What's happening in your world?

['thul]

These beings have begun constructing a bit of a story and wonder what others think of the preliminary map sketch...

[Image: th_IMG_2156.jpg]
Its missing a many of the elements key to the story, but much of the general terrain has been drawn...

[Farseer]

Looks fantastic 'thul beings!

With such a treacherous mountain crossing to the north-west of Ingath Hold (what a terrific name!), I think I'd personally go for a boat crossing rather than face those peaks!

Now I want to read the story...

['thul]

There's a slight problem with reading the story... its not written yet.
Tried a short segment of it a week or so ago, but it was utterly horrible and inconsistent with 'thul's master plan.

Its generally a bad idea to cross those mountains, yes... 'thul could have added the label "There be dragons" to them.
oh, and the story will loan heavily from RotE dragons, only with a personal twist or five. (for now at least, no serpent/cocoon stages).
Essentially, this world is somewhat plagued by dragons. There aren't hundreds of them... there are thousands... Oh, and the majority wont be all that smart. You don't need all that many wits if you're as large as a house, spit acid and can swoop down under the cover of magic when hunting.

oh, and thanks for the name comment... its a name 'thul made for a small 3D model quite a while ago. It simply fit nicely. Now to make up names for the other cities, as well as making the rest of the settlements and such.
The problem is steering clear of direct influences from both other works and from the history of tellus. There won't be any clear links to existing cities on Tellus, nor any cities copied from other books. Might be that a few will have styles of naming inspired from such, but not without twists.

The stories are still very much in preliminary mode. Setting up the world, races, some of the characters and such. Still not figured out the hows and whys of the system of magic used.

[joost]

Not a good day today:
- Woke up around 6 and couldn't fall asleep anymore.
- When I went to my car I found it frozen shut. I had to break away some ice around the lock to be able to open it
- When I arrived at the shopping mall my car slipped and hit a concrete pole. Luckily only paint damage as far as I can see...

['thul]

Now that has got to be annoying.
These beings have experienced the same as you in sleep. Waking up early after going to sleep late, unable to fall asleep. Knowing one is exhausted and need sleep, yet unable to get it.

['thul]

These beings have drawn further on the map, adding in a number of rivers and fixing up the coastlines for two of four ocean sections. They also added a few more mountains and such, as well as naming one more settlement.

[joost]

Well, last night ended in style: the remote of my TV stopped working. It's just over 1 month old....

['thul]

Life is hard.

These beings have continued on the preliminary information for the story related to that map, as well as adding in more details to the map. Now there's been added more trees, more rivers and a lot of settlements. These beings are considering adding a second sheet to the map, placed below the current one, so as to allow a somewhat larger number of cities and such. Right now the world feels a bit small, despite the fact that crossing east to west in a straight line, ignoring things like mountains should take roughly 50 days. with terrain in mind, probably 2-4 months.

[fool-ish]

joost, I hope things have gotten a little better since

Great work 'thul! You really must have an amazing amount of patience to sketch all those mountains and trees and rivers. And it sure does look like a treacherous journey overland getting from one side to the other!

['thul]

the mountains and trees are easy. Rivers are more trouble.

The basic lines for a mountain is one "peaky" line for the shape, and a few sketchier lines for the side. about 3-5 seconds.
The trees are even quicker. one vertical line, and a few scratchy lines that are somewhat diagonal.
These beings won't do as they did no a former map, where they drew in many houses. probably around a thousand of them or so. At least 25-30². The pencil sharpener for that drawing was a rather decently sized knife.

The journey in itself isn't all that treacherous, as one would keep to the valleys between the peaks. Of course, in wintertime, it'd be treacherous. If one ignores the dragons, it'd be a nice journey. but then, dragons dont like being ignored, so...

It is much harder to write out descriptions for everything about the different races and such for the story, especially to keep it all consistent. Having to think of all sorts of things that you never think about when reading a book, like how do people there dress? is dress symbolic to status, if so how? Whats the currency? How is it divided up? What does it equal in the currency of those? And so forth.
Still not even started on building up the base of minor characters, or for that matter planning the magic system. As 'thul can quote the author David eddings on, it might be easier to take up rocket science than writing epic fantasy.