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That aside, let me summarise for you where I am in this creative process, as I've once again reached that stage where I need to talk about things to move on with them and having left my old Neverwinter Nights Persistent World community I have no-one to chat to about it.
The thing I love most about the Malazan world is that it is different and vivid without feeling odd. For those of you who have read Perdido Street Station, the thing I love most about that is that it is different, vivid and very very odd. I tend to llike reading worlds where the elves and dwarves are absent but you have something else cool to be interested in. When constructing my own world, however, I find I want elves dwarves, etc in. I just can't come up with cool new races from scratch, and I am drawn to playing with old things and turning them upside down instead. I just like to mess up the conventions so you don't know what to expect.
My own world is based on a globe that I took off its stand filled in the holes where the North and South poles were. I relocated geographic North to be off the coast of West Africa. In my world;
- Humans are the oldest race in the world. After several rise-and-falls of Human* civilisation they are back on top going through a period similar to the real-world renaissance due to the emergence and development of arcane magic for the first time in history. This is fuelling an age of unrivalled creativity and exploration. They have recently discovered a remnant Human empire reminiscent of China that has been all but wiped out by a newly emerged young race (Dwarves). The main Human nations got their religion from Gnomes.
- Gnomes are the second most influential race in the world instead of a footnote, and though they were historically much like their DnD stereotype, they are now ultra-conservative religious nuts living in a strict theocracy. They still love their hammers, but use them now to put down religious heresy instead of building quirky inventions. Even in their own religious literature, they were created after Humans as Humans were deemed unsatisfactory by The Father and Gnomes were meant to be an improvement. They currently consider themselves out of favour with The Father though, because of creating Dwarves.
- Dwarves are the youngest race in the world, created by the Gnomes and are the cause of the change in Gnomish society. Instead of the lawful types we know and love, they are warlike and chaotic, with elements of Viking, Celtic and even a little Mongol imagery thrown in. They are still very hard-working and love their beer and their axes, but are making their place in the world for the first time instead of fighting to regain past glories. And they have never delved a Moria-like mine in their history.
- Orcs as a race have all but ceased to exist due to diseases caught from Human explorers, but due to some quirky genetic higgery-pokery that I made up but won't explain here, two Half-orcs can breed to produce Orcs (most of whom die young or are stillborn), more true Half-orcs or pure Humans. Half-orc society is in its absolute infancy and pure orcs that survive to adulthood are revered while Orc-descended humans are reviled. They inhabit the jungles and islands that make up the land portion of a Caribbean-esque setting in the world. Many of the Human children and some Half-Orcs land up as members of pirate crews.
- Halflings have only just returned to my world after I decided at one stage they wouldn't be in it at all. They are pretty dull normally, after all. Kender are the closest thing to interesting halflings, and they are not that great either. I decided they'd make a pretty good race to put on a fantasy Easter/Pitcairn/Henderson Island and have them as a pathetic society of cannibals following the ecological collapse of their previously idyllic islands due to a combination of climate and mis-management of resources in their not-too-distant history.
- Arcane Magic, new to the world at any meaningful power-level following its discovery/invention/development by Humans, seems like the answer to the the world's needs, but, like technology (specifically, hydrocarbons) in the real-world, is actually causing as many problems as it solves, slowly unravelling reality as it used more and more, and accelerating beyind the world's ability to heal itself...
- Dragons are non-intelligent forces of nature, destructive and seemingly without purpose, but actually the world's response to the increase in the number of arcane magicians in the world and an attempt to prevent magic use destroying reality. If the world is a body then dragons are its macrophages...
- Continuing the previous analogy, familiars are the antibody to the dragon's macrophage. Of course, magic users haven't realised that yet, and wonder why dragons keep trying to eat them...
- Vanara are a race in DnD's oriental adventures, but also a cool story element in Chinese and Japanese mythology. I put them in to replace halflings as a less serious race than all the others I have included.
- There is no Underdark. It is a rubbish cliche anyway.
- The main Human nations and the Gnomes follow one monotheistic religion that has many branches, which has echoes of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, but differences to all three. All different aspects of devotion to this deity seem to yield genuine divine magics, so it is questionable whether this magic points to the existence of any God at all, let alone one God of a set philosophy or belief structure.
That leaves me with Elves. Now, Elves are causing me problems. They are normally lovers of nature, and I am pretty certain that I instead want them living in floating cities similar to Erikson's Sky Keeps that the KCCM live in. I have also thought about them being Necromancers and maintaining undead servants, soldiers etc, but that seems a bit easy. "Oooh! Elves are baddies!" Besides, Elves have been made into baddies before. Drow Suck. What else are Elves? Aloof and superior. I thought about having the Elves in their Sky Keeps huddled around their crystal balls obsessed with the minutiae of Human life, treating it as a kind of Truman Show on a grand scale, and occasionally interfering like the Greek Gods of old. Making Elves into petty, jealous, squabbling twerps appealed to me on some levels, but left me feeling it does not quite work somehow. I considered the possibility that the only Elves left in the world are the ones who did not want to leave and rest all buggered off to wherever it is Elves go and that the Sky Keeps (somewhere between 10 and 50 of them) each have but one inhabitant, possibly commanding the undead forces mentioned above, and possibly indulging in the veyeurism also described to keep themselves from getting bored.
So, what is the essence of Elvenness? How can I twist and corrupt that, or over-exaggerate it without keeping them as the usual cliche, but without turning them into something totally unrecognisable? I mean, elves hammering away at forges would just seem stupid, but Elves living in tree cities is just boring. Any ideas or comments on what I have written about any of it, Elves or anything else, will be gratefully received.
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*For some reason, when writing about my world it feels right to capitalise races just like we capitalise nationalities like French or German in the world. I may break the habit, I may not. I also use the Tolkienesque convention of elves and dwarves, not elfs and dwarfs.
This post has been edited by Fifty: 04 November 2008 - 04:46 PM
Make them into a race that Andarist would be proud of, aloof, immortal, but completely obsessed with the idea of mortality and dying. Perhaps even trying to alter themselves in such a way as to gain that. Screw beauty and nature, its a cliche of the highest order.
