Worldbuilding and writing religions: some helpful links.
Chaotic Shiny has a wonderfully thorough religion generator. It gives you bare bones of things like "is the religion focused inward or outward" or "how is it passed down," "afterlife," "family size," "prevalence," "how outsiders are viewed," "major taboos," "high virtues," "deadly sins," and more!
You could just take the questions themselves as inspiration for creating your religion! We merged a couple different generated religions and used them to build more detail. Really fun.
I also love how the podcast Writing Excuses talks about various aspects of worldbuilding religions and portraying religions, and even portraying real world religions that are not your own. Check out their stuff here.
I love seeing religions portrayed in a way that makes sense and doesn't follow tired tropes. Whether they're part of the main plot or just represented as part of a character's life, it's soo cool to see it done well!
On a personal note, my religion guides my life, and I am open to respectful asks about stuff like day to day impact/mindset or other insights if you'd like some help with writing religions!
STS fun: Generators for making coats of arms (plus a couple other generator mentions). Anyone have any to add? What are your favorite generators for worldbuilding?
Tagging @hd-literature, @tate-lin, @blind-the-winds in case you guys wanna throw any links out there. That's how this works, right? (Hi it's Inkwell and I'm new here, hahaha.)
Got a few images and links below.
Happy Storyteller Saturday!
-Inkwell and Crooked Writer
This is the coat of arms for the Stewards of the Swords, the anti-eldritch bodyguards of the king and his family in our WIP audio drama, Songs of Decay. It's cool cuz the Steward represented there in the middle keeps the Swords (the king's family members) from being corrupted by eldritch influences and turning on the Crown. Read more about the Stewards here.
We used Armoria to generate and customize the coat of arms above.
Armoria actually connects to Azgaar's fantasy map generator! If you generate a map and click on a city, it will show you that city's emblem.
Similarly, you can also click on a city to edit its layout in City Generator by Watabou, a medieval fantasy city generator. All three of these resources are pretty dang awesome, and I love that they all work together!
This is the crest of the Haldane royal family of Imeuiad from our fantasy WIP, Outcasts.
We also use Draw Shield. Draw Shield even has resources on their website to learn about heraldry and related vocabulary. I loooove that it types up the term for each feature you add to the shield, so you can learn blazonry ("the art of describing or painting heraldic devices or armorial bearings") as you go!
Hello! Welcome to Foxfire Ink, a cowriting collaboration between Crookedwriter and Inkwell! We enjoy writing together, and occasionally with a few others, and this is where we want to share our hard work as we go (and random fun things from along the way, haha).
I’m Crookedwriter, and I love worldbuilding, fantasy, and character-driven stories. I’m also obsessed with lore, I blame my worldbuilding love haha. Delving into character dynamics, history, and mental gymnastics is a ton of fun for me. :D
We write a lot of fantasy, but also inject it with: drama, political intrigue, intergenerational conflicts, slice of life, some romance, buddy adventures, and poking at various subgenres within like suspense, mystery, explorations of cosmic horror, xianxia, and whatever else catches our fancy. :) (*cough*Hallmark*cough*)
Inkwell says hi
Hi there! I love a lot of the things about writing that Crookedwriter mentions above! We’ve been cowriting off and on (and on) for about ten years with our friends. (I have no worries about providing content, hahaha.) Crookedwriter lured me here by sharing kind responses to excerpts and posts about our stuff. Excited to enter this community and meet you guys. :D
Also, I do not understand this arcane website. I did not expect this; my previous job was as a social media librarian (children’s librarian now!). We’ve already had adventures and many step-by-step instructions getting me this far. It’s been great, haha. Should be fun! We might post about some misadventures as we go.
SO apparently it's Worldbuilding Wednesday? That's pretty cool, because I queued this post at just the right time! Post is under cut, and image descriptions are in the alt text. I'd love to see this list of climate helps grow if you have anything to add!
Happy writing, friends! :)
-Inkwell
I was looking through my worldbuilding links and refound Space Calc, which is a website that helps you put info into make accurate calculations about things like a planet's climate using a heightmap, water level, and so forth (and it's got Earth's information plugged in so you can default to that on the more technical stuff):
So then you get an accurate climate for your planet!! AND he's got other calculator like "Black Hole Parameters" and "Radiation Exposure" and "Artificial Gravity" for those who need more gritty science details for their writing.
All of this said, I hadn't ever gotten to using this website for myself. I plugged in a Googled height map of the earth just now (it loaded very quickly!):
And after adjusting the water level got this:
So you'll probably want to play with your height map, water levels, etc. (Or just go post-apocalyptic >.>)
The Space Calculator creator also recommends this excellent article titled "How to Color Your Map Using SCIENCE!" which goes over basics of what goes into a planet's climates in a friendly, easy to understand way.
But if you are not as interested in poking at things from scratch, I do recommend Azgaar's Fantasy Map Generator - its generated maps include climates and you can even go in and edit the generated map and it'll adjust accordingly. OR you can upload your own map (though that takes a LOT of work to get it to the level of detail you want... *coughdidthatcough*). You'll want to go to the "Tools" tab to start poking at stuff.
One of these days I might do a detailed post on how to use Azgaar's generator... We shall see!
Hi! I found your blog when you reblogged my "how to writeblr" post but your WIPs all look super fascinating! If you have taglists, can you please add me to the ones for "Songs of Decay" and "Bards, Courts, and Changelings?"
Also please feel free to ramble about either of these WIPs, I'd love to hear more about them.
Wow, thank you for the ask! We have added you to our taglists! :D And we are soooo happy to ramble about Songs of Decay and Bards, Courts, and Changelings. This is Inkwell. I am gonna cover Songs of Decay, and Crooked Writer will cover BC&C in a part two post.
Be warned. This is a very long post. I had waay too much fun writing it, hahaha. Bards, Courts, and Changelings will be a much shorter post, as it is in an earlier stage of development.
Part One: Songs of Decay
A HISTORY OF THE PROJECT
This is definitely a 2020 project, hahaha. We wrote draft 1 in script format because it was an easy way to write intermittently. We pulled out board games like Arkham Horror (2nd Edition) and Betrayal at House on the Hill to help us add the eldritch elements and throw in some chaos. We tracked the insanity level of different characters through some of our scenes. Then, when we were done, we were so happy with the story that we wanted to DO something with it rather than it just being a hobby project… and we were like, "What if we actually turned it into an audio drama?"
Crooked Writer does voice acting, but neither of us had ANY experience with writing audio dramas. It was our lazy way of not converting to prose, but also trying something new!
We created draft 2 by having friends come read what we'd gotten done out loud. We would edit and write for two weeks, then gather online, divvy out parts for the night, and read through it. It gave us a lot of motivation to get through the draft! I personally am not the kind of person to sit in on someone's early writing project and read it out loud for an extended period of time on a consistent basis, and it still blows my mind that our friends wanted to do that with us. It was so much fun.
Now, a great deal of research and worldbuilding later, we have four seasons planned and are midway through writing draft 3 of season 1. :D
WORLDBUILDING
The story isn't straight cosmic horror, it's more flavored by the eldritch, and much more inspired by the board game Arkham Horror than Lovecraft. We have our own pantheon of Horrors who have different thematic elements and warp and corrupt in different ways. Technology is roughly equivalent to the 1910s, and eldritch Horrors have been threatening to end the world as we know it for centuries. We have four countries who approach the long-standing eldritch problem VERY differently:
Our setting country, Malgrave, has a "kill it with fire" approach. They have a specially trained corps of Stewards and an Eldritch Anomalies Department (the EAD) to handle things using mostly weaponry. Malgrave views eldritch corruption as an individual's choice to bring Horrors and Fiends (Horrors = world-ends-upon-arrival monsters, Fiends = smaller monsters) into the world and destroy/remake it, so laws tend to treat cults and such in a similar way to how you'd treat the mafia. The temptations are overpowering to many. You can't trust anyone completely.
Side note, because I love the Stewards: The Stewards have really fun political power dynamics, as they are supposed to keep the king's family from turning on him/protect the family, but also can't really contradict a royal, sooo it gets messy sometimes. They technically have the power to report or stop a royal that's corrupted, but just try doing that in practice and see how it goes. Stewards tend to be more subtle. They also die, a lot. The MC's father, Sam, is one of the few Stewards in living memory to retire from active duty. Pays well, though!
Eastcairn, Malgrave's other neighbor, uses augury - magical engineering - to create wards and automatons that are powered by protective patterns. These patterns slowly corrupt over time and must be maintained regularly, or they will amplify corruption rather than negate it. Eastcairn views corruption as a contagious miasma in the air and isolates eldritch outbreaks in sanatoria and asylums. There are many strains of corruptive virus, and most if not all are incurable by current science.
Logoria is Malgrave's neighbor to the left and uses patterns just like Eastcairn, but rather than using physical augury patterns they use mathematical patterns in music and dance to ward off corruption. They have trained singers and musicians and dancers, and choirs are common.
Not a ton of development on the fourth country, because it's farther away (only worldbuild the top of the iceberg, right?) but it has a protective martial art, a caste system based around the concept that corruption runs in family lines, and people there know what different kinds of corruptive influences/objects/presences smell like.
These varying perceptions pool together in our story, as Sam is from Eastcairn but worked in the Stewards in Malgrave and has a medley of views about the nature of eldritch corruption that often conflict with prevalent theories. Augury isn't well thought of in Malgrave, but both he and Tom practice it. The conflict of "eldritch corruption: illness or choice?" is central to the first two seasons of Songs of Decay (particularly the second).
CHARACTERS AND STORY (Season 1)
Tom moves into the very rural Malbury county because living too close to his far wealthier ex-wife will end with him losing custody of their daughter, Sara. His dad lives in Malbury county and is supposed to be living far away from all eldritch influence. However, Tom is appalled to see how rife the county is with cultists, corruption, and eldritch Fiends - such as the Moose that he and Sara run afoul of on the first day of school. Tom also has a past record that requires him to report to the EAD and means that the EAD could refuse to grant him an augury license, which is literally Tom's livelihood right now, SO Tom offers to help with local problems. In doing so, he trips into the plot of a local cult that centers on the estate of one Lady Esther Lambert, a widow with a grudge against the EAD.
Esther married into one of the local noble families and is used to fighting for herself because no one else will. She throws an annual party at her house at the end of summer, but this time things go very poorly very quickly. Tom and Esther have to band together with other guests to stay alive and prevent the summoning of a greater Horror, but they don't know who to trust when you can't even rule yourself out as an enemy.
So, throughout Season 1 you've got Tom trying to be a good single parent, learning how to prep and cook three consistent meals a day while also getting drawn into fighting eldritch monsters and cultists. You have Sara, his daughter, who is trying to adjust to a lower class lifestyle, meeting a grandparent for the first time, and stressing about her dad putting himself in danger. You have Sam, who convinced his son to move to Belleview because he was worried about him, but also has so much corruption from his time in the Stewards that he is one poor decision away from snapping entirely. You have Chief Compton, a former city policeman and current head of the local EAD bullied into the role after the last chief died trying to contain an eldritch summoning. And you have Lady Esther, whose late husband's family literally built her house around the idea of summoning eldritch Horrors, and whose perception of the local EAD is so poor that she would rather fight off monsters with a shovel than call them in to help.
We are having a great time writing this story. :D
The hope is to ultimately put it on YouTube, but we want to get the first two seasons ready before we get to that, as they contain the first major arc.
Okay, I am done now. If you've made it this far, thank you for reading! Again, really appreciate the ask, and absolutely delighted to be able to ramble away like this.
Cheers!
-Inkwell
Songs of Decay tag list: @hd-literature @pure-solomon @blind-the-winds @sarah-sandwich-writes @lucianinsanity @coffeewritesfiction @surroundedbypearls @tate-lin @ettawritesnstudies
