Wolf Kanno
is a Level 99 Chocobo
Memento Mori
Site Contributor

Who knows, though so far the cosmology is pretty closely tied to the plot. Let’s just say, though I tried to limit the influence of my inspirations, in some ways, this is getting even more Xenogearsy than before

Yeah, same for you. I am a bit worried I am going in a bit too deep, but I really hope it’ll help me in the end. I think it was Hemingway that coined the iceberg rule - that you know a lot more about the character (or world in this case) than you read, so that the rest can be naturally deduced by the reader.

How do I put this. It’s a science, but it was created based on the other form of magic. It’s stull supernatural, in a sense, in that the original magic predates it, but it involves techniques that allow it to sustain itself even when magic is at so low a point that it can’t manifest in people at all. There’s the implication that alchemy might just actually have a different source altogether, but that’s spoiler territory, I guess

Sounds intriguing - you seem to have a pretty good idea of where you’re going with this magic system. In my case, like I told you earlier, magic used to be in abundance, pretty much disappeared since antiquity and is now slowly reappearing. It’s gptten to the point that it’s not omnipresent enough to be experienced by anyone, but common enough that it’s widely studied and used in academic circles, to the point that the words professor and Magus are interchangeable. Then there’s the monoliths that grant their users near infinite potential but come with a very high risk factor and are mainly taken over by the military. Alchemy, on the other hand, has been present since ancient times but is mostly confined to one culture and curiously, its power and intensity is unrelated to the magic flow I mentioned earlier.

Sounds pretty similar to what I have tbh

Oh man, I really need to figure something out when it comes to my magic system. I know where it comes from and I know how it fluctuates, I know there’s two main brands - vanilla magic and alchemy - but I honestly have no clue when it comes to how exactly it works.

Yeah, it does seem like it works like that - if anything, I am now constantlybonmersed in that world I created, so that’s cool. And yeah - handling exposition is also something I struggle with. You already know what it’s all about, but you know another person knows nothing, so there’s a tendency to either explain things inadequately or excessively. It’s sonething I hope can be dealt with in later drafts.

It is working for now and I hope it keeps working out. Interestingly, I actually started out with drawing a world map and will probably have to draw several more. The first one was the easiest, though, since it was a general outline of the continents - gonna need to go deeper into country borders later, which will be tricky. Though I still feel that I’m using broader stroke for the world for now, at least I got some terminology down

So working on my world’s Bible has been great so far. Though I’m trying to confine it to backstory and lore a I’d really rather avoid making a plot outline this far. Rather, I want to create a framework so thT everything that happens in the book is the result of previous events in one way or abother. Hope this works.

How has your progress been?

Nice. Whenever you’re ready to run it by me, I’ll be happy to read it. Judging by my own pace, it’ll be a while until I get this done to that degree, sadly

I wanted to pants this whole thing, but I think I might need to actually have to sit down and make a diagram or something. I still want to avoid a detailed outline, but I kind of need an anchor, I think. It’s kind of hard to keep track of all the places so far and I am being very reluctant when it comes to actually naming stuff.