so far, worth listening to? It seems like an ordinary industrialist town. This needn’t be a bad thing per se, but for now it is. You should have shared something with the reader that is extraordinary about this town. Imagine this is The Lord of the Rings, you describe Hobbiton, how everyone is preparing food (in your case working on metalworks and trade), and… that’s it. There is no Ring in Hobbiton, and none of them Hobbits know anything about the peril that lies over Middle Earth… Sure, the Hobbit community is a fun little, merry world, but why would we want to know about them? On a side note, Hobbiton is more interesting because a race is living there that is unfamiliar to the reader; little fellows with big hairy feet. I want to believe that your world and lands, and people and their habits are extraordinary, but you have to give me some specifics…

[SJAB]

Originally Posted by Marky Lazer

General Comments on SJAB’s world:

Why is the story of your community, so far, worth listening to? It seems like an ordinary industrialist town. This needn’t be a bad thing per se, but for now it is. You should have shared something with the reader that is extraordinary about this town. Imagine this is The Lord of the Rings, you describe Hobbiton, how everyone is preparing food (in your case working on metalworks and trade), and… that’s it. There is no Ring in Hobbiton, and none of them Hobbits know anything about the peril that lies over Middle Earth… Sure, the Hobbit community is a fun little, merry world, but why would we want to know about them? On a side note, Hobbiton is more interesting because a race is living there that is unfamiliar to the reader; little fellows with big hairy feet. I want to believe that your world and lands, and people and their habits are extraordinary, but you have to give me some specifics…

That's the whole point it is an ordinary industrial town. One that becomes the nexus for events that change Haflen forever. Most of my work doesn't have strange creatures or traditional "fantasy" elements in them. They mostly concern people caught up in events that change them and change their worlds. The novel this is taken from doesn't have any wizards, dragons etc... It is just about a city that gets caught up in a civil war.

Point taken though, there is not enough there to hook a reader... and the description does appear in the novel when the action shifts to Volesford. I just felt the section fitted the assignment.

This, if you forgive the posting of it, is one of a number of alternative "hooks" or beginnings I am working on.

A hooded figure moved up the torn ridge, two large hounds at heel. The dogs milled around, begging their master to be allowed to hunt. The Dark Hunter glanced down, and for a second a smile played on his lips, as he contemplated his beasts’ joy in their work. He clicked his bony fingers and commanded them to seek. Away the large creatures went, bounding through the carnage of the battlefield. The deity then turned his hooded face again to the brow of the ridge. As he reached the cusp he stopped and listened; there were voices in the mist, but they were not the ones he was expecting to hear.

It was the time and the appointed place, but others had claimed it.

“You sure he’s dead?” the lad whispered, his hands hovering over the twisted shape.

“Course he’s bloody well dead, sliced like a feast day joint of beef he be,” the youth’s companion snarled, swinging a thick hand at the boy's head.

The youth winced and clamped his jaw hard against the bully’s blow. Tears smarted in his hollow eyes; he sniffed and forced himself closer to the fetid corpse. “Are you really sure?”

“Get on with it,” the dull-faced bully growled and turned the body beside him over. He ran his hands over a blood soaked leather tunic and grasped at a locket underneath. The chain snapped, leaving behind a blood-encrusted imprint on the cadaver’s neck. He peered through the gathering dawn at his find, grunted and flung it down with the rest of his pickings

A weak sun skittered out from behind the mist, its faltering beams slicing the still air. The remains on the ridge for moment heaved, as if the sun’s rays could again forge life into the abandoned shells. The youth quickly flattened his body to the ravaged ground. Patrols under a flag of truce had been out since the previous dusk. Corpse crows, like he, would be given short shift if caught plying their trade by either side.

The raw meat before him lay toppled over on its right side. An up thrust arm was shattered and bent back at the elbow joint. The legs brought up tight into the pit of the stomach. The lad moved along, feeling hesitantly in the folds of the man’s garments. Suddenly, the corpse’s right hand flexed and grabbed the youth’s heel. Another limb shot out of nowhere, clasping tightly over the boy’s terrified face. Then a thin body lunged over his, pinning him to the ground, as a length of sharpened metal plunged into the eye of the not so dead corpse.

For a second the clawed fingers on the boy’s heel clenched tighter, then relaxed. In response the hand over his mouth slowly slipped off. The youth rolled to one side, curling up, each of his ragged gasps exhaling his fear and loathing. “Thanks Moll…” he garbled. The small, hump-backed woman sniffed in response, wiping the knife clean on the corpse's breeches. She sniffed again, as if sensing something that troubled her.

“Move further on lad,” she grunted, pointing down off the blighted ridge. “I’ll finish off here.” The boy grinned in relief, gathered up his small hemp bag full of his pickings, and without a backwards glance scuttled away.

“Bloody soft cow,” the dullard muttered. Moll turned her head snarling.

The bully backed off, cursing boys and old whores with sharp knives. Moll sat back on her narrow haunches and glanced down at the bleeding corpse. A grin split her crone’s face and she began to rummage through its torn clothes.

As the old corpse crow worked her way round the remnants of a bay gelding, the snort of a horse disturbed the sullen silence. Moll glanced round for her companions; but there was no sign of them. She began to panic. The horses’ swift approach gave her little time to make good an escape. So in desperation Moll crouched down behind the bulk of the once fine animal.

The Huntsman chuckled deep within the folds of his hood at the woman antics. He was, it seemed, not going to be the only one that would be eavesdropping this autumn morning. He bowed slightly as the first of the riders passed him. Though the rider and his companions did not see or acknowledge him, or his hounds, as the dogs returned to their master to await his further commands.

[Marky Lazer]

I wasn't saying it needs a weird mythical creature in it, but it needs something to stand out of other little towns. You say a civil war is going to take place, you could have hinted to it, maybe some tensions between one smith and another. I'm just saying something... Well, let us see what the others have to say, and what you make from the next assignment

[Culhwch]

Well, my effort. A bit off the cuff, so possibly a little uneven, and maybe not what was expected from the assignment at hand. But this is what I came up with, anyway.

Kethis. Once the largest city in the Fo'lion Empire. Centre of the world, home to a hundred thousand folk. Kepen, thayal, mannish, weinds, the unworthy - all called Kethis home. Now, it is a crumbling ruin, forgotten in the desert sands, abandoned to time and the elements. A ghost city of tumbledown towers and rubblestrewn streets. But far from empty...

It is a forgotten race that now calls the forgotten city home. In a dozen tongues they have a dozen names. They name themselves, in their own hissing language, the first. They are the children of the night, born at the dawn of the world, when all there was was darkness. To this day they prefer the cool, enveloping shade of night, but you can see them in the daylight, if you look hard enough. By that corner, the heat shimmer? In that courtyard, where the mosaic tiles lay scattered, the dust-devil? Such are the signs of the children.

They are not alone in the desert, as wide and as harsh and as empty as it seems. Caravans still cross the barren sands, and though most know to shun the ruins of Kethis, there are some who risk the danger to shave some precious time from the long journey. When the children scent the live flesh so near at hand, they leave their city, and come whispering across the sand. They are selective in their prey. One here. Another there. A wandering camel-driver. A sleeping guard. A boastful merchant. All brought back to the city, back to catacombs beneath the Emperor's old palace. There, their blood is given to the first's gods, the nameless gods of the world without time, and there, their souls are devoured....

[Marky Lazer]

Lot of mystery in that, Culhwch. Stick with it!

[Trimac20]

Here's my attempt;

Selaron's Secret:

You may be wondering just exactly what Selaron's Secret is. Is it a lost treasure, a dark secret, a lost race of captured Sorgul's? No, Selaron's Secert is an island, a peculiar island for an island I know, but a name as evocative to its numerous inhabitants as it is to Skywanderers.

Selaron's Secret is an island trapped within the 'Pure' Dimension. For, when the Pantheon of Creator Gods fashioned the Inter-dimensional world, they created a venerable paradise for the first inhabitants of the world, a race of 'light people' known as Eluds. The Eluds are both astral and corporeal, both divine and human. Mortal in the sense they did not inhabit their bodies for ever, but after death were transferred into the superconsciousness of the Pantheons.

Selaron's Secret's geography is as fluid as the waves of the ocean, the stone that composes its structure hewn by the imagination of the gods, its trees said to be the dreams of the Siseria: the great Muses of the Pantheon who dwelleth on the Eternal Mountain, vaguely viewable as a white bird from Selaron. Hence, the geography of Selaron changes every day, in accordance to the dreams or whims of the Pantheon of Creator gods. Principle among them is the God Luurith, and the Goddess Luurithia, both his sister and wife (for incest for usual among the gods). It is believed Selaron's Secret was created as a gift by Luurith for his homesick wife, who had actually come from another Plane altogether to marry Luurith. Hence, a city of dreams are created.

Selaron on a typical day is a paradise as bizarre as it is wonderful. It is said there are a million cities on Selaron, but not a single house. One floats among cathedrals hewn of cloud, castles made of the carcasses of dragons and fallen demons, and great spires that reach from the lowest depths of Kul'klix: the Hades of the gods. From Kul'klix the cries of the dead rise like smoke over a simmering broth.

Selaron's people are 'light-people' are 'shape-changers.' They have neither form nor function, but they spend their time in contemplation of the Three Truths.
1: Selaron is only eternal so long as the god's desire, the gods have the
power to wish them away at will
2: Selaron is ever changing, that is necessity;
3. They do not exist, but are the dreams of gods

Hence, they live alone, yet connected spiritually in one Universe, collective consciousness. They write golden poetry, eat from the mysterious trees and such. There are no rules but one; the people of Selaron may not glimpse into the Tunnel of the Eternal, a massive obelisk/column which rises at the very centre of the Selaronian country. It is believed that glimpsing within the column will reveal the secrets of Existence, and the Destruction of the World.

[chrispenycate]

I want about four indigenous cultures, and one extraplanetary one, plus climatic effects, orbital details… I've decided that aiming for 1.500 words wn't even get my planet stable, let alone its inhabitants.

"Not enough tectonic activity". The ship gazed down from its newly achieved orbital stabilty on a shallow, world covering ocean. Here and there wave patterns showed where infrequent vulcanism or a chance confluence of currents had produced a speck of "dry land", but these were only a few meters high, and whenever the two moons cooperated, would be covered by the tides.
Not that the surface was pristine. Huge, floating islands of life- call it vegetation, for the developement on this planet had taken much the same path as on many others randomly colonised by comet-carried DNA spores - were visible from space, migrating eternally round the currents.

Where an older culture might have powered down through the atmosphere on tongues of fire, those whose trips through the cosmos could take over a century had learnt more patience. The giant airship eased itself into synchonisation with the planet’s air, taking such time as was needed, while the ship and the extensive and still developing satelite network fed them all the new data obtainable from on high, especially meteorlogical reports - even a zeppelin that would stretch from England to France would be vunerable to storms - and storms had already been observed in plenty, ripping apart the mat continents, dashing their remains on any solid bits remaining above the waves. Still, at this season they appeared to be concentrated in the northern hemisphere, so the gasbag, with its cargo of humans, laboratories, sensors and life support came down in the south.

Although from a distance its immense bulk appeared to kiss the waves, it was in fact several hundred meters above the water when evidence of sophisticated non vegetable life was obtained. Across the immensity of the ocean, boats were being paddled; and that, while not a proof of sapience, was a strong indicator. The multiple limbs of the paddlers were all to the same plan, two rigid jointed sections tipped with a shorter, flexible tip. This was made clear by the fact that different beings were holding their oars in different appendages, while those not so occupied could perform other tasks, some fishing, some eating, and some supporting smaller versions, who would, until contrary evidence presented itself, beassumed to be their young.

By now very few of them had any interest in propelling their craft. The multikilometer shape floating in the sky was a distraction that could not be ignored, and while a few of them dived into the safety of the water (demonstrating their total mastery of the element) most went into the local equivalent of a startled gape- complete immobility, with all eyes observing the impossible object as it grew through huge and enormous to unthinkably, universally vast.

From the airship, information ascends through the sky, to where another group of avid humans, with their scarcely less enthusiastic data processing units, analyse and file, theorise and question. It would have been preferable to have made a more subtle first contact, but what was done couldn’t be undone; and the raw data, along with theories and conjectures from the ship, set out on it’s long voyage towards Earth, the heart of human expansion.

We are the lords of the air ; beneath the waves, the grininick might chalenge us, or a brainless but still mighty schlaag, but on the travelling lands, none is our equal. And of all the tribes, ours is the boldest, those who go farthest, risk most, fish the most dangers. And now, from the air itself, a beast like none ever seen, bigger than the biggest schlaag, invading our territory.
Hide, and hope it doesn’t notice us ? After all, to something that size our boats are no more than shrimp. Attack, for enough meat to feed all the tribes ? But how to attack something higher than a dozen dozen waves, what spear could pierce the vitals many boatlengths within ?

The boats are bound together bundles of the same hollow tubular stems that make the island mats buoyant. A second bundle, acting as an outrigger, is attached by spars that are probably bones of some gigantic animal. The distance of this little group of craft fron any island, fixed or floating, together with the children and the possibly fish skin bags of possessions, suggested a nomadic culture, though the rope and nets could never have been made without contact with an island. Spears and cutting tools could indicate warlike comportment, or large prey; an expanse of water that size could hold beasts as large as could be imagined. Bilateral symmetry, twenty-four interchangable limbs, in two rows of twelve, brightly patterned shells, either natural or clothing. The difference in behaviour patterns between individuals suggests this is not a hive society, and social levels can not be judged from technology level, on a world where discovering fire is not an option… [probable, suggests, perhaps. No definites yet, nothing that isn’t surmise, guess]

It is passing over me faster than I could swim- and it goes on and on. It’s not attacked yet, has it even got eyes ? I grip my spear in five hands, if it attacks get the bearers and the young to safety if possible, treat it like a schlaag, that big it must be sluggish. A god? But the gods of air have always been friends, have always aided our raids on those who live on the moving lands, those who cross the fixed lands. And gods speak, they don’t hang in the sky, don’t move faster than a hurricane. A cloud? No cloud in memory, in song, has ever looked like, moved like, sounded like this. And no giant waves, no falling rain escort its passage. A beast ? A giant jellyfish in the sky (for now the translucence of it’s upper shell is clear, as it passes before the sun), brainlessly lost, and only interested in feeding – but never has such a beast been known.

And two tribes of nomads, separated by physiology and technology, study each other.

[Marky Lazer]

I think it would be good if you participate that you comment on the assingments of the others as well...

[SJAB]

Intend to, as soon as possible...