So just to keep this fire stoked, I am looking at the world creation random tables in the book (pg 147 onward) and the checklist of steps.
For step 1, I'm still kind of digging a flat world whose oceans fall up into the heavens once they run off the sides.
For step 2, grabbing a map, I like this one of the two pre-rendered Fabula maps:
I marked one square for one day of travel because it feels like a nice size to me. Takes about 11 days to walk from top to bottom of that big south-eastern landmass, which I'm fine with.
Which brings us to Step 3 and beyond. Just gonna throw some ideas out there.
Harri expressed an interest in souls, soul-powered machinery, souls being corrupted, souls being feasted on by demons. Argo mentioned a horror element, mentioned bleakness and desolation of Shadow of the Colossus. I mentioned some stuff about magical engineers, monsters being attracted to technology, a flat world, and the sky being held up by enormous pillars.
So, letting all of that bubble around in my head...
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Step 3 is What is the role of magic and technology in your setting? Are you living in an age of industrial development, or is it more Renaissance-like? Is magic seen as a form of science, or mostly as a great mystery?
We haven't really talked about magic
itself, but we've locked onto soul and technology so I am tempted to say that it feels like -- in our hypothetical world -- magic and technology are absolutely intertwined with one another. I am feeling a very strong
academic slant to magic and alchemy and souls and all of this. I could see Universities teaching, very correctly, the idea that everything in the world is made up of a specific ratio of elemental motes and by understanding those ratios and the principles of Elemental Interaction or whatever then you will understand the way the world works. All physical laws as we know them actually just being interactions in the style of the classical elements, in the way alchemists' writings talked about metals and minerals and all of that. Taking that further, I can see (and I think really like the idea) of medicine having a very deeply developed working knowledge of the soul and its role in ailments and treatments.
This question gives examples of industrialism or renaissance type development, and if I were to point at one I suppose I am thinking more of the latter. Aqueducts, telescopes, sextants, printing presses, so on and so forth, with fun high fantasy extras like airships, maybe a high fantasy train somewhere just for fun.
I do still really like my idea of monsters/demons being drawn to technology and liking to get into it and gobble up soul juice (maybe in our setting "demon" is our word for monster, since they're all about chomping souls). And I still like my idea of, like, engineers who are half technical support and half sword guy because sometimes it's not turn it off and on again, it's oh dang a goblin got into the anima sluice let me get that out of there. Harri mentioned corruption and Argo mentioned horror, so what if this hypothetical soul-engineering job exacts a toll on the body. I'm just thinking of the idea of industrial accidents -- gouts of steam, chemical sprays, all of
that stuff, except when you accidentally get exposed to processed soul-stuff (and probably just incidentally over time, it doesn't have to be one giant blast at once) you contract something like Ashitaka did in Princess Mononoke, or like Link in Tears of the Kingdom. I'm just picturing a plague of shadow or glowing lines inching up someone's body year after year on the job.
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Step 4: Create the major kingdoms and nations of your world, mark their borders on the map and discuss their relations: mutual trust, strained alliances, or open conflict? Each person at the table should contribute at least one kingdom or nation during this step, providing some details about their customs, beliefs, industry, denizens, and creatures.
and
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Step 5: Discuss the major historical events that shaped your world into what it is. Each person at the table should contribute at least one important event that dramatically altered the history of your setting.
Harri mentioned rival nations in tension, third party nations caught in the middle. Argo mentioned refugee stories, and the bleak landscape of Shadow of the Colossus.
I think it would make sense to have some kind of major nation that enjoys the majority of the benefits of all of this soul technology. For whatever reason, my brain keeps latching onto Roman vibes if not Roman aesthetics. I think I'm just thinking of the way Rome's roads connected the world, the way Rome's influence stretched everywhere, the way the aqueducts crossed absurd distances. That kind of thing.
And in keeping with that idea, I'm thinking of, like, tributary states. You allow the Republic to send in its archanics (arcane mechanic?) and sages to build whatever it is that people use to tap soulstuff from the world, and in return you get a bunch of benefits and also limited self-rule, you'll love it.
Argo mentioned desolate landscapes...
Preamble: Maybe the method of grinding out soul juice to power engines and lights and purify water and all of those fun anachronistic technology stuff is, for as magic as it is, still pretty basic mechanical stuff? People chop down trees and break down rocks or whatever and throw it into the big magic factory archanics build and it just straight up squeezes all the soul stuff out. So, labor intensive and all that.
Returning to "desolate landscapes" with the above thought: maybe there is a place where a different process was attempted? Something to draw soulstuff just, like,
directly out of the area, ambient soulstuff, an attempt to -- like -- tap the soulstuff that exists in wind, light, the more ephemeral and complicated elements. And yeah maybe that went badly and there is an expanse of what's left and trying to recover ("The Dregs?")
An ecological disaster would absolutely get you some refugees.
For some reason I am thinking about region that wanted to break off from its nation or governing power and became a tributary of the not-romans, only to have their land or some chunk of their land be what is now The Dregs... and so now they're in the middle of these two big nations. On one side of their borders, the power they broke off from who never recognized their autonomy in the first place and views the creation of the Dregs as destruction of their lands -- and on the other side of their borders, the not-romans who have fucked up some perfectly good real estate and now have all of these refugees flooding other tributary states and the homeland.
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Step 6: What are the great enigmas and mysteries of the world? The questions left unanswered, and the truths that are now indistinguishable from legend? Each person at the table should contribute at least one mystery of the world that they want to explore over the course of the group’s adventures.
Mystery: if demons are drawn to soulstuff tech, why isn't the capital absolutely fuckin' overrun and frankly already devastated by monstrosities the likes of which you've never seen? As I was writing all my brain bubbles up above, this popped into my head and I was like huh... that's absolutely a JRPG-tier question isn't it.
Do the pillars holding up the sky deserve a mystery? Maybe they just
are, man haha. Maybe they're just existing haha