this is a sideblog for my fantasy world called sumakha, ive tried posting this stuff here before and either found it to be a hassle or got embarrassed soooooo maybe putting it on a sideblog will feel better... idk. this will mostly be art but also have text posts if i dont feel like drawing + reblogs of stuff related to it
if i havent addressed a worldbuilding thing i either havent figured it out or havent found an opportunity to talk abt it. if ur curious about something please send an ask about it worldbuilding thru audience participation is so fun
i hate being super organized with my worldbuilding stuff but also i love tagging things. so heres a directory for that
characters: i have too many i do not feel like listing them all out rn LOL maybe ill edit this later
ok down here is the info stuff
countries/regions
sumakha is a supercontinent and the only big landmass on the face of the planet, the rest is endless ocean and scattered islands
annoshik: empire with divine monarchy, pemadae majority, used to hold the most power til gnemmia was set free by king kontekitann. like to use magic for weaponry and fucked up nonsense
gnemmia: mostly just a region with autonomous towns, bumidae and homidae majority, was part of the annoshiki empire til they were freed. idk theyre chill
janggok: empire, bumidae majority, had control of gnemmia BEFORE annoshik took it. i dont have much on this place either outside of Its Fucking Cold
ketvidae lands: a bunch of different chiefdoms, ketvidae majority (obviously), they mind their own business mostly
xizekh: kingdom with a weird complicated system for choosing monarchs, ketvidae majority, also mostly mind their own business but its because theyre geographically isolated. prehistoric ketvidae got stranded there and experienced island dwarfism so theyre tiny lol
kumaku: a bunch of acephalous communities similar to gnemmia's setup, regrettably i have still not figured out the newadae's deal so i will have to get back to yall on it later
old dzenn: old homeland of the atridae that was conquered by iuraph, now most atridae are nomadic in the annoshik/gnemmia/iuraph triangle. the place is a hotspot for political tension nowadays mostly
iuraph: 'democracy', homidae majority, probably holds the most power in sumakha right now. they also use a lot of magic but its mostly for practical everyday use. they kinda have the fantasy equivalent of canada's reputation where they act like besties with everyone but still have a fucked history of imperialism like annoshik does
sapient species
this stuff is very barebones cus most stuff about them will be in their respective tags i think
pemadae: fucked up deer with predator eyes and raptop stances. omnivorous. diurnal. weird love for arthropod meat specifically.
bumidae: bear/ruminant/ground sloth/general fluffy guys. herbivorous but not strictly, some living in janggok will opportunistically eat meat. diurnal.
newadae: again these guys are a work in progress but i am leaning towards them being like freshwater octopus-like amphibians. thats all ive got rn
atridae: vulture/raptor guys. omnivorous scavengers. can fly. diurnal. eusocial on some level, but i haven't fully figured it out/will get to that in its own post.
homidae: basically just humans but shorter and hairier, also they have more of a chimp-like stance and still have handfeet. omnivorous. crepuscular.
magic
magic comes from crystals which may or may not actually be weird bacteria/microorganisms idk i havent decided yet. crystals start off as a pure white 'base' form that can be used for a bunch of things but can be further specialized into the above categories by transforming them (dousing it in blood to make a body crystal, lighting it on fire to make a fire crystal, etc etc). crystals need to recharge after prolonged use. usually mages will wear them in the form of jewelry but sometimes theyre embedded into weapons, and recently iuraphan mages have been experimenting with using 'pure' crystals as a power source for different tech
oops i abandoned this blog for two years. i shrimply have not been inspired to do fantasy worldbuilding stuff... but recent classes (mainly my archaeology classes for dis last semester) may be changing that... stay tuned
makeup is a sign of both material wealth and masculinity in annoshiki culture, and long hair is mostly just a sign of masculinity but REALLY long untied hair can also signify wealth (you don't work in the fields or anything, so you can leave your hair long and trailing without fear of it getting dirty). i haven't decided if high-class annoshiki women wear makeup as well, i'm leaning towards having them wear more simple stuff (like lipstick and one color of eyeshadow) while men wear more elaborate patterns that can utilize the whole face
characters featured here are the ex-noble body mage sheyann, a sumakhan version of my character samjulang, and the annoshiki royal family (prince kontekitann, king iunekitann, and queen kontessarai). if you're wondering why iunekitann is so much taller than his wife and son... that's part of the untitled eki story and i may make a whole separate post about it in the future. the tldr is that the annoshiki royals really want to look like they're divinely ordained, so they use body magic in order to make the king grow much larger than any normal pemadae should
another NEW OC (but not really i made this guy 3 years ago) ALERT!!! everyone please welcome surissesh. or dont because he sucks (read below the cut to find out why!)
surissesh is the royal advisor for king iunekitann of annoshik, and part of the story i mentioned here. currently hes... kind of a one-note character, just some megalomaniac who wants power for power's sake and double-crosses everyone he works with in order to ascend to the throne. i will probably add more Meat to him character-wise later on though, since he is the main villain.
however he is not the only new character here as you can see. on the left scene in the second pic we have keyopha, the leader of iuraph. she recruited surissesh to assassinate king iunekitann, then manipulate his son kontekitann into giving control of gnemmia to iuraph. gnemmia has a lot of fertile land and a mountain range with a LOT of magic crystals growing inside it, so the three major powers of sumakha (annoshik, iuraph, and janggok) all want control over it. she gave surissesh the magic weapon he's brandishing in the first pic in order to kill the king and threaten the rest of the royal family/staff into compliance, while also having one of her own men follow surissesh to make sure that if he used the weapon for his own gain, he would be killed on the spot. unfortunately for her, surissesh isn't an idiot, and by the time he Does start using the weapon for himself, keyopha's men are already dealt with.
gnemmia is a highly sought-after territory... with people already living there, who don't like being occupied. the rebel group (whose individual members don't have names yet bc these are even OLDER ocs that i rebooted so they need to be reworked) were mostly dedicated to taking out annoshiki outposts in gnemmia one-by-one until they started working with surisessh. their plan was to have surisessh help them get into the palace to assassinate the king, then kill him immediately and occupy the palace themselves as part of freeing gnemmia. right when their assassin (the ketvidae in the pic) has finished killing the king, he turns his blade on surissesh, but surissesh reveals keyopha's weapon and completely blasts his head off. while the rebels did plan for surissesh fighting back, they hadn't planned for him having a weapon of this caliber, leaving them scrambling for a new strategy.
while surissesh could have likely risen to power just through intimidation, he justifies his uprising by claiming to be an agent of kennemikannosh, the patron deity of annoshik. i will probably make a different lore post about kennemikannosh in the future, but for now, all you need to know is that it looks like this ⬇️ and that annoshik is a divine monarchy, so surissesh's claim of being a prophet is taken seriously.
OKAY that's all the lore i really want to write out today. after finals (or as a break from studying for them LOL) i will finally do a bullet point outline of this story so its not all in my brain. and i'll see if i can actually figure out a name for it. also shoutout to my flight rising dragon ghirahim (and also the original ghirahim from loz skyward sword) he was a big inspiration for surissesh's design :-)
NEW OC* ALERT!!!! everyone please welcome genzhe-gai
(character info under the cut cus i didn't expect it to get so long LOL)
genzhe is currently a guard on the janggok mountain border (they have a great wall there), but used to be an archer for the janggok military (as seen in the second pic). a few years into his military time, a small skirmish with annoshiki invaders led to him getting hit with the eye with a magic arrow. the arrow had a body magic crystal attached to it that was designed to explode on impact, with bits and pieces lodging into different parts of his eye and turning it into a multi-eyed tumor (and it was honestly quite lucky that it hit his eye, as a hit to somewhere like the heart would've been fatal).
the tumor completely fucked up his depth perception, so he was forced to stop being an archer. healing magic does enough so that he can live with the tumor (mostly by replenishing any nutrients that the tumor might be stealing from other tissues + making sure it doesn't get infected somehow), but getting rid of it outright is impossible, as trying to remove any of the crystal shrapnel still stuck there could make things a whole lot worse. now that he can't be an archer, he mostly does small jobs for the other border guards, like fixing armor and weapons. janggok culture holds great reverence for those who were injured/scarred in battle, so despite not being able to fight anymore, he's still well-respected as part of the guard.
the bumidae in the second picture is unnagk-am, one of genzhe's fellow soldiers. after genzhe's injury, unnagk, despite still being in peak fighting condition, quit the military and followed genzhe to the border wall as another guard. the two have a sort of homosexual WARRIORS BOND thing going on, but tbh everyone in the border guard fucks around with each other bc there's not exactly a lot to do there. just guys being dudes.
PHEW okay that was a lot of lore. ill end this post on a funny thing i noticed after drawing these, which is that i accidentally switched the side that his tumor is on for all of these drawings. like in all of my other art of him it's on his right eye (right from his perspective i mean). but honestly i'm glad i accidentally changed it LOL it looks better this way
also *genzhe is not actually a new character i've had him since uhhhh january 2021. i just never made finished art of him or developed him past 'hes a homidae with a weird eye' until now
your first priority when developing a magic system should be to make it as cool as possible. your second priority should be making the audience sick to their stomach.
new sumakha maps just dropped!!! (and already added to the intro post)
random ramblings + previous maps under the cut
whew! third version of the sumakha map! if you saw the previous one in the intro post, you may think it looks pretty much the same, and youd be like, half-right. i used the previous map as a base still, but edited the proportions quite a lot (the old version was much more horizontal because i traced over the supercontinent rodinia for it and thats what rodinia was like)
what i think i really improved on is biomes! i finally took an ecology class (so far my favorite class ive taken in college) and i finally know the proper names of the common biomes AND where they should be (i actually got inspired to finally remake the map because i hated how i put the desert right on the equator on that one). also learned about RAIN SHADOWS!!!!! rain shadows my beloved ohhhh they saved my ass irt making the biomes make sense and also making the map look cool. i know a lot less about rivers and where they flow though, so the rivers i put on are tentative, but i think they look mostly fine. i think it'll be a while before i tweak the map again
just for fun, here's the old maps i had before (just the biome versions b/c the countries are still in the same relative place):
this map is from... exactly two years ago actually. i didn't really know what i wanted or how to make a landmass that looked natural, i just knew that it was gonna be a supercontinent with one island branching off. also didnt realize that arid grasslands and savannahs are The Exact Same Thing LOL
this one is from 7 months after the previous map, so august 2021. im REALLY glad i decided to look into earth's previous supercontinents because learning how to draw unique landmasses would have been... kind of a hassle since rodinia ended up looking so similar to what i wanted. it's kinda funny, i didn't know what rain shadows were yet but i still put them in accidentally. only things really wrong with this one is the desert right on the equator and me still not realizing that arid grasslands and savannahs are the same thing
okay that's all the old maps but holy shit here's a BONUS map!!! i thought it'd be fun to map out where the ocs i draw the most are from.
shikann and goddska are guys i have yet to post (they're part of eki's story), and kenzhe is a guy i have posted before in a doodle dump but haven't expanded on. i would've put tehmikh on here but tbh i haven't figured out exactly where he's from, just that he tours around annoshik
okay that's it! i think! i hope you guys enjoy the political map as well, i know it's a bit busy but i didn't expect to write all over it. in the next few days i'm finally gonna add a 'history' section to the intro post that'll give more context :-3 anyway enjoy
decided to redraw this thing from 2016 because eki's character has gone through. so so so many changes since i first made him in 2015. honestly if you even recognize the name eki you deserve a Dorian Veteran's Discount
in this current incarnation, "eki" is the runaway prince kontekitann, heir to the throne of annoshik. he was set to become king at age 13 until his father was assassinated, kickstarting a series of events that unravels a myriad of conspiracies surrounding the royal family and its history. im still in the process of rewriting the whole thing bc ive had it in my head since 2020. we will see where that goes
decided to redraw this thing from 2016 because eki's character has gone through. so so so many changes since i first made him in 2015. honestly if you even recognize the name eki you deserve a Dorian Veteran's Discount
in this current incarnation, "eki" is the runaway prince kontekitann, heir to the throne of annoshik. he was set to start his training to become king at age 13 until his father was assassinated, kickstarting a series of events that unravels a myriad of conspiracies surrounding the royal family and its history. im still in the process of rewriting the whole thing bc ive had it in my head since 2020. we will see where that goes
