Worldbuilding Tutorial #11: Example World B
Intro This is an example of how to develop history for your world. This tutorial will demonstrate a “building backwards” method for when you know what your present looks like and want to figure out what came before; if you’re interested in how to build history forwards from something earlier on, take a look at the example for World A.
As noted in the other example, I’m going to start placing the examples under a “read more” break because they can get quite long. Enjoy!
Deciding Priorities: This world makes a good candidate for using a building backwards method because it’s (a) further along in its in-world development as a baseline, and (b) already has a clear story and trajectory going on. If your world is fairly early in development - which is to say, there isn’t much that came before what it is now - then it doesn’t make much sense to build backwards. Most of the time folks already have a sense of the current state of their world in mind, though, so usually this is the method you’ll be using.
Check Your Notes: This is the “what do we already know?” stage of the process, and crucial for a building backwards process. In summary, there are several culturally distinct and largely autonomous regions, each with their own traditions and forms of complex government. Many of these regions have relationships with one another; some friendly, others less so. This is also a world in which gods (and other supernatural beings) manifest and meddle at times, sometimes quite directly and others less so. The world is roughly earth-sized, which means that distances have the potential to be quite great in relation to the speed of an average person walking. There’s a lot more detail, of course; but that’s the basics. I’ll pull in more details as they’re needed.
History from Culture One of the things I noted in the tutorial is that the more similar two culture are, the more likely they are to share common roots; and the more different they are, the less likely. This region breaks down into a few fairly clear groupings; Region #1, Region #2, and Region #3 are quite similar, and Region #5 and Region #6 are quite similar; but Region #4 is quite different from all of them. Of the regions, it bears the closest similarity to Region #3, which can be attributed both to proximity and to the suggestion of more influence than with any of the other nearby regions.
This suggests that there was once a coastal-and-woods oriented civilization on the northeastern side of the continent (regions #1 and #2), an agrarian civilization on the northwestern side of the continent (#5 and #6), and an inland nomadic civilization in the northern central part of the continent. There are enough similarities to suggest that regions 1 & 2 and regions 5 & 6 share a common civilization in their history; and, given that 1 & 2 are coastal cultures, it’s not unlikely that people from that region sailed and settled the regions that would become 5 & 6 long ago. Some of their cultural drift can be explained by separation by the central section of the continent and time passing.
Another factor to look at is how multicultural each region is within itself; a high amount of cultural variance suggests a great deal of migration in and out or else changing hands many times throughout history, whereas a certain amount of homogeny suggests that there has been less of either (though that doesn’t preclude the possibility of that group having colonized or migrated elsewhere). The two regions with the highest degree of cultural variability are Regions 1&3. Each of those is for different reasons -
Region #1 will, I suspect, owe a great deal of its multicultural background to a long history of sailing, exploration, and trade. This also suggests a history that has been less about imposing its own cultural values on others - though that does not preclude wars or colonial ambitions. The sort of cultural diversity displayed by this region also implies a large influx of people from other places - which suggests that there is something to be gained by moving here. In this case, wealth, trade, connections, and good weather.
Region #3 owes its particular variant of multicultural influence to being an “in between” sort of place - the kind of place that people travel through to get to somewhere else. This is the sort of region that can’t afford wars and has to work to stay on everyone’s good sides as much as possible - which probably means avoiding choosing sides as much as possible. This implies a very different course of history than Region 1.
Connecting the Dots Based on the above, let’s outline a timeline. Given the amount of cultural differentiation that’s happened in the cultures with similar roots, let’s start back, oh... 800 years. Region 1-2 has had basic boating technology for a while now, but has started developing something truly seaworthy. Early on, it sends boats out to explore; some go north along the coast, some go south. The boats that go south return a year later bearing all sorts of goods and tales from place they have only ever heard of through long trade routes up the continent, but never seen themselves. The boats that go north do not return. They were unprepared for the harsh storms that brew in that part of the ocean; some ships sank, and others were wrecked in Region 5-6.
Meanwhile, Region 4 is much wider than it is today - more like 4-3-8 - and engaged in its own internal politics and issues. Being a nomad riding society, they cannot feasibly expand into either the rainforest to the south or the vast swamplands to the east; so instead they are engaged in political intrigue, intermarriages, and trade alliances to gain control of these regions through other means. This is a time period when many clans are united under a single leader; but this does not rule out clan-to-clan conflict, and there is a great deal of political intrigue to manage here as well.
Occasionally, there is conflict between Region 4-3-8 and Region 1-2. The former will look to invade the latter, or the latter to push the boundaries of settlement into the former; but by and large Region 4-3-8 has bigger problems to worry about and mostly doesn’t bother with its smaller coastal neighbors. This establishes Region 3 as a place that traded hands between both of these groups many times and has had to play the role of go-between since before its existence as it is now.
Over the following 200 years or so, things change. Region 1-2 has mapped and established safe sea routes that are used for trade and to bring wealth -and resources - back to the region. Region 5-6′s colony on the northern coast has grown into a full stretch of coastal towns and cities; they initially went unnoticed by Region 4-3-8, but had to establish strong centralized leadership early on in order to keep their claim on the region; resulting in a monarchy variant of some sort. By this time, Region 4-3-8 has fractured into several clan federations who continue to vie for control over alliances and one another. One of these federations approaches Region 1-2 with a proposal: use their resources to help beat out their rivals, and the federation will give over control of territory that is still settled by the descendants of its people. With some convincing, Region 1-2 agrees.
The conflict that follows is messy, and there is not a clean victory. It ends with the federations disbanding into many smaller clans. Region 1-2 says that it has fulfilled its end of the bargain and wants what was promised; the clans involved in process argue that they did not actually emerge victorious, and thus Region 1-2 has not fulfilled its end of the bargain; and another war breaks out. Region 3 is taken from Region 4-3-8 by force, and connected up with roads and military outposts in order to keep control. This is the foundation of the warlord government that will develop in Region 3 over time.
Meanwhile, Region 1-2 has supplanted some of Region 3-4-8′s old alliances - particularly in Region 9. This is part of what turned the conflict in their favor and caused the disbanding of the federations - some of them lost their backing. Region 1-2 is beginning to drift culturally: Region 1 is becoming not just a hub for trade but for diplomatic endeavors as well, while Region 2 maintains a much quieter crafting culture as it builds the ships for Region 1. What’s more, Region 1 was involved in the brunt of the fighting with the federations; Region 2 was mostly sheltered from this conflict, and as such was not shaped by it in the same way.
Region 5-6 continues to develop on its own, and takes advantage of the federations breaking to snap up more territory for itself. More wars and skirmishes result, and for a brief time cause a small group of clans to band back together again; but ultimately it ends in a stalemate. Somewhere around the 300 years mark, Region 1-2 sends another set of ships along the northern side of the coast - these stronger and more able to weather the storms - and discovers the civilization that has developed from the shipwreck survivors. There is cultural distance by now, but a willingness to cooperate - so long as it is as equals rather than vassals.
150 years later - so 450 years past the beginning, and 350 years back from the present - Region 1-2 has continued to grow and prosper. Or - Region 1 has, at any rate. Region 2 is left out of the broader wealth and decision-making of the region; and given that the crafting of Region 1′s ships and goods are done by it, this does not sit well with Region 2. What follows are a number of crafters’ and guild wars; waged mostly not by armies, but rather through economic and cultural means - boycotts, trade alliances, propaganda, etc. There are of course a number of smaller scuffles, and assassination as a tool falls into favor; but after some time, the situation is resolved by giving Region 2 more autonomy in exchange for certain economic agreements. This is where the two begin to become more their own regions, though there’s a long way to go yet. Meanwhile, Regions 5-6 is running into its own problems. There is a succession crisis that is both practical and idealogical in nature; and two candidates both claim to be the true ruler of the region. As such things often go, a war - and perhaps a series of smaller wars across the next hundred years or so - are fought, and through this fighting two separate regions are established. Each one follows one of the possible candidates for rulership, and their cultures develop and drift according to the differences in values that were in play. Once a few generations have gone by and no one is left living who remembers the original crisis, relations between the two regions calm down and they mostly leave well enough alone. This brings us to 250 years or so in the past.
There are of course a number of smaller historic events happening all this time - historic storms, plagues and fires, new inventions, clashes between worshippers of various deities (and perhaps at times within the worshippers of the same deity), the rise and fall of particularly popular or infamous figures, migration of cultural groups to other regions due to war and conflict, and so on and so forth. You can get as granular and specific as you like; I’m staying more general because 800 years of history is a lot and this is only meant to be an example, but those are a few examples of other types of historical events you may want to consider. In any case, you probably get the idea by this point; and once you have the basic outline like the above, you can go back and work out more of those smaller events as well.
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This has been the “working backwards” method. If you have any requests for the next tutorial, let me know; otherwise, it’ll likely be some sort of day-to-day cultural topic like food, art, leisure, etc.