Vestraten: Ecology & History

[Joel P.]

Welcome to this planning thread for the new collab story! It is one of three, each addressing different facets of the world.

This one addresses ecology/geography and history. Time to toss out ideas for debate and discussion!

Feel free to contribute to this discussion, but bear in mind that unless you are part of the Vestraten team, you will have no say in the final implementation of any ideas, whether contributed by yourself or another (though opinions will certainly be respected). If you would like to become a member of the Vestraten Collaborative, contact Joel P. This is not intended to be a club or a social status, but rather a subset of Anomalians who happen to be working on a story together.

That said, don't ask to be a member unless you would like to contribute a meaningful amount of work; whether mental or physical. Anyone can contribute ideas, but that's not the same as asking to be listed as co-author on the binding.
Current team:
Joel P.
rjj7
Kessie
stormiel

[myrthman]

Given the busyness of my life right now, I appreciate the offer for ideas to be considered. I understand the "no-author" statement.

I love the name for the setting! How did "Vestraten" come to be?

[Joel P.]

Um...well, I just kind of threw out a few ideas for names and asked for more. No more were forthcoming, and everyone liked this one. *shrugs* No real magic to it, if that's what you were asking.

[Joel P.]

Okay, so here's a rough idea of the land of Vestraten. (Yes, it is part of a larger map, but that's a topic for later). A few questions:

Where should we put the capital, Kalastyr?
How many and what kind of mountains should we include?
What kind of forests should there be, and how many?
How frequently should rivers and streams figure into the landscape?

Let's hear some ideas!

Attachments:

[Kessie]

Looking at your map, I'm going to make the most far-out suggestions I can think of. Because that's what fantasy is all about, right?

Each of those land masses is floating independently in a sea of free-flowing mana. All magic users get their power from the mana sea. A person can't swim in it--it has the consistency of fog--but ships can sail on it. I'm thinking of ships like the ones from Treasure Planet, with the solar sails, except they harness the mana itself for propulsion and buoyancy. There are sea-monsters in the mana sea.

The inland sea up there comes from a mana spring that bubbles up from beneath the continents. It has a different source, because mana from the inland sea has healing properties, much valued by clerics, paladins and other holy classes.

The world didn't always have a mana sea--one time it had an ocean--but a catastrophe in the distant past bled away the oceans and mana replaced it. Or it seeped through from cracks between the worlds, giving Vest magic it was never meant to have.

[Kessie]

Alternate idea: Instead of a sea, the ocean spaces (or reverse it and have the land spaces be the void) are actually an immense canyon, dozens of miles deep. Continent dwellers have burrowed cities and towns down the cliffs, and some continents are joined to others by immense bridges. Dragons, rocs and other giant flying creatures are bred and utilized for traffic and trade between the continents.

Down in the canyon lies the World Serpent and its spawn, hungry to devour the world and its citizens.

[Kessie]

Alternate idea:

Each of the continents is the back of an immense robot, about ten times bigger than the Pacific Rim ones. Centuries ago, these robots collapsed after a tremendous battle, and earth and forests gathered on them, and eventually people. But technomancers have found their way into the heart of the continental robots and have been repairing them, and one day soon the robots will again rise to do battle.

[Kessie]

Alternate idea:

We rip off the Zendikar setting from Magic the Gathering, which I still think was the AWESOMEST THING EVAR.

From Wikipedia: Zendikar is the first set in the Zendikar block. Its tagline is "Deadly perils, priceless treasures." The eponymous setting is a vast, untamed wilderness, whose few bastions of civilization exist primarily for outfitting treasure-seeking expeditions to distant locales. Colossal stones called "hedrons" float in the sky, and a phenomenon known as "the Roil" causes frequent geological upheaval as it sweeps across the land. - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zendikar

[Divides the Waters]

Kessie, I wish I had a fraction of your imagination....

[stormiel]

Kessie, I like your first idea. It makes me think of a bunch of avenues for characters and small plots and such

[Joel P.]

I'd have to agree, I like the first idea the best (the robot thing's already been done - ever heard of Bionicle? ) But maybe, just maybe, the magic essence (I say we find another name for it, mana just strikes me as overused and new-agey) also has the consistency of water - so what would tsunamis be like?

Another thing to consider is how water warfare would be affected. Cuz I like science, I'll say the essence has a density and specific gravity, so ships do have to be designed to float on it, in addition to using it as their power source - and the same restrictions that'd apply to ships in our world apply here. E.G. a ship's payload is determined by its draft and buoyancy, and so on.

Also, I just had this thought while working on the map - what if there are caverns below the landmasses, accessible from above, in which a multitude of creatures and some necromancers/evil mages live. The essence swirling around the outside of these caverns would provide energy and obscure the telltale signs of magic use below. It gives us some good dungeons and hideouts for evil. ;D


Now, time to play devil's advocate. The most glaring problem with this idea is the lack of water, fresh or otherwise, in the world. This leads to several sub-problems:

1. With no water to evaporate, rain would be nonexistent; thus plants wouldn't grow (other than those with a dependency on magical essence).
2. Without water to absorb heat, global temperatures would quickly rise to a ridiculously high level.
3. No plants means no animals, which means no humans.
In summary, a carbon-based ecosystem would be essentially untenable in a world without water.

Now, if we wish to argue that this essence takes the place of water, how does it do so? Can the populace drink it? Or is the mere presence of magic enough to keep them alive?

I think a good compromise would be to have the oceans be water, but with a thick 'fog', as Kessie calls it, of essence atop them. Ships can float atop this 'fog', but you can't swim because you'd drop twenty or thirty feet before you hit water. Inland water sources, such as rivers and lakes, are purely water; but perhaps with the occasional 'fog problem', which requires the attentions of mages to clear away and make the water safe again. Groundwater is unaffected.

This is starting to sound like the mists in Mistborn...now all we need is for them to attack people...

[rjj7]

Hey, coolness. Awesome work Kessie!

I also like the first idea, though I have to say I enjoyed all of them. I also like Joel's ideas that expand on it. My inclination is to go with the 'mist on surface of water' idea. Here's a thought: Maybe there are some ships that sail on top of the mist, and these are the primary methods of transportation across the ocean. But maybe there are still a few ships that sail on the water itself. Nobody in their right mind uses these, as it's very dangerous sailing through the 'mana-mist'. Not to mention that extended inhalation of the mana has--unpredictable results. However, there is a bit of an underground of smugglers, thieves, and political agents that occasionally use normal ships for delicate operations. We'd have to expand on why the mist is dangerous, but that's not a problem, it's an opportunity! (by the way, I share Joel's distaste for the term 'mana'; but for now it's a handy handle for the concept).

This also has potential tie-ins with a plot idea I put in the original thread. The clouds bring more than weather; something has disturbed the heavens, and each day brings a fresh new doom. No need to think of it now, but I just thought I'd give everyone a heads up as to where my imagination is taking off to.

[Kessie]

I think we should use the term "mana", because the reader will go, "Oh, it's a mist made of magic, so it's mana." Every game/book whatever calls free-floating magic mana, and I think we should stick to fantasy standard rather than tiptoe around it for fear of offending somebody.

What if the ocean levels are dropping, and slowly being replaced by this mana sea? That would set up a global ticking time bomb that the heroes (and probably a lot of the political factions) have a big stake in. After all, without oceans, everybody dies. Maybe that's why there's these sudden new underground caverns that have opened up--no longer flooded in water, and they lead down to the cracks in the world.

Of course, that begs the question of why the cracks appeared in the first place. The world next door must be very heavy on mana and very low on water for such a swap to be taking place.

I'm thinking it might look something like Netherstorm from World of Warcraft: 1.bp.blogspot.com/-GABFpEKTcJk/TbWCkn67MsI/AAAAAAAABPc/Mv1YqIMEhPQ/s1600/WoWScrnShot_031211_205341.jpg

Of course, this has probably been happening very slowly for years, so there'd be factions who insist that the mana is useful and they shouldn't try to get rid of it.

[Joel P.]

Eh...see, that's where I disagree. I think (especially if we can get a rough language idea, like a fusion of Latin and Japanese, figured out) we should call it something of our own devising. Or, as a compromise, we can have the term for it be 'mana' in one country or district, but have other places have their own terms for it. (For instance, in Japanese magic is 'maho', and in Latin it's 'magia')

The levels dropping would be a good idea - and since according to Randy's idea the first people to notice it would be secret political envoys, we could say the governments all know about it; but there's so much bickering they can't seem to decide on what to do!

Okay, I just thought of this. What if the essence that's basically 'invading' the world is of the Enemy's devising? While the original magic system of the world relied on having a single, specific power (earth, water, atmosphere, botany, mind, and energy are the ones I've thought of so far), the power derived from this essence is much more versatile and farther-reaching in its effects. And it's also considerably more dangerous.

[rjj7]

I'm actually too far out of touch with modern culture to contradict Kessie's point about the term 'mana'. But for the nonce, I think it's unimportant, and I vote we discuss it in more depth later.

Thinking about the latest ideas. The mental wheels are flying, but the ideas are coming and going too fast for a post to be worthwhile at this point.

EDIT: I think that we should move most of the discussion of the purpose of the mists into the Cultures and Magic thread (since it is a question of magic, and since the purpose and origin of the mist will strongly affect our cultures and magic system, moreso than our ecology). In here, I think we should go back to thinking about Joel's questions with regard to mountains, rivers, and whatnot. We can move into history when we know a bit more about the present day plot (for example, what caused the mists to appear in the first place? That depends on whether they're malevolent in purpose or not).

I'll start by saying that rivers should factor in the story prominently (even if there aren't very many of them), as it will be a good contrast with the oceans, and allow us to demonstrate a bit more of how the world works (and if we go with the lowering-oceans idea, we could have a corollary: the mists creeping up the rivers).