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The Curse of Steel: Some Background Notes

The Curse of Steel: Some Background Notes

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The setting for The Curse of Steel is a region whose name will translate as The Great Lands (the constructed-language word is probably something like Mortalani). This is a region roughly analogous to western Europe (or north-western Middle-earth, if I’m being honest) which has just about completed its transition to the Iron Age.

The primary inspirations here are Tolkien’s legendarium, and the fantasy of another British author: Michael Scott Rohan. From Tolkien will come the general shape of the world map, and a few pieces of back story. From Rohan will come a more Darwinian approach, in which the divine powers aren’t all so benevolent to humans, and societies are rooted in the long prehistory of a world that wasn’t created for their benefit.

The Peoples

At present I have five “races” (more accurately, hominid subspecies) in mind for this setting.

Elders

The Elders are a very ancient population, ancestral to all the others. Think of these as highly evolved and sophisticated homo erectus.

Elders tend to be shorter and more gracile than humans, but they are strong and quick for their size, and are immune to aging or disease. They are not by nature more intelligent than humans, but they have many ages of traditional wisdom to draw upon, and they have considerable natural talent with magic. Their natural lifestyle is that of intensive hunter-gatherers. When they have the opportunity, they will sometimes maintain small sedentary communities in order to practice more advanced arts and crafts.

The Elders are almost extinct in the mortal world. Most of them departed from the world long ago, to live in the divine sphere with the benevolent gods. Some return from time to time on specific errands, always apparently arriving by sea, so individual Elders and even small groups are sometimes seen.

Smith-folk

The Smith-folk are about as tall as humans, but they are stocky and extremely strong. Think of these as resembling homo neanderthalensis, although with better manual dexterity and more advanced material culture.

The Smith-folk learned advanced crafts from the Elders in ages past and are now known as the best stone-workers, wood-workers, and metal-smiths in the world. They are very clannish and insular. They tend to live in small communities within reach of agricultural society, where they can trade their craft-work for food. When that doesn’t work out, they will often revert to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle (or turn to brigandage).

Sea-folk

The Sea-folk are small hominids, about half the size of humans, not very strong but quick and nimble.  Think of them as homo floriensis who have taken to more advanced tools.

Sea-folk originally evolved on a chain of islands far away on the other side of the world, where they followed an intensive hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Centuries ago they encountered human sea-farers, and took to that life with great enthusiasm, making themselves so useful that every sea-captain sought them out. Today, they can be found in coastal communities everywhere.

Sea-folk are very gregarious, curious and imitative, good at picking up languages and mimicking local customs. They are superb sailors and fishermen, but are also known as thieves and rogues.

Humans

Humans are the default population from which my protagonist and most of her peers and rivals come. They are biologically and sociologically identical to homo sapiens sapiens, modern humans from Earth. They are the most diverse of the peoples of the world, following many lifestyles and living at a wide range of levels of technology.

In ages past, some human populations interacted with the Elders and learned a great deal from them. Transplanted to a minor continent amid the Western Sea, these were among the first to develop an advanced civilization. Today they are great sea-farers, traveling all over the world to trade with the peoples they find. In the Great Lands, they have begun to establish permanent settlements on the coasts, and their relationship with the indigenous peoples is turning greedy and exploitative.

Other humans developed civilization independently and are beginning to establish large empires of their own, but these have generally fallen under the domination of cruel and greedy gods. My protagonist is from a more “barbarian” culture, technically advanced but still at a tribal level of organization. Most human societies in the area where the story takes place are blended from ancient hunter-gathers, farmers who moved into the area in more recent millennia, and a warrior elite who arrived even more recently with their distinctive customs, language, and military technology.

Beast-folk

Beast-folk are the “youngest” of the major hominid subspecies, bred by malevolent gods in the last few thousand years. They have no close analogue in our own prehistory.

Beast-folk were bred to be carnivorous pastoralists, living on herds of horses and cattle on the broad plains east of the Great Lands. They’re also not above eating members of the other four subspecies when opportunity arises. They are larger and stronger than the other peoples, and raised from birth as warriors. They don’t make particularly good soldiers, since their logistical requirements don’t allow them to form large armies. On the other hand, they make excellent raiders and shock troopers.

Beast-folk were created to be destroyers of civilizations, and many of them remain hostile to all outsiders, feared and hated. They are somewhat variable, however; some beast-folk are less necessarily hostile, and a few have even assimilated into human societies.

Final Notes on “Races”

Yes, if you tilt your head and squint, you end up with “elves,” “dwarves,” “hobbits,” “men,” and “orcs,” but I’m hoping to play those themes in a different key, as it were.

One note: when it comes to who can interbreed with whom, humans and the Smith-folk are the ones who have been known to intermarry, while the Elders and the Sea-folk are more biologically distinctive. No one is quite sure whether the Beast-folk can interbreed with any of the others; no one really wants to make the experiment.

Villains

The stories I have in mind are likely to have a variety of villains and conflict-sources. Given that I’m aiming for a pulpy, Conanesque feel, there should be plenty of corrupt kings and evil wizards to go around. On the other hand, the big, world-shaking villains are all going to be gods.

Most spirits and gods are benevolent – or at least not interested in interfering with the mortal world. Occasionally one of the gods decides to be malevolent, emerging onto the mortal plane to pursue their own goals, actively interested in killing, tormenting, or just ruling mortals. The Elders call these malevolent beings the Great Enemies. So far in history there have been three of these:

  • The most powerful of the Great Enemies, a god of deep cold and ice. He fought to preserve the mortal world as a place of quiet, austere beauty, free of the “corruption” of sentient life. Held sway for many thousands, if not millions of years, and was only defeated by the direct engagement of more benevolent gods.
  • A goddess of disease and pestilence, who thought of herself as a champion of the natural world. She sought to protect forests and animal life around the world by using virulent plagues to eradicate sentient life. Opposed by the Elders, and eventually by a brief period of divine intervention.
  • A god of fire, iron, and warfare, who seeks not to eliminate sentient life, but to rule it “for its own good.” Currently active in the world in the present day, not apparently opposed by the Elders or by the benevolent gods.

Okay, that’s a taste of the backdrop. Next time, some notes on the initial draft timeline for the setting. Then I’m going to start working on a new version of the map, which I may also use to set up a worldbuilding-by-simulation exercise to develop the timeline in more detail. More to come over the next few days.

Reviving an Old Project

Reviving an Old Project

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I’ve been rather blocked for the past month or so, as witness the lack of updates in this space for about that long. So I’m going to try something that often works for me: turn to one of the other projects that’s currently on the back burner, and see if I can push it forward for a while. By the time I run out of steam on that, I usually find I can turn back to the first project and make progress with it once more.

One of the items I’ve had on the back burner for a while is a novel, possibly first in a series, with the working title of The Curse of Steel. This is a foray into writing Robert E. Howard-style pulp, set in an Iron Age world that’s reminiscent of our own prehistory without being tied to it.

The protagonist is Krava, “the Raven,” a female warrior from a pseudo-Celtic society, kind of a younger Boudica. After a battle against orc-like raiders, in which her father is slain, Krava comes into possession of a magic sword. She soon finds it an uncomfortable weapon to own, one which pulls her into a struggle of ancient magic and foreign gods. Eventually she leads her people in a fight for their freedom and independence, against several more “civilized” nations.

I have maybe 25 kilowords of the first novel down, including a first chapter that I posted here a while back. Unfortunately, I got blocked on that because I couldn’t converge on a consistent picture for Krava’s world beyond her immediate homeland. Back in 2017-2018 I tinkered with several concepts, including a late Stone Age Europe in our own world, and a completely new world map, but none of those quite came together to my satisfaction. I also did some language construction, which will probably be useful eventually.

Yet as often happens, since I’ve left that set of ideas on the back burner for a while, now I think I can clarify and push them forward a bit. I’ve got a plan to develop some back story and a more focused map, enough that I can move ahead with the first novel when time permits. The plan involves some research, and a little worldbuilding-by-simulation, and I’ll be working on that and making posts about it over the next two or three weeks.

Status Report (3 June 2018)

Status Report (3 June 2018)

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Some more work on the world map over the weekend, rather painstaking. I’m flipping back and forth between continuing to paint in elevation contours at lower and lower levels, and adding ocean currents. Neither of these is finished, but another day or two of effort should have me there. Then the fun part begins – actually mapping out climate zones.

Here’s the current map:

Status Report (31 May 2018)

Status Report (31 May 2018)

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Not a lot of time over the past couple of days to work on this, but I’ve managed to tweak some of the landforms a little. The planet resembles a mirrored Earth a bit less now. I’ve also started painting altitude contours on the map. So far, just the very highest peaks, the Andes- or Himalayas-equivalents, but the next few layers should cover all of the land areas with colored zones to indicate altitude.

Status Report (28 May 2018)

Status Report (28 May 2018)

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A few hours of work this evening, while I had Wonder Woman playing in the background, and I ended up with a decent set of land-masses for my world map.

I seem to have reinvented an Earth, although flipped east-to-west. That not-North-America stands out in particular, and all those island arcs in the far western not-Asia are kind of reminiscent too. It makes sense, I suppose, since plausible plate tectonics aren’t going to generate completely arbitrary shapes.

There are differences too, of course. The pseudo-Atlantic ocean is a bit wider, and the continents are in general separated by stretches of sea. There’s a narrow gap between the not-Americas, and instead of a Mediterranean Sea there’s an open ocean between the not-Africa and the not-Asia. That’s going to do some interesting things to ocean currents, I think.

No matter. The actual stories I intend to write are going to be on a much smaller scale, so if the layout of the continents looks a little derivative, that won’t be obvious to my eventual audience. What’s important right now is that I’m reasonably satisfied with this layout, so I can move on to the next steps again.

Status Report (27 May 2018)

Status Report (27 May 2018)

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One of the major stumbling blocks with world-building, at least for me, is that even when I’m momentarily satisfied with the outcome of a task, it doesn’t take much to rob me of that satisfaction. In this case, while staring at my world map draft in progress, I began to compare it to both the real world and to other world-builders’ efforts, and found it lacking. Too crude.

So I’ve gone back to first principles and started over, this time rebuilding a map of tectonic plates without pre-designing any of the continental land masses. This time I strove to come up with something to resemble the general pattern of tectonic plates on the real Earth, at least as far as the number of major and minor plates was concerned. I also paid attention to the way plate boundaries are arranged – whether they tend to be convex or concave, and how they form seams and three-way intersections.

One thing I found useful was to simply mark off the polar regions and ignore those. One of the things that was giving me fits was the transformation from a flat projection to the globe and back, and that switch always introduces the most distortion close to the poles. By assuming there will be no major polar land masses, I can gloss over how any plate boundaries might be laid out in the arctic or antarctic regions.

The result (equirectangular projection only) is as follows. So far, so good. I haven’t marked continental plates yet, but there will be five major continents and a few minor land-masses and island arcs.

Next step will be mark out the relative movement of plates at each boundary, and then sketch land-forms to match.

 

 

Status Report (25 May 2018)

Status Report (25 May 2018)

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Just a quick report today: progress on my world maps for the Curse of Steel project. After tinkering a bit and learning how to build and use layer masks in Photoshop, I managed to paint mountain belts in their own layer on my map, with the following results:

Here, the deep-red belts are “young” mountains, the result of recent orogeny at the site of plate collisions or subduction. Think the Andes, Rockies, or Himalayas. The narrow, golden-brown belts are “old” mountains, the eroded remains of ranges that formed many millions of years ago in previous orogenic periods. Think the Appalachians or Atlas range.

One thing strikes me: the big continents to the east are going to have really big rain-shadow deserts, since those young, high mountains are going to block any kind of monsoon climate from moving too far inland. I’ll have to figure out the air circulation patterns next to know for sure. It makes sense, though, since large continents tend to have big arid zones anyway.

Next, it will be time to work out those climate patterns. I’ve been reading up on techniques for that all week, and the long weekend coming up should be a good time to work out the details.

Status Report (22 May 2018)

Status Report (22 May 2018)

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Had the day off sick today, so in between bouts of ick I got a bit more work done on the world map for The Curse of Steel. Mostly this involved refining the landforms, using a much finer pencil stroke to create crinkly coastlines and islands. I’m fairly happy with the results. Here’s the equirectangular base map:

Much better continental shapes, not so cartoonish now, and clear island arcs. Another view, in the Mollweide projection for variety:

Next step will be to lay out mountain ranges, in accordance with the underlying map of tectonic plates. Once that’s done, I’ll need to work out air and ocean circulation patterns, and then lay out climate zones. Then it will be time to drill down to the regional scale and build the maps I’ll need to support the story.

(Very) Rough Draft World Maps

(Very) Rough Draft World Maps

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Okay, given my level of frustration over the weekend, I’m rather happy with today’s developments. I’ve managed to produce a very rough draft of my world map, using Photoshop, the GPlates software, and GProjector. By no means is this as detailed as a good map of Earth yet, but I’m reasonably satisfied with the realism of the planetary geology involved.

Here’s a flat map in equirectangular projection:

This planet is in the middle stages of the breakup of a supercontinent. An Atlantic-like ocean has opened up, breaking off the equatorial continent and sending it south and west, creating a nice long chain of island arcs along the edges of two subduction zones as well.

The big continent that covers the north polar region is actually made up of three major continental plates. The piece covering the polar region itself is one plate, then a second is in the process of breaking away and heading southward, with a rift valley and a newly opening ocean basin dividing them. The third piece, down in the southern hemisphere, is actually a separate plate that started out attached to “Equatoria” but found itself divided from it by the new mid-ocean ridge. It’s currently being driven east and north, and is probably forming a blocked-off sea basin or an impressive range of mountains (or both) along the point of contact with the larger land mass.

The blot of land in the middle of the pseudo-Atlantic is my equivalent of Atlantis (or Númenor), the home of the most advanced human culture on the planet, one which is just starting a period of sea-borne exploration. The land-form is basically a super-Iceland, an exposed piece of the mid-ocean ridge that has a magma plume under it. Lots of volcanism and hot springs, and the inhabitants are feeling crowded enough that they’re ready to sail away and find primitive lands to colonize.

For variety, here’s a two-hemisphere orthographic map, produced using GProjector:

I did mention that this is a very rough draft map, right? I think I may produce a somewhat more detailed version of this map with Photoshop first, so I can add mountains and other major land-forms, then work out ocean currents and climate zones. Then it will be time to drill down to the specific region(s) that will appear in the story, and use Photoshop or Campaign Cartographer to put together finely detailed maps for those.

How did I get through this in just a few hours, after struggling all weekend? As often happens in world-building, the secret is finding the right workflow.

For a couple of days, I was using the GPlates software to try to draw features on the sphere. Problem is, although GPlates is perfectly good for that, that’s not what the software is actually designed for: it’s a very sophisticated plate-tectonics simulator. So by using it just to sketch features, I’m ignoring 99% of the thing’s functionality – and some of that functionality very much gets in the way. I was spending most of my time juggling multiple raster files, and fighting the very elaborate system GPlates uses to save projects, and getting frustrated with the results.

So today I switched my workflow around. Rather than do any drawing in GPlates, I did all of it in a Photoshop document with three layers (one each for ocean, tectonic boundaries, and land-masses). I would draw a few features, then save the result as a PNG image and import that into GPlates, purely to see how it looked on the sphere. More often than not, I would spot absurdities on the sphere that weren’t obvious on the flat map – so I would go back to Photoshop, fiddle with a few lines, and then re-import the result back into GPlates. I never tried to save anything in GPlates, so I never had to deal with its weird file-management system. Fifteen or twenty iterations later, I finally had the planet divided into a reasonable set of major tectonic plates, I knew where the major mid-ocean ridges and subduction zones were, and I was ready to finish the sketch map here.

I’ll take my progress where I find it.

Status Report (16 May 2018)

Status Report (16 May 2018)

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A short note, since it’s been a few days since I last posted anything here. I’ve been up to my eyebrows at the day job, teaching a course on risk management and cybersecurity. After a full day on the platform I’m rarely in good condition to get a lot of creative work done in the evening. Still, my brain has been percolating along on the Curse of Steel project.

I’m currently beginning work on some maps, to give the story some structure. The overall plot of the novel is very much in the “heroic quest” vein, with Kráva and a few companions going on a long journey across unexplored and dangerous countryside to reach an objective. So I need to at least sketch out the geography.

This, as usually happens with me, turns out to be more complicated than it might appear at first glance. Knowing too much about world-building often means you can’t be satisfied with the simple or naïve approach to any problem.

In this case, my brain got stuck on the question of how to draw regional and world maps on a sphere. I keep thinking back to the classic Baynes-Tolkien poster map of Middle-earth, which has been the inspiration for a hundred thousand fantasy-world maps since then. It’s a beautiful map, but the big unspoken problem with it is that it’s flat. The map legend indicates both constant directions and a constant distance scale, and that just cannot be done with any flat projection of a spherical surface. That’s a subtle flaw in the world-building for Middle-earth, especially if (as I suspect) Tolkien did his meticulous measurements of distance and travel times on a similarly flat map.

So, since this piece at least of my world-building is decidedly in the same mold, I want to draw a similar map – but I want to envision my world as a sphere and do my regional map-making on that basis. Which means I need to expand my cartographic tool set.

I usually do map-building with Photoshop, but it’s a challenge to draw on a sphere with that tool, and there’s no way to easily do the standard map projections. However, I’ve recently come across one of the superb world-building YouTube videos produced by Artifexian, in which he discusses a work-flow he’s developed to do just this kind of thing. Here’s a link to the specific video I’m talking about.

So I’ve gotten started on this piece of the project by downloading a couple of freeware tools (GPlates and G.Projector), and will be sketching out global and regional maps over the next few days. I’ll post some of the interim results here.