#setting:rb

[keyboardandquill]

Hapoy WBW! What's your favourite world building bit in your current WIP? @catharticallysarcastic

Hey @catharticallysarcastic thank you for the fun question!

Boy howdy do I have a lot of worldbuilding in both my WIPs, so it took me some time to figure out my Favourite.

For Rocket Boosters, I think it's the Death of the Trillionaire(tm) backstory piece. I had a lot of fun figuring out what finally tipped people over the edge enough that his own private militia turned on him!

The answer is: an ostensibly well-meaning but ultimately self-serving act that Screwed Everything Up For Everyone. It has to do with a privately funded power grid upgrade that goes so horribly wrong that it causes a huge EMP, which leads to a nation-wide state of emergency, which leads to the National Guard being called and martial law being enacted, riots, revolts, and a country-wide lockdown.

All of that happened about 10 years before the start of the story. :)

For Athenaeum, I love the design of the main character's home city, Paredes, and the giant atrium that serves as HQ for the Greenhouse Project. It's shaped like a lotus flower, and it opens during the day so the solar panels on the 'petals' can take in energy and closes at night. It houses a garden sustained entirely by Source and cultivated by conduits who have specialized in botany and horticulture. This is where they are trying to create plants that will withstand the harsh conditions of the wastes in an attempt to bring life back to the barren parts of Terra Verde. It's been pretty slow going, but they make progress.

[keyboardandquill]

Valour, Ignite, Scars // Hawthorne 👀

@bloodlessheirbyjacques ✨

(hope I'm doing this right 👀)

Thank you @bloodlessheirbyjacques! Have fun >:)

---

Hawthorne was 15 years old when his mother received a promotion at work and uprooted the whole family. It was meant to be a secret. He couldn't even say what city they'd be in, much less what the promotion was for. Even he wasn't supposed to know, but his mother never hid anything from him. Or so he thought.

He put up a courageous front as he said goodbye to his best friend, to the neighbourhood kids he'd grown up with, and their bratty little siblings, too. Who'd have thought he'd miss them? But valour was the last thing on his mind as he lugged his suitcase into the trunk of the company car. His mother had gone on ahead, so it was only him and the driver on this journey to who-knows-where. As soon as the door closed and the screen went up, partitioning off the back seat, Hawthorne broke down and sobbed.

--

"The compound," Hawthorne and his friends called places like these. Somewhere for employees and their families to live, work, learn, and play. The kind of place the neighbourhood kids used to make up stories about to scare each other at sleepovers.

One of Hawthorne's leading theories was that these compounds were really a front for testing dangerous new technologies on human subjects. He'd told his mom that one once; she had just smiled indulgently and told him to keep nurturing his creativity. And he had. That spark would go on to ignite a whole made-up world in his head, with tech bros forming cabals and plotting to mind-control the masses. He had imagined military-esque construction with barbed wire fences and armed guards.

He'd been totally wrong. The compound was downright pleasant. There were none of those jagged, industrial angles in the architecture his neighbour used to hate so much; instead, the neighbourhood featured state-of-the-art eco-futuristic houses and organic paths galore. Two gates opened automatically as the driver inched forward. No guns in sight. No people in sight. Everything was perfect. Until it wasn't.

The alarms sounded on a sunny afternoon in July, but they were far too late. Hawthorne stood with his foot jammed under the door to the community bunker and ushered in a terrified stream of citizens. He was fairly certain the metal digging into his foot had cut through his shoe if the pain was anything to go by. His earpiece crackled, and he awaited the instructions he was dreading.

The alarms had been too late, and not everyone was going to make it in. He would have to close the door. Far worse than any scars this awful day would leave on his body would be the knowledge that he was the one who had carried out a death sentence on half the town.

The militia is closing in, the voice over his earpiece said. I'm not going to make it back there in time. Hawthorne, close the gate.

It was some of them, or all of them. Hawthorne un-jammed his foot from the door and bit back an agonized scream as the sharp edge tore through his flesh. An incoming surge of people had just entered at the far end of the hallway. Gunshots sounded close behind.

"I'm so sorry," Hawthorne whispered to nobody who could hear. He turned around. He stepped inside. And he sealed the door.

[keyboardandquill]

🌍 🏆

Thank you for the ask! :3

Based on this ask game.

🌍 - What is distinctive about the setting? What sets it apart?

Rocket Boosters:

It's a post-apocalyptic society, but the apocalypse is not the main focus of the story. Nor was it really one event, but rather the inevitable result of inaction.

I'm not a fan of bleak worldscapes, and I'm really not a fan of "the world ended so everyone is out for themselves" cliches in stories, so I decided to focus on the brighter side of things. It's a story about perseverance, community, and the importance of not isolating yourself when the world turns into an even bigger dumpster fire.

Athenaeum:

I think the most distinctive thing to me when I think about the setting is the stark contrast between the lush, high-tech utopia and the harsh surrounding wastes. There's a sense of relief that comes with entering the safety of the city's walls, but eventually that relief turns into a feeling of being restricted.

It's not necessarily unique, but I do love the concept of an ancient advanced civilization lying in ruins, the evidence of it visible at every turn, but having it hold secrets that impact the protagonists' lives in huge ways. It's very Horizon Zero Dawn (and was in fact heavily inspired by it in some aspects!)

🏆 - What is the end goal? What are your characters fighting for?

Rocket Boosters:

One of the main themes in all of my main characters' arcs is their search for a sense of belonging. That's the true thrust of the story, but most of them are on a ~noble quest~ to find urgent medical help for the settlement of Basin's Edge for technically selfish purposes: Beck is trying to reach her brother, Yarrow wants to get out of a place where she no longer has any allies, Hawthorne is Looking For Someone (and also running from someone else), and Cal doesn't care if anyone survives except for his brother.

Athenaeum:

Where Rocket Boosters is a "you can't change the world as a whole, but you can change your world" type story, Athenaeum is quite the opposite. The characters start out trying to change the world around them in incremental ways for the better, but end up on a mission to save the whole world.

I don't have their individual arcs as well in mind as I do for RB, so that's what I'm currently working on for this WIP. :)

[keyboardandquill]

lantern, forest, martyr /// calamus 👀

@bloodlessheirbyjacques ✨

They fled in the dead of night, Calamus carrying their supplies while Jamie carried the valuables they would need to trade for safe passage east.

Heh. 'Trade.' Cal knew damn well what kind of 'trade' it would be. 'Your money or your life.' Nobody would be offering them a ride anywhere; every last item in that bag would line the figurative pockets of some lowlife who wouldn't hesitate to press their faces into the dirt and take everything they had.

Cal didn't tell Jamie any of that, though. The kid was pessimistic enough as it was. (Though if you were to ask him, it wasn't his fault the brat got sucked into all that doom and gloom nonsense when he did.) Instead, he kept a tight hold on his brother's wrist and squinted into the darkness ahead, trying to catch a glimpse of the distant lantern light awaiting them.

Later, when the city was far behind them and the mountains but a distant memory, Cal would tell Jamie the real reason they were running. Right then, however, all his kid brother needed to know was that it wasn't safe to remain at home.

Cal received a surprise about how the world worked when they finally reached that night's destination. There was an old man leaning against a flatbed truck outside the cabin, arms crossed and mustache drooping low over his lips. He was early. Cal's father said the man wouldn't be there until morning.

He must have been moving fast to get here before they did. But what for?

The man stood upright and stuck out a hand to shake before Cal could ask any questions. "Calamus? Name's Henry. I know you were expecting to leave tomorrow, but I received word that someone's gonna torch the forest before dawn. We best make what distance we can before then."

All the details checked out: the name, the vehicle, the 'old prospector' vibes. Everything except when they'd leave. But was that suspicious enough on its own to risk not escaping at all if Henry was right about the fire?

Leave now and be at this man's mercy, or maybe die tomorrow in a fire, making himself a martyr for some cause he still didn't fully understand. Well. Facts were facts: He couldn't fistfight a fire. And maybe there were still some decent people left in this world after all.

Cal turned to his brother. "Hope you can sleep sitting up," he said. "We got a long way to go."

[keyboardandquill]

I've been reading Wool by Hugh Howey and thinking about apocalypses. I have previously described the one in Rocket Boosters tongue-in-cheek as "the world's boringest apocalypse" but it would be more apt to call it the world's slowest apocalypse. It's been happening all of Beck's life, all of her parents' lives, and maybe all her grandparents' lives.

From my notes:

"It was the kind of event where you didn't know you were in it til it was over. The kind where you can sense its absence, but the effects still linger like your ears ringing long after the generators shut off."

The end of the world in RB isn't a singular event, it's basically taking what's happening today and seeing it to its conclusion if it goes unchecked. And people don't die in some singular cataclysmic event; most of humanity carries on, business as usual, but with slightly less structure to their society. Or perhaps just a different structure.

There are "milestone" moments that people love to point to as "the beginning of the end," but it's a cascade. Each one is connected to the last.

Anyway. It's an interesting exercise to explore what might be going on in the world 40–50 years from now.