forum Worldbuilding Discussion: Ideas and Concepts

Started January 11, 2018 by @ghostphoenix

tune

Literally anything you want to share about your universe: A discussion to throw ideas back and forth to generate new things from the innovation of you and others

My world has three moons. As interesting as it is, it's a biig problem. Tides, gravity, lunar cycles of months and days… I have three moons to keep track of! So, I ended up dividing them by seasons. Winter has no moons in the sky during the day. Spring has one, Summer has two, and Autumn has three. But this means, during Winter and Autumn, the tides are reeeaaly strong, because they have THREE MOONS pulling on the water from the same direction. Conversely, during Spring and Summer, tides are more frequent, but less powerful. There's a whole coastal culture that "migrates". The cities move inland during the colder parts of the year, and back to the coast to trade and weather storms during the warmer parts.

There's also the association of each moon with a particular god-spirit, but I'm still working on that. It's very difficult to get everything lined up and connected!

So where are the other moons during the seasons they aren't in the sky? How do they not appear at all? I'm not good at visualizing 3D shapes or concepts like this, so in my mind the three moons are all orbiting and everything like normal… :P And I guess it's only the zero, one, two, three moon thing in specific areas on the planet? As in, wouldn't the equator see all the moons all the time?

BUT OTHER THAN THAT the way you constructed societies around that was really cool! I would be so excited if you published it so I could read about them all. :D

Thanks!

For the moon problem, the way I see it, moons are deemed "present" when you see them during the day. For example, in the no moon months, no moons are in the sky during the day, but you will see all three of them at night. Each moon is still orbiting the planet, but like our moon, we only see it for half the day. I hope that makes it more understandable!

As for making my world public… I am still building it, but once I'm confident I have enough history down, I'll definitely make it public!

Well, here it is, if you're still interested! I have a lot of information though, so sorry if it's a bit wordy.

One question about your universe: since you labled time using AC (After Christ), is there some sort of Christ-like figure in the Trinity? If so, which one would it be? I couldn't really tell from your description of the three figures.

Sorry, I didn't nean to confuse! This stands simply for "After Creation", or at least, the rough estimate of Creation. As for the Trinity, Quirin IS somewhat of a Christ-like figure, but I'm not going to go very in-depth with him, and his portion of the religion. The idea is that Man represents both the god-spirits of Quirin and Karnost, and Quirin is the representation of the "good" in them, whereas Karnost is the "evil". I plan to have lots of confusion over this, eventually, since Karnost is actually the god-spirit of destruction, and Quirin is the god-spirit of creation, and you can't really have one without the other to balance it out. I hope that makes sense now!

[Gonna sticky this for a bit to keep the good discussion flowing. :)]

Hi, I'm writing a Sci-Fi thing and was wondering if anyone had suggestions for fleshing out the Alien Cultures so they seem different from ours.

Not what I meant, but it's a thought. I mean their cultures. How to make variety without emulating earth's.

Different cultures are generally tied very closely to the environment. Clothing and structures are the obvious answers, but you can go deeper. Religions based off of the natural environment, "explaining" natural phenomena like the old polytheistic religions of Earth. Explain death and the afterlife. Different values/social statuses will echo those that they use to survive. Find what this race deems "appropriate" and "inappropriate", eg. clothing covering/uncovering skin, killing certain species, their approaches to war and politics, etc. Create a government system - hiveminds, democracies, oligarchies, you name it. Is there slavery/bias against other races/species? What professions are loved? Hated? What do we take for granted that they don't have? What do they take for granted that we don't have? What does this race fear? What does this race love? What social trends are there?

A fun exercise that I do is to imagine my newly-created race meeting my "default" race (generally humans, but whichever one is the most developed at the time). There's gonna be some culture shock. What are they confused about? What are they exited about? If a person of this new race/species walks down a street on Earth, what will catch their attention, and why?

Okay, so to summarize: looking at your world and its inhabitants from a societal/environmental standpoint will give you ideas to base your culture off of. Major areas to look at are Religion, Politics, Society, and Values. Some of these areas will overlap. It's always a good idea to constantly compare your culture to already existing ones, so if something feels weird, you can figure out what it is.

I hope I helped!

Thank you! This is really helpful Ember Ris!

Hey, I'm having real troubles thinking of a name for the rebel group in my series and was wondering if anyone had any suggestions?

Well, what are they rebelling against? That might play in to the name, like the Anti(insert thing here) Alliance.

Try acronyms if you want it to sound more like a societal rebellion, but a name if you want to portray a group ((If that makes sense?))

Hey, thanks so much for your suggestions!

Basically, it's a dystopian novel and they are rebelling against the king. Most of the human population has died out due to an experiment that worked too well when the world governments were trying to stop global warming. The remainder of humans live inside "pods". So there are 1000 pods around the world that hold 100 people each (like mini villages). These pods are basically like bubbles. The people inside certain bubbles have different jobs (for example, some pods might have to farm [using artificial light]). It has been like this for about 250 yrs
So King Antony Charmant is a descendant of the person who invented the bubbles and he basically rules the entirety of the human race but he is a complete tyrant and pretty much everyone lives in poverty.
The rebels are a group who are dedicated to overthrowing him and giving people equality.
So they represent

• equality
• freedom
• a new beginning
• an escape from poverty
• people can choose their own future instead of having it determined by which pod cluster they live in etc.

I hope this actually makes some sense because it is still an idea in the making and I'm not sure I did a good job of explaining it.

So I was thinking about something like a new dawn but then I realised that that appears in a LOT of books already (e.g. 'the red queen' by Victoria Aveyard (we will rise, red as the dawn) and 'the rebel of the sands' by Alwyn Hamilton (a new dawn, a new desert)) and there's a heap more, so I decided probably not to do something to do with dawn, which meant I was back to square one. lol.

Cool idea @BookAddict!

Thanks!

Hey again! Sry but I need yet more help lol. Basically, my main character Lucinda's core motivation is to find her younger sister Lila who has been stolen away by the King as she has powers from genetic manipulation that occurred 100s of years before (Lucinda has these too - she has atmokenesis) Lucinda is distraught when this occurs and the beginning of the book is basically her escaping to find Lilac with her BFF Carmel.
I was thinking it would be cool if maybe her dad was the one who had sold Lila out to the King, but I'm having trouble coming up with a justification/motive for him to do this. Like I can't make him just pure evil because otherwise, Lucinda's mother (Akari) would never have married him. (Akari has very strong beliefs about equality, freedom and kindness. She is thought to be dead but turns out to be the leader of the rebels. I don't think it would make sense for an amazing woman such as Akari to marry Lucinda's dad (Charles) if he was pure evil.)
So any suggestions for his motivations etc?

Thanks so much for your help before, sorry for my nonsensical explanations. :P

@BookAddict Try something inevitable and necessary, like needing food or money to survive so he sold her off for what he thought the greater good was OR go for the 'cowardly father' path and make it so she was taken, but the father froze up or something and let it happen, in that case she can blame him but he did nothing felonious. Hope this helps a little!

Thanks so much! It definitely helps.

Hey, I'm having real troubles thinking of a name for the rebel group in my series and was wondering if anyone had any suggestions?

Maybe think of some rebelgroups from movies/books/series etc you like! maybe base them off real life rebels (anarchists/punks for example).
I'd personally go with something simple. Game of Thrones for example has the Brotherhood, but you can also simply go with the name of their people/race (the aliens rebel against the crown).