I have chosen the winner of last week’s poll, and it turns out that an ancestor of Wesley once saved the Gnarl kind, who granted him rights to log the forrest. This knowledge was lost years ago, as was the agreement to only log within three valleys.

Since then, loggers have been moving further and further into the forest, invading the trolls sacred forests. They lashed out, killing those loggers who broke the ancient treaty. Troll-hunters were hired: brutal, vicious men who have hunted the trolls almost to extinction.

Now, this sounds like a great place to put in our little prophecy. This very same troll-king told this ancestor that a scion of his would one day either save the world, or destroy it. Trolls everywhere whisper this prophecy amongst themselves, spreading the word of the Chosen One throughout Faerie lands.

But it’s time to zoom out a little. We have our farm and forest, our village and a general sort of feel for our kingdom. Let us fill in some more details around Wesley, shall we? We are starting with a generic sort of Western European/Mediterranean sort of feel, with an empire based on the Roman Empire. I would love to make that Eastern European/Persian kind of thing, but I am not nearly familiar enough with the area. But we can try to add in some Easter European mythologies, and if we make out tyrannical emperor a God King like Xerces, ruling over many smaller, conquered states we get a little of the persian feel.

This brings us to another of my rules: Don’t Forget the Little Things. A quick google search of gives me some ideas. For mythology, we get: Baba Yaga(Yes!),  domovoi, vodyanoi, and of course, vampires. This is gona be fun. So, we will just have to include some of these faerie creatures in out story, especially Baba Yaga! But the little things? How do we use ‘little things’ to add authenticity and flavor to our world? Well, my favorite is food. By simply mentioning a few well known slavic foods we can tell our readers, without actually telling them, that we have constructed an eastern european fantasy world. Pirogues, ham, kolbasa, shopska, potatoes, leeks, ect. Your readers will pick up on these little details, and will fill in whole gaps with their own expectations. If we name places, especially old places, with slavic sounding names, then we really set the tone. We have a name for our town, but it’s relatively new. But the forest? Trevasny, that sounds properly slavic. The Trevasy Forest, in the Pmarya Mountains.

We have a great start.

But we are moving away from out forest and village. ElmsGate is part of a much larger community, part of a kingdom. A kingdom that was conquered by our God King(with the help of Baba Yaga, perhaps?). Our kingdom is one of, lets say six smaller kingdoms. Lets stick with this one first, we can fill in the rest later. We need a name.  Dolnaskie. There, properly slavic.

A lot of the process of world building is filling in names and details of places(don’t forget to create a secret when you do), and we can do a lot of that as we write our story. We don’t need to fill in every little corner of the map right now, only the ones Wesley will visit. Most of the time, we make that up as we go along. We will only concern ourselves with the general sort of details. We can cheat by patterning our culture after the czech and slavic cultures of our own world.

But this is a fantasy, we need something a bit more fantastical for our kingdom of Dolnaskie. There are three ways to do this: people, magic, and creatures. We just created some creatures with our Gnarls, and we can use the vodyanoi and domovoi when we need more. Magic, well, that’s a rather serious post, so let’s save that for next week. That leaves us with people.

Lets create a magical race of people. And this gives me a great opportunity to explain another rule of World Building: Exaggerate Traits. A great way to create something in a fantasy world, is to take the familiar, an exaggerate it to the point of fantastical.

As we are getting into a slightly dark faerie tale kind of story, let’s keep with the dark theme. And we need something to fill the roll of Elves, especially if this is a faerie story.  Lets take a human trait, a negative one, and exaggerate it greatly. I like Pride. That’s a good one. Pride. So our new race of people are incredibly proud. Let’s make them tall, and golden skinned, with a radiant luminensence. The Veela are a slavic faerie, who can entrance with their dance. Lets use this, and call our new golden-skinned race the Veela. But we don’t just want an elven rip-off. So, they aren’t magical. Let’s make them superb craftsmen. They craft incredible devices and toys. They are nomadic, moving from city to city, town to town, village to village in elaborately decorated wagons pulled by clock-work horses. We will craft a secret for the Veela later, when it suits our story.

Now, the Veela live only in Dolnaskie. As Wesley explores our fantasy land, he will come across many new and exotic races. Each of the six kingdoms can have it’s own new fantastical race.

Next week, we talk about Magic. So, our poll for next week is: what kind of magic do you want? High Magic, with powerful sorcerers hurling fire-bolts about? Low magic, based on nature and a connection with the land? Simple magic, based on folk-lore? Subtle magic, that that takes time and skill to use? Can anyone use magic, if they take the time to learn it? Or are only a special few born with the gift? Think about the fantasy books you have read and enjoyed, and what magic systems resonated the most with you.

Post your comments and suggestions, and I will use the most common or obviously preferred suggestion.