Amanda Lafrenais
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Worldbuilding: Home-Bound - Porrima and Remnants
🕑 Added 2020-03-25 16:25:09 +0000 UTCIf you're interested in someday reading Home-Bound when I make it (the comic with the rat girl), don't read past the drawing in this post, as its nothing but Spoilers.
Porrima lives on a floating island in a pocket dimension that circles Mainland Earth, and twice a year when the orbits are close enough, there is a bridge between the two for a weekend-long festival for trade and exchanges. This festival is the only time the two worlds interact - No one is allowed to enter what Earth calls "Remnant Island," and no one is allowed to leave.
Porrima, already terribly curious about Earth, becomes infatuated with a visitor - Tassel, a rabbit girl in charge of overseeing the festival, and follows her around. Chaos breaks loose when the exact conflict Tassel was there to prevent breaks out, and in the scuffle, Tassel "rescues" Porrima not knowing she's an Islander - stranding her on Earth until the next Festival.
This kicks off an adventure with Tassel's cohorts and antagonists, pursuing Wishing Stones and the powerful Darn'ed and Immutables who cause chaos from the mainland, that the island has been spared by its distance. And along the way Porrima learns why her island exists, and what that means for her and her relationship to the Earth.
SPOILERY WORLD BUILDING below this drawing of the two head gods of Earth's pantheon, Rend and Darn, showing off their favorite party trick (that everyone hates):
Threads connect everything. They are the literal elements holding the universe together (mass, physics, etc) and the metaphorical (relationships, memories). Time and space is like a tapestry and every single one of those threads moors an object or person to reality.
Rend and Darn sit on the "throne" of the pantheon of deities because of how they connect to threads. They're the joint-force that prevents entropy - Rend 'cuts' threads, and Darn 'mends' them. Sometimes their target is a problem that needs fixing, but most of the time they are indiscriminate. Rend runs through the world, unseen, cutting threads indiscriminately, with Darn always chasing behind, darning and mending the "holes" left as she finds them. If they weren't such jerks and apathetic to the plight of the living, they would be more careful in how they conduct this necessary task - but they are.
This has resulted in anomalies all over the Earth is reality is warped by their chopping and screwing. Floating islands, magic rains, people with supernatural abilities, dangerous objects, and areas of pure chaos.
Another aspect at play are the Wishing Stones. I'll type about them in another world building post but in short, they are numerous and contain within them a tiny portion of Rend & Darn's combined power. They can grant a wish by changing reality, which involves cutting necessary threads, rearranging pieces and sewing the pieces back together to make it possible. With a small wish, this is easy. But with bigger or more complex wishes, the stones (even more apathetic than the goddesses, as simple objects), don't always put the world back together cleanly. This creates even more chaotic elements and anomalies. Sometimes, those anomalies are so big and complex and collapse in on themselves, causing the Earth to have to "reboot."
Then there are the Remnants. When a wish is granted and everything is sewn back together, sometimes things are left out. With a complex wish, it is impossible to account for every single element. Sometimes places or objects aren't put back in. Sometimes its entire people. These people are just removed from time and space. Their threads to the world are cut and they just see to disappear, most of the time completely forgotten - when things are put back together, with the memory threads to them cut, people forget they were there at all. Of course, sometimes someone wishes another person "away." And sometimes, that's where they go.
And that's where Remnant Island comes in. Its origins are a secret, but a minor goddess created it as a home for Remnants she finds in the time stream, and pulls them back into reality. She spends all of her time "watching" for them, finding and pulling them back. They have no memories, and seem frozen in time from when they disappeared. Remnants are each from different eras, iterations of the world, and due to their cut threads are unstable on the Earth where nothing moors them to reality. The island is a safe place for them to live out their lives, unaware what they are and safe. They are just told they are "pulled from the Stars."
When Porrima is stranded on Earth, she begins learning all of these things slowly. Finding out she's a Remnant ends up being a big part of her story, and its upsetting at first: the idea that she had somewhere she belonged but was just, accidentally cut out of it. Or intentionally cut out.
ANYWAY! That was a lot, and I'll type more later if people are interested.
Comments
Amanda Lafrenais
which is funny cuz its the one I have the MOST world building for! Which is why I'm sharing it now
Christina K
Very interested!! This project is probably the one I know least about and I would love to know more!
