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Khivesk Citizens concepts
🕑 Added 2019-06-22 18:06:30 +0000 UTCThis time around its the full set of some of the concepts I'm roughing out for the citizens of Khivesk.
The small port city plays a pretty important role in the story of Cinders (as well as Berrand, Amathos and a bunch of others). Its a hub with a fairly ancient history dating back to before the exodus of some rather powerful beings known as the Indorai (or Indorillian). It also was founded jointly after the original inhabitants had fled from a long ruined city of Whiterook.
Khivesk was originally a small fishing village that was predominantly Javarran. The largest of the packs even back then was the Three Heron pack. When refugees started streaming along the coast, and even crashed into the shore aboard broken and leaking boats the Javarran people rescued dozens of them.
The ensuing alliance between the groups grew in the few hundred years from then. The practice of worshiping spirits was cross traded with the words of the Saints. The Aldormira Academy was founded with the remnants of the seers and wizened magic theorists and practitioners from old Aldormira (an ancient Indorillian school near Whiterook that was also lost). These magics were passed on to the very few able and willing Javarran.
I remember not being able to figure out the time-frame I wanted this world to be in, swinging between everything from pre-historian/Conan-esque times to the times of Solomon Kane, and decided the periods between 1500 and 1600 earth could work well, still allowing for fantasy but introducing some slightly modern elements. I've always liked the 'Harvest' feel of pre-colonial times, the age of discovery, so it fit well with this.
It also started to allow me to begin looking into cultural shifts for the various Javarran people in the world. While the wild-wolves of the eastern areas are more Celtibrian or even Helvetic in nature, I wanted the ones in the center and west to have a more Native Acadian/island tribal feel to them. I wanted to be careful not to take full-cloth from any one culture for either though, which left me enough room to start adding more fantasy shifts to them since at its heart, Felwroth is a fantasy world. There are still dragons, still magic, and still dark places that you don't want to stray into from the roads between points of light.
I hope to continue solidifying about this world as I go on. I've had so many disparate scraps written that I have to pick through, and cultivate, and hope that the end result is the world that I hear speaking to me often.
More than anything, though, I hope to finally tell the tale of a small lorrnath in a very big world.
(Please forgive all the chicken-scratch notes. These sketches are kind of serving as both a visual reference and a way of reminding my admittedly forgetful brain of certain things.)
Comments
David J.
That is fascinating! Now you have my FULL attention!
Tim J.
Cinders herself is a dragon, at least I should say, she has that bloodline in her (Its a long, long story that I hope to unfold in the comic thing). Dragons actually are a foundation of the world itself. The goddess who sacrificed herself to save this little orb she loved was the 'First Mother' of their kind. :)
MountainGoat
Your 'chicken scratch' is incredibly legible and welcome :)
David J.
My world: Tolkien meets Bram Stoker's Dracula. Castles. Gothic architecture. In an Eastern European inspired setting with lots of mountains (our family emigrated here from Romania about a century ago).
David J.
I'm enjoying the heck out of these details. "There are still dragons, still magic, and still dark places that you don't want to stray into from the roads between points of light." Dragons! That... I wanna see.
Garry Stahl
A method of mine for lifting cultures, but not whole cloth is to mix two improbable ones together in interesting ways. Say the Dream Time with German Calvinists. I don't know that I would want to live there, but it would be interesting. Another is things like the Arilaners. Their culture is Renaissance Englishesque, but they are totally landlocked and have no sea tradition. Also they have memory of an Empire in the past. A golden time some are insufferable about. The idea is to take something familiar; England. Then put it someplace strange; landlocked. And consider the changes.
Perfesser Bear
Excellent cultural background, here. And I have no trouble deciphering your chicken-scratch notes. Interesting that you mention that the Khavijas engage in both Ancestor worship and in Nature spirits (animism). I developed much the same beliefs for my little fictional world. That said, it was pivotal to one story for a family of Wolves to adopt Christianity (although I think their son was gaming the system). Anyway, a friend summed it up this way: <i>"The nature of the Maker of All things is unknown and unknowable. It benefits no one to ponder such things; move along."</i>
