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lenora_rose) wrote2014-04-10 05:35 pm
lenora_rose) wrote2014-04-10 05:35 pm
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A Ramble on Worldbuilding.
This is purely self indulgence, written because it interests me. It's the first time I've had to do this much intensive almost ground-up worldbuilding since Labyrinth was first started (Because Labyrinth is set in a wholly different world). Every other story I've had to *refine* extant worldbuilding, do further discovery, but the basic sketches were MUCH more firmly set.
So. Let's start with a half-assed map, a rapid fire doodle in Photoshop. Until now, I mainly had the complete world map only in my head, though I have some country maps and extremely loose sketches. Names in upper case are the names of the continents, otheriwse they're country names (Except Fauconara, which like Australia is kinda both.)
This is at most 2/3 of the world, since there's a LOT more to Oriessa especially that vanishes off the map, a fair bit more to the north, and a whole other, if smaller, ocean on the reverse side of the world. Plus, of course, we're not showing all the way to the pole even in the south (Note, that the visible part of Borsza Diavhchi is HABITABLE land. And the poles do freeze.) The dark grey-brown is mountains, and blue on land is wetlands (there's some violet on the map of the other side of the world to mark polar areas.) The rest are probably self-evident. I didn't bother to get into rivers or lakes, because half assed and quick, not because I don't have a good idea where they are.
The opening scene of the book is this. Ship captain reports in to a harbour master, and instead discovers that the Navy is recruiting any fighting ship of theirs that shows up so they can assault an island harbouring human traffickers. The captain explains his ship's unusual circumstances, but nonetheless agrees to join the endeavour because A) It's on one of the two best routes towards the unknown anyhow, B) if the piracy is serious enough to warrant this kind of action, he's better off travelling with strong company, and C) he personally abhors traffic in slavery and all it stands for.
Straightforward scene, right?
Well...
Back to the map.
First thing is to figure out WHERE this is happening.
See the coloured dots by the country names? Those are a listing of how I've used those countries in the past. bright red means stories have taken place there with major protagonists from there. Violet is strong supporting characters from there have shown up in other works. Turquoise means they've warranted a more than passing mention.
Yellow means they've appeared as villains.
Other than Borsza Diavhchi, where there isn't a single human country, you'll notice Kalekoh has ONLY a villain dot. Everywhere else has been used in several ways. (Just noticed a small oops; Conalio should also have a villain Dot. Ah, well, not the only one.)
This is all that even I knew about Kalekoh prior to starting this book (Felian weren't much in for analyzing the culture of the people assaulting them):
- Being near to on the equator, so a lot of it is tropical hot and/or desert, but much of it is mountainous, so there is snow in the highest areas.
- The people there most strongly resemble our Africans. (Adding to the good reasons to make them not always villains)
- Their Goddess is called the Scorpion, and while She's not exactly a nice Goddess, what with the making felian undead and the religious order of assassins, it's also noted that mother scorpions carry their children on their back to protect them. (IE, it's not as simple as, oh, look, evil Goddess, just because she's based on a critter we find creepy.)
- In an earlier time period than this one will be, they had an extremely politically repressive society (even more so than many monarchies).
- In that time period, because their immediate neighbours on the same continent were felian (non-human sapients), they attempted to both take over their land and to use them as slave labour (NB: they did this to the humans of Fauconara, too, but the ocean crossing and Fauconara's more advanced technological level made that a less appealing target.) This could be considered in the long term an abject failure, though it did not feel like it to the felian at the time.
- Kalekoh has had woman in positions of political power and/or in the officer ranks of its military, and doesn't seem to think this is rare or inappropriate. (That the prime example I've written about is an adept sorceress may explain some of the more level playing field.) OTOH, they also, in spite of claiming to especially prize some traditionally female roles like motherhood, still devalue those tasks compared to other kinds of work. So not all comes up roses for the ladies.
- In a story set in a post-apocalypse era, there is a passing mention of Kalekoh as the place that used to produce the bulk of that world's equivalent of Kung Fu movies. This is attributed to a combination of learning those Felian fighting techniques that humans can reproduce at all and the necessity for people outside the military to learn to fight with improvised weapons to revolt successfully.
350 or so words of worldbuilding is not *nothing*, but I needed a *wee bit* more than that.
One part of the reason Kalekoh would work is that it's already canon, from its attacks of Fauconara, that ocean going is one of its technological strong points. Also, the sort of territory it takes up implies a strong need for trade. So no need to explain or justify the presence of significant ship power *even though* the bulk of their shoreline either faces Fauconara or right into the Lost Ocean.
The second was this first human trafficking storyline. It would make sense for a country that used to try to hold slaves to now be ashamed of that past. Attitudes would vary from defensiveness regarding the past practice, to active ignoring of the problem (which is the attitude most likely to have led to a small island territory becoming a haven) to trying to compensate, maybe overcompansate, in how harshly it treats more current-era slavers. Enough of a match to let me keep going and actually learn/invent something about the country.
NAMES:
All the names (All about 10 of them) I had for characters from Kalekoh were singular names, with no surname or patro/matronymic or job description. They did have titles, usually noble titles attached to geography, or military titles attached to named regiments. This may have been laziness on my part, but I decided it worked. They don't usually have surnames.
But in these higher-population higher-travel eras, even common people who don't travel much would likely need to append a town or province as needed to clarify for tax records. This meant I needed more names of cities and towns and ports, but at least I *only* needed those, and I might want such info anyhow. (Oh, and captains identify by ship first and home port second. I needed some minor nuisance paperwork to get the scene going, so my Captain is in the middle of a change of official home port. Which says a lot about bureaucracy's place in Kalekoh, which is another worldbuilding detail.)
The names were also, shall we say, pure fantasy names. Most of them were originally invented when I was pretty much an adolescent and had a tin ear for things like country or language of origin, and while they've been tweaked to sound more similar (or less blatantly ripped off from Earth - honestly, a villainess named Yvonne with a brother named Stefan, what was my teenaged self thinking?) since, they, and Kalekoh, weren't important enough for me to worry about developing a sound or feel for the language.
Well, ten names IS enough to figure out a few small sound commonalities. Enough to know that when I pulled the name Killian out of my names-that-were-cut-from-other-stories file for the Captain, it wouldn't fit as written.
Killaine would. And sounded a bit less soft, which is good for a dude who's over 6 feet tall, and grumpy and middling years.
(How did I know the captain was these things? Well, um, I kinda mentally cast him as Lance Reddick with even broader shoulders.)
Thing is, even Killaine is a bit gentle. Also, the "aine" ending had previously only been used for two female names. So. I had to think. Was -aine a gender neutral ending, a feminine ending, or just an ending?
I decided it was like names in our world that started masculine but began to get adopted wholesale by women - like Marion or Ainsley. It's a perfectly legit name for either gender, but it skews towards female.
On paper, Captain Killaine looks like a woman to most people who haven't met him. SO. 1: Is this a problem? 2: is it an advantage? (or 3: is it a nuisance?)
1: "A problem" would imply a society that is sexist in the traditional ways of European society. IE, sailors and ship captains are male oriented jobs. IE, people who only see what's on paper might discriminate on the assumption they're dealing with a woman. It would follow with the name being assumed female because it's been devalued by association with women.
But.
I haven't written my world to be a utopia which has solved the problems of gender disparity. But I ALSO don't feel like always treading the same old same old ground of exactly the same KINDS OF assumptions and disparities that come to us via European history and which permeate virtually every aspect of high fantasy worlds.
(More so when I already have countries on the map of this world that do have that exact attitude and more cause for it.)
What if the assumption is the other way around? Some parts of sailing, even with the assumption of a junk rig (Which needs fewer crew and less strength) require upper body strength, but that's not true of everyone on board - especially the officers. Womens' lower centre of balance suggest they are better at climbing, too, so the physical justification can be there for some duties to be feminine.
What if it's assumed that the officer roles on a ship are traditionally female duties? What if it's assumed that females organize and command while men do the hard labour? What if what a male on board ship is told is that he can never advance past a certain rank because they need the strong hands on the strong hand work?
This puts Killaine in an *odd* position. He's a man in a woman's role. But with a woman's name, so the assumption is that he fits the role. Until they see him.
It makes for an interesting dynamic. It also implies reasons other than ambition for Killaine to be in charge of a ship.
But. Is a man in charge of a ship rare a la "Everybody knows it can't be done" or just "Not common, worth mentioning but it's been done"? Well, I would find the first one a case of the most boring sexism; the blatant extreme kind that makes too much of the story about teh ebil sexism instead of, you know, story. It also would be unconvincing to a reader who lives in a world where ship captains have been male more than female. So, it's a bit more subtle. Less problem or advantage, and more option 3: is it a nuisance?)
How to represent that?
Well, have another male ship commander in the fleet. They'd naturally gravitate together to talk at least to start, just out of the pleasure of not being alone. That's natural social dynamic for most humans regardless of culture (Whether this has to be true of non-humans... well, that question could turn into yet more worldbuilding later). But again, to keep the dynamic more interesting than "Us against the women", they also have to have things sufficiently *not* in common that they don't stick together.
So, how about their attitudes about who should serve on their ships?
Killaine is quite proud to have an all-volunteer crew. But confronting him with someone who takes on conscripted sailors might seem too much cognitive dissonance for a reader when the plot involves heading out to cope with human trafficking and slavery (real humans have exactly this kind of dissonance sometimes, but this is part of some minor opening scenes and has to be something that can be grasped without need to explore). So. Let's make it something else.
I have to go back to the whole Narnia Deconstruction connection for a moment.
One of Mardoll's first criticisms of Voyage of the Dawn Treader specifically is that the non-human population of Narnia, all the talking animals, fauns, nymphs, dryads, centaurs and other mythical beasts supposedly so important in the prior books (and future books) is entirely represented on board ship by one (1) mouse. Who, though Lewis seemed fond of him and gave him a fairly large role, is still not exactly a strong representation for what is meant to be the chief population of that country. (especially when the humans of that country were making a serious attempt at wiping out all the non-human aspects of Narnia just a few years back.)
So, obviously, in a world with a rich variety of non-human sentient life forms, I had to bring more than one on board. A couple are among the passengers the God pretty much dumped on the captain will he or nill he. But crew?
Kalekoh is an entirely human country. It is, however, effectively flanked by two which are explicitly not (Fauconara has a strong and significant but not exclusive human population). So it's not hard to assume that Killaine has crew from one or both places as an explanation for the non-human presence. But what does *that* mean? is it normal? Is it freakish? Is it something else?
As stated above, Kalekoh made a serious attempt to conquer the felian homeland Rrarcho. So, even though a centuries has passed since (It can't be too much more than that due to where that would take us for technological advances), you wouldn't think felian would be an easy or comfortable fit on a ship of Kalekoh.
However, it's established in another novel that felian, who are after all strong for their mass, incredible jumpers and climbers, pretty good at carpentry and smithing, and able to supplement all the above with magic, are quite at home on board ship and have their own active trading fleets. So they'd be desirable sailors aside from that past history.
Back to good old Geography. Mountain and desert (and some cultivated land to the west). Kalekoh might have trouble getting ships BUILT, but Rrarcho has a LOT of wood and hard grasses (IE, bamboo or rattan). So. Kalekoh might well be happy to be attempting trade agreements so as to even be able to build a fleet. What do those entail?
Felian might help them build their ships. On the condition that a certain percentage of each crew BE felian (And thereby likely ensure that if the two countries do fall out again, Kalekoh will lose any advantage it has at sea in seconds).
This raises the spectre of quotas, which has unpleasant baggage - but in worldbuilding unpleasant doesn't necessarily equal bad. It sometimes means interesting, or even *necessary*. Certainly, in this case, it could eb the reason the two men don't see eye to eye. Killaine has a mixed crew; Kalekan, a few felian - probably more than is essential for a quota, and several human and non-human from Fauconara. (His first mate or equivalent role is a Wind Unicorn named Ocilia).
The other male ship commander has a crew entirely from Kalekoh, except for the absolute minimum required felian. Not that he treats them badly or differently. But he feels deep patriotism. Or at least that's how he thinks of it. Killaine's motley reads to him as the sort of crew one has when one can't pull enough volunteers from their homeland, because there's obviously something wrong with his ship. It doesn't occur to him that Killaine sees advantages in variety of experience. Or sees extra worth in another country's expertise on ship design.
Maybe this also means Killaine's ship has a few surprise aspects for anyone expecting a typical Kalekan ship - that it was partly designed, built, or rebuilt by either felian or Fauconarans to their own sketches. Again, back in the mire of research to come to figure out what or why its different (Could be as simple as adding a spinnaker to an otherwise junk-rigged ship, which would fix some of the problems with junk rigs, but I suspect some hull design tweaks might help), AND it might be a part of why he ended up drafted by this blasted moronic God. Still, it's more world and story building.
And one more thing: I wanted a reason to refer to the nature of some of the God's picked people (IE, not Killaine's crew) on board. So my proposed sketch for that was that Killaine himself was at one point briefly accused of 'indecent acts', but the case was dismissed and the charges dropped - in such a way that this harbour master shouldn't *know* it ever happened. Which brings up a raft of worldbuildy things about the legal system but more likely to be plot relevant: What to this country constitutes an indecent act? Is it consent, kink, sexual orientation, age, or something else? (Whatever it is, Killaine is genuinely innocent, but how the scene plays out to a 21st century eye is also relevant). Is this sort of accusation, if true, liable to lead to embarrassment, jail time but not a big social deal, a huge social deal, a killing offense to some...? Is the existance of an accusation, however false, a potential issue in Killaine's life for more than a conversation? Is Killaine straight or gay or bi (since the ship after all has a mixed gender crew...)? Is he married? Does he have kids? Can Killaine get away with snark in front of a superior officer and the person in charge of the port he's in? How much and on what topics? Is it allowed as long as he doesn't SAY it, even if he's really obvious about thinking it? What counts as insubordination and how important is it to their naval tradition?
Anyhow, what it comes down to, is by figuring out what I needed to know to write ONE scene, I poured out that much more worldbuilding and decision making. And I could have identified a number of other places I needed to ask questions (What is Killaine's ship's relation to the Navy? is this a standing navy or is this kind of draft their usual recourse? Why does Killaine have a ship with fighting capability if he's usually carrying cargo? Is the fighting capability cannons, sorcery, soldiers and guns or something else, and in any case, why and how did Kalekoh go from being a country where common people had no access to weapons to one where nobody minds that Killaine's cargo ship can and does defend itself? Is it normal to have to report to the actual Harbour master? Is the Harbour Master typically male? What are the usual rules of naval engagements in this world? What are the usual rules of romantic engagements?...)
Some of these got left to the side because research first, questions later. Some just haven't come up until the next scenes.
And because sometimes the process of worldbuilding isn't take what we know and consider ways to play with it, it's crazy, out of the blue, and entertainingly random: I was thinking about what the entire fleet of ships would do to look extra impressive coming in on this territory they're planning to attack. Sails and ships in best repair and sailors on parade are one thing, but what about something a little extra?
Also, if they're not human and this is not Earth ...
The sails are maintained by non-sapient spiders. They're essentially a mass of silk strung to the rigging - part of the reason then for junk rigging is the additional solid parts to force it to a frame if the spiders try to deviate. The silk is tough when it's fresh, is very lightweight, can take the force of a storm, or a wind that would be hard for any canvas -- but ages fast, and dissolves, especially in sun. It thus needs to be constantly rewoven. So someone or several someones on board are thus responsible for feeding and guiding the spiders. And when they want to look really good, they change the spiders' diet about two to three weeks before arrival, and the silk, instead of coming out clear to white, comes out tinted...
(Oh, and yes, the lazy-fast map of the other side of the world.)
So. Let's start with a half-assed map, a rapid fire doodle in Photoshop. Until now, I mainly had the complete world map only in my head, though I have some country maps and extremely loose sketches. Names in upper case are the names of the continents, otheriwse they're country names (Except Fauconara, which like Australia is kinda both.)
This is at most 2/3 of the world, since there's a LOT more to Oriessa especially that vanishes off the map, a fair bit more to the north, and a whole other, if smaller, ocean on the reverse side of the world. Plus, of course, we're not showing all the way to the pole even in the south (Note, that the visible part of Borsza Diavhchi is HABITABLE land. And the poles do freeze.) The dark grey-brown is mountains, and blue on land is wetlands (there's some violet on the map of the other side of the world to mark polar areas.) The rest are probably self-evident. I didn't bother to get into rivers or lakes, because half assed and quick, not because I don't have a good idea where they are.
The opening scene of the book is this. Ship captain reports in to a harbour master, and instead discovers that the Navy is recruiting any fighting ship of theirs that shows up so they can assault an island harbouring human traffickers. The captain explains his ship's unusual circumstances, but nonetheless agrees to join the endeavour because A) It's on one of the two best routes towards the unknown anyhow, B) if the piracy is serious enough to warrant this kind of action, he's better off travelling with strong company, and C) he personally abhors traffic in slavery and all it stands for.
Straightforward scene, right?
Well...
Back to the map.
First thing is to figure out WHERE this is happening.
See the coloured dots by the country names? Those are a listing of how I've used those countries in the past. bright red means stories have taken place there with major protagonists from there. Violet is strong supporting characters from there have shown up in other works. Turquoise means they've warranted a more than passing mention.
Yellow means they've appeared as villains.
Other than Borsza Diavhchi, where there isn't a single human country, you'll notice Kalekoh has ONLY a villain dot. Everywhere else has been used in several ways. (Just noticed a small oops; Conalio should also have a villain Dot. Ah, well, not the only one.)
This is all that even I knew about Kalekoh prior to starting this book (Felian weren't much in for analyzing the culture of the people assaulting them):
- Being near to on the equator, so a lot of it is tropical hot and/or desert, but much of it is mountainous, so there is snow in the highest areas.
- The people there most strongly resemble our Africans. (Adding to the good reasons to make them not always villains)
- Their Goddess is called the Scorpion, and while She's not exactly a nice Goddess, what with the making felian undead and the religious order of assassins, it's also noted that mother scorpions carry their children on their back to protect them. (IE, it's not as simple as, oh, look, evil Goddess, just because she's based on a critter we find creepy.)
- In an earlier time period than this one will be, they had an extremely politically repressive society (even more so than many monarchies).
- In that time period, because their immediate neighbours on the same continent were felian (non-human sapients), they attempted to both take over their land and to use them as slave labour (NB: they did this to the humans of Fauconara, too, but the ocean crossing and Fauconara's more advanced technological level made that a less appealing target.) This could be considered in the long term an abject failure, though it did not feel like it to the felian at the time.
- Kalekoh has had woman in positions of political power and/or in the officer ranks of its military, and doesn't seem to think this is rare or inappropriate. (That the prime example I've written about is an adept sorceress may explain some of the more level playing field.) OTOH, they also, in spite of claiming to especially prize some traditionally female roles like motherhood, still devalue those tasks compared to other kinds of work. So not all comes up roses for the ladies.
- In a story set in a post-apocalypse era, there is a passing mention of Kalekoh as the place that used to produce the bulk of that world's equivalent of Kung Fu movies. This is attributed to a combination of learning those Felian fighting techniques that humans can reproduce at all and the necessity for people outside the military to learn to fight with improvised weapons to revolt successfully.
350 or so words of worldbuilding is not *nothing*, but I needed a *wee bit* more than that.
One part of the reason Kalekoh would work is that it's already canon, from its attacks of Fauconara, that ocean going is one of its technological strong points. Also, the sort of territory it takes up implies a strong need for trade. So no need to explain or justify the presence of significant ship power *even though* the bulk of their shoreline either faces Fauconara or right into the Lost Ocean.
The second was this first human trafficking storyline. It would make sense for a country that used to try to hold slaves to now be ashamed of that past. Attitudes would vary from defensiveness regarding the past practice, to active ignoring of the problem (which is the attitude most likely to have led to a small island territory becoming a haven) to trying to compensate, maybe overcompansate, in how harshly it treats more current-era slavers. Enough of a match to let me keep going and actually learn/invent something about the country.
NAMES:
All the names (All about 10 of them) I had for characters from Kalekoh were singular names, with no surname or patro/matronymic or job description. They did have titles, usually noble titles attached to geography, or military titles attached to named regiments. This may have been laziness on my part, but I decided it worked. They don't usually have surnames.
But in these higher-population higher-travel eras, even common people who don't travel much would likely need to append a town or province as needed to clarify for tax records. This meant I needed more names of cities and towns and ports, but at least I *only* needed those, and I might want such info anyhow. (Oh, and captains identify by ship first and home port second. I needed some minor nuisance paperwork to get the scene going, so my Captain is in the middle of a change of official home port. Which says a lot about bureaucracy's place in Kalekoh, which is another worldbuilding detail.)
The names were also, shall we say, pure fantasy names. Most of them were originally invented when I was pretty much an adolescent and had a tin ear for things like country or language of origin, and while they've been tweaked to sound more similar (or less blatantly ripped off from Earth - honestly, a villainess named Yvonne with a brother named Stefan, what was my teenaged self thinking?) since, they, and Kalekoh, weren't important enough for me to worry about developing a sound or feel for the language.
Well, ten names IS enough to figure out a few small sound commonalities. Enough to know that when I pulled the name Killian out of my names-that-were-cut-from-other-stories file for the Captain, it wouldn't fit as written.
Killaine would. And sounded a bit less soft, which is good for a dude who's over 6 feet tall, and grumpy and middling years.
(How did I know the captain was these things? Well, um, I kinda mentally cast him as Lance Reddick with even broader shoulders.)
Thing is, even Killaine is a bit gentle. Also, the "aine" ending had previously only been used for two female names. So. I had to think. Was -aine a gender neutral ending, a feminine ending, or just an ending?
I decided it was like names in our world that started masculine but began to get adopted wholesale by women - like Marion or Ainsley. It's a perfectly legit name for either gender, but it skews towards female.
On paper, Captain Killaine looks like a woman to most people who haven't met him. SO. 1: Is this a problem? 2: is it an advantage? (or 3: is it a nuisance?)
1: "A problem" would imply a society that is sexist in the traditional ways of European society. IE, sailors and ship captains are male oriented jobs. IE, people who only see what's on paper might discriminate on the assumption they're dealing with a woman. It would follow with the name being assumed female because it's been devalued by association with women.
But.
I haven't written my world to be a utopia which has solved the problems of gender disparity. But I ALSO don't feel like always treading the same old same old ground of exactly the same KINDS OF assumptions and disparities that come to us via European history and which permeate virtually every aspect of high fantasy worlds.
(More so when I already have countries on the map of this world that do have that exact attitude and more cause for it.)
What if the assumption is the other way around? Some parts of sailing, even with the assumption of a junk rig (Which needs fewer crew and less strength) require upper body strength, but that's not true of everyone on board - especially the officers. Womens' lower centre of balance suggest they are better at climbing, too, so the physical justification can be there for some duties to be feminine.
What if it's assumed that the officer roles on a ship are traditionally female duties? What if it's assumed that females organize and command while men do the hard labour? What if what a male on board ship is told is that he can never advance past a certain rank because they need the strong hands on the strong hand work?
This puts Killaine in an *odd* position. He's a man in a woman's role. But with a woman's name, so the assumption is that he fits the role. Until they see him.
It makes for an interesting dynamic. It also implies reasons other than ambition for Killaine to be in charge of a ship.
But. Is a man in charge of a ship rare a la "Everybody knows it can't be done" or just "Not common, worth mentioning but it's been done"? Well, I would find the first one a case of the most boring sexism; the blatant extreme kind that makes too much of the story about teh ebil sexism instead of, you know, story. It also would be unconvincing to a reader who lives in a world where ship captains have been male more than female. So, it's a bit more subtle. Less problem or advantage, and more option 3: is it a nuisance?)
How to represent that?
Well, have another male ship commander in the fleet. They'd naturally gravitate together to talk at least to start, just out of the pleasure of not being alone. That's natural social dynamic for most humans regardless of culture (Whether this has to be true of non-humans... well, that question could turn into yet more worldbuilding later). But again, to keep the dynamic more interesting than "Us against the women", they also have to have things sufficiently *not* in common that they don't stick together.
So, how about their attitudes about who should serve on their ships?
Killaine is quite proud to have an all-volunteer crew. But confronting him with someone who takes on conscripted sailors might seem too much cognitive dissonance for a reader when the plot involves heading out to cope with human trafficking and slavery (real humans have exactly this kind of dissonance sometimes, but this is part of some minor opening scenes and has to be something that can be grasped without need to explore). So. Let's make it something else.
I have to go back to the whole Narnia Deconstruction connection for a moment.
One of Mardoll's first criticisms of Voyage of the Dawn Treader specifically is that the non-human population of Narnia, all the talking animals, fauns, nymphs, dryads, centaurs and other mythical beasts supposedly so important in the prior books (and future books) is entirely represented on board ship by one (1) mouse. Who, though Lewis seemed fond of him and gave him a fairly large role, is still not exactly a strong representation for what is meant to be the chief population of that country. (especially when the humans of that country were making a serious attempt at wiping out all the non-human aspects of Narnia just a few years back.)
So, obviously, in a world with a rich variety of non-human sentient life forms, I had to bring more than one on board. A couple are among the passengers the God pretty much dumped on the captain will he or nill he. But crew?
Kalekoh is an entirely human country. It is, however, effectively flanked by two which are explicitly not (Fauconara has a strong and significant but not exclusive human population). So it's not hard to assume that Killaine has crew from one or both places as an explanation for the non-human presence. But what does *that* mean? is it normal? Is it freakish? Is it something else?
As stated above, Kalekoh made a serious attempt to conquer the felian homeland Rrarcho. So, even though a centuries has passed since (It can't be too much more than that due to where that would take us for technological advances), you wouldn't think felian would be an easy or comfortable fit on a ship of Kalekoh.
However, it's established in another novel that felian, who are after all strong for their mass, incredible jumpers and climbers, pretty good at carpentry and smithing, and able to supplement all the above with magic, are quite at home on board ship and have their own active trading fleets. So they'd be desirable sailors aside from that past history.
Back to good old Geography. Mountain and desert (and some cultivated land to the west). Kalekoh might have trouble getting ships BUILT, but Rrarcho has a LOT of wood and hard grasses (IE, bamboo or rattan). So. Kalekoh might well be happy to be attempting trade agreements so as to even be able to build a fleet. What do those entail?
Felian might help them build their ships. On the condition that a certain percentage of each crew BE felian (And thereby likely ensure that if the two countries do fall out again, Kalekoh will lose any advantage it has at sea in seconds).
This raises the spectre of quotas, which has unpleasant baggage - but in worldbuilding unpleasant doesn't necessarily equal bad. It sometimes means interesting, or even *necessary*. Certainly, in this case, it could eb the reason the two men don't see eye to eye. Killaine has a mixed crew; Kalekan, a few felian - probably more than is essential for a quota, and several human and non-human from Fauconara. (His first mate or equivalent role is a Wind Unicorn named Ocilia).
The other male ship commander has a crew entirely from Kalekoh, except for the absolute minimum required felian. Not that he treats them badly or differently. But he feels deep patriotism. Or at least that's how he thinks of it. Killaine's motley reads to him as the sort of crew one has when one can't pull enough volunteers from their homeland, because there's obviously something wrong with his ship. It doesn't occur to him that Killaine sees advantages in variety of experience. Or sees extra worth in another country's expertise on ship design.
Maybe this also means Killaine's ship has a few surprise aspects for anyone expecting a typical Kalekan ship - that it was partly designed, built, or rebuilt by either felian or Fauconarans to their own sketches. Again, back in the mire of research to come to figure out what or why its different (Could be as simple as adding a spinnaker to an otherwise junk-rigged ship, which would fix some of the problems with junk rigs, but I suspect some hull design tweaks might help), AND it might be a part of why he ended up drafted by this blasted moronic God. Still, it's more world and story building.
And one more thing: I wanted a reason to refer to the nature of some of the God's picked people (IE, not Killaine's crew) on board. So my proposed sketch for that was that Killaine himself was at one point briefly accused of 'indecent acts', but the case was dismissed and the charges dropped - in such a way that this harbour master shouldn't *know* it ever happened. Which brings up a raft of worldbuildy things about the legal system but more likely to be plot relevant: What to this country constitutes an indecent act? Is it consent, kink, sexual orientation, age, or something else? (Whatever it is, Killaine is genuinely innocent, but how the scene plays out to a 21st century eye is also relevant). Is this sort of accusation, if true, liable to lead to embarrassment, jail time but not a big social deal, a huge social deal, a killing offense to some...? Is the existance of an accusation, however false, a potential issue in Killaine's life for more than a conversation? Is Killaine straight or gay or bi (since the ship after all has a mixed gender crew...)? Is he married? Does he have kids? Can Killaine get away with snark in front of a superior officer and the person in charge of the port he's in? How much and on what topics? Is it allowed as long as he doesn't SAY it, even if he's really obvious about thinking it? What counts as insubordination and how important is it to their naval tradition?
Anyhow, what it comes down to, is by figuring out what I needed to know to write ONE scene, I poured out that much more worldbuilding and decision making. And I could have identified a number of other places I needed to ask questions (What is Killaine's ship's relation to the Navy? is this a standing navy or is this kind of draft their usual recourse? Why does Killaine have a ship with fighting capability if he's usually carrying cargo? Is the fighting capability cannons, sorcery, soldiers and guns or something else, and in any case, why and how did Kalekoh go from being a country where common people had no access to weapons to one where nobody minds that Killaine's cargo ship can and does defend itself? Is it normal to have to report to the actual Harbour master? Is the Harbour Master typically male? What are the usual rules of naval engagements in this world? What are the usual rules of romantic engagements?...)
Some of these got left to the side because research first, questions later. Some just haven't come up until the next scenes.
And because sometimes the process of worldbuilding isn't take what we know and consider ways to play with it, it's crazy, out of the blue, and entertainingly random: I was thinking about what the entire fleet of ships would do to look extra impressive coming in on this territory they're planning to attack. Sails and ships in best repair and sailors on parade are one thing, but what about something a little extra?
Also, if they're not human and this is not Earth ...
The sails are maintained by non-sapient spiders. They're essentially a mass of silk strung to the rigging - part of the reason then for junk rigging is the additional solid parts to force it to a frame if the spiders try to deviate. The silk is tough when it's fresh, is very lightweight, can take the force of a storm, or a wind that would be hard for any canvas -- but ages fast, and dissolves, especially in sun. It thus needs to be constantly rewoven. So someone or several someones on board are thus responsible for feeding and guiding the spiders. And when they want to look really good, they change the spiders' diet about two to three weeks before arrival, and the silk, instead of coming out clear to white, comes out tinted...
(Oh, and yes, the lazy-fast map of the other side of the world.)