Embracing Setting Changes

If you’re interested in worldbuilding, these kinds of articles are a great part of my process. Every once in a while my own conception of my own setting changes. Whenever that happens, I sit down and I write to myself what it is I want to change. I decided to post it and let you in on the process, and what sorts of things I want changed.

The changes are such that I feel the need to comb through past articles and see whether they still fit enough to be linked to in my setting page, or if I should remove the links, thus parting them from the glorious canon. This is the nice thing of having it all on a blog and editable. There are a couple things that I’d like reader input on before I go take the red pen to them. So if you’re interested in worldbuilding or you’re a fan of Eden, help me out here. I want to start rolling in a few edits and retcons here and there, here’s my ideas.

Good And Evil: Currently, there’s a bit of ambiguity as to Spirits. You absolutely aren’t supposed to ever kill them, even if they’re cartoonishly evil (and they do easily come in that flavor). You’re supposed to do battle with them though. But a hero of an Eden mythology would try to find some alternative to killing – sealing away, showing the creature love it never had, etc, that sort of thing. I’m thinking of bringing in demons/youkai/something as being a subset of Spirits that’s totally fine if you just kill them. This way, you can have a better gradient of enemies – from misguided spirits whom you must purify without dealing death, to demons that you have to squash. Sometimes you just want a petty little deity to have its face squashed in.

The Sci-Fi Stuff: I’m thinking of shrinking the Dromidae Empire to only a single Hive floating above Adel, or maybe even having the Dromidae reside in the Second Sky instead of the in the Forlorn Void. Dromidae would still have acid guns and their other weird stuff, but the whole star trek thing with the Dromidae secretly trying to prevent the destruction of the universe was too over-the-top even for me and I had no idea why I even added that. Dromidae and Adelians would also be technologically more equivalent, rather than the current situation where Dromidae have magical nukes and flying urchins and Adelians have just discovered that guns can shoot more than one bullet at a time if you mess with them a certain way. This way if you want to have some kind of alien invasion plot, the Adelians can actually win. Though, I have no plans to change the Dromidae’s general culture and nature. They’ll still like the Adelians and are unlikely to invade them. I was also thinking of giving the Dromidae a more focused role as artificers for the Adelians, as well as making them a bit more alien (though still very human-like in appearance). They already have antennae, but I was thinking they could have some prehensile tentacles.

The Races: Humans will remain near-extinct, Elves will occupy the same role of being evil xenophobic jerks as usual, and I’m thinking of nuking Dwarves as well. I tried to make Dwarves kinda interesting and I believe I failed. I really don’t care about Dwarves all that much and I have nothing to really say about them or incorporate them or twist them around. This will pretty much eradicate the staple of fantasy classics, but if I cared about fantasy classics all that much, I wouldn’t have written the setting in the first place.

I’m also thinking of making the Damakran be fish-people rather than specifically sharkpeople, but sharkpeople specifically is just so cool though.

Nations: If I cut out the dwarves, Noshiki can either become some kind of underdark mountain place that adventurers can run into and die in droves from angels/sorians/furies/whatever else decides to hide there, or it can remain civilized. Cutting out Noshiki PROS: less space taken up in the Nations section, its cultural overlaps with Emderuer are eliminated so Emderuer alone can be the Europe-Japan “Culture of Honor” place, Noshiki can become a completely massive mountain megadungeon filled with pre-cataclysm ruins, giving you a place to point to on the map that SCREAMS “there’s stuff to explore HERE.” Cons? I don’t see a single Con, but perhaps you can help me. This ties into the “cut out the dwarves” decision. If the Dwarves stay, Noshiki likely stays with them. Of note – I don’t plan on turning the Dwarves into affably evil jerks like the Elves.

Dragons: Dragons are nearly extinct. I’m thinking of bringing them back a bit. That’s basically it. I don’t really want every potential dragon fight to be against the last of its species. At the same time I don’t want them to be common, even if the average Adelian adult could potentially clown a wyrmling dragon. Adelians are kinda hardcore.

Thematics: Adel was never all that European, and it’s always been a melting pot. It’s got lots of India and Asia (rural villages, robes everywhere, polytheistic, religion is powerful and respected), and touches of Europe (like the army/government organization and uniforms, the dress of the upper class, the commerce) and the Middle East (Vedaria). I like its fantasized versions of all these things. I’m wondering if perhaps people would like to see more of the real world mythologies, more of the different real world ethnicities (rather than fictionalized abstractions of these). I’m perfectly fine with how this is right now, but if it would be more interesting for people to make it more, uh, I don’t know, historical?