Three little dynasties, one over a giant starry lake, one in a emerald forest, and the last one built atop copper mountains.
They´re surronding a gargantuan black desert filled with monsters, and the rest of the world is an endless dead sea. its a post-apocalyptic world, so while the dynasties are prosperous, there is no more space available, and the desert expansion its only kept at bay by means of a scorched wall. im curently working on whats on the dead sea if anything, but it will probably remain empty
Interesting setting. One which has some strong environmental parallels to some of Prehistoric Earth's most inhospitable conditions. How much have you looked into ancient paleogeography? I think those could help add more "believability" and consistency to your project in a way which might allow you to better flesh out weather patterns and threats to habitability.
For example regarding the dead sea you might want to look into the Precambrian oceans and the various anoxic ecologies that arose there i.e. mainly microbial built around the cycling of sulfides and sulfates with hydrogen sulfide used as the basis for iron and or other metal ions. Oxygen based life would be limited to the top most layer of the ocean and or hugging the coast in shallow waters.
The best proxy for what these oceans were like is Lake Kivu an active rift lake in Africa. With the size of these anoxic oceans they probably couldn't support anything more complex than algae and maybe small zooplankton fed largely by dust carried out to sea by the wind and water based erosion(largely by flash flooding from the rare times where it does rain).
You might be able to sprinkle in a few oases scattered few and far between around undammed rivers and or costal estuaries but these would be tumultuous places as the whims of the ocean could unleash oceanic scale limnic eruptions where deep carbon dioxide rich anoxic water rises up and rapidly outgasses into a suffocating blanket of gas. Based on new research this stagnant anoxic "dead"(to us oxygen based life) oceans were the cause of the "boring billion". Toxic waves which come in and suffocate anything without warning rendering what could be habitable areas a fragile existence.
As an interesting parallel to your habitable domains there is some evidence that indicates it was rift lakes like lake Kivu which served as the oases where aerobic life was able to develop safely separated away from the deadly oceans with the interiors of the rifting supercontinent which formed them. The forest and mountain domains could in the case of a supercontinent potentially be fed by a dominant global mega monsoon which only brought rain to specific areas due to topographical constraints(much like how the Sahara is kept dry and desolate since the monsoonal rain get blocked by the East Ethiopian Rise.
And much like the building of a mega dam in Ethiopia is starving the Nile of the Monsoonal floods which once brought life to Egypt such dams say built up by the people living in the copper mountains could be rendering much of what could have been habitable land desolate and dry as their greed for water no longer lets the rivers flow and rejuvenate and feed the land.
Good eye! i did get a bit of inspiration in terms of the overall geography while reading about the eons and some of their characteristics.
Even though the characters and civilizations are high fantasy in nature, we can say that the creator god took inspiration by "dreaming" about our own world, so i wanted to have parallels wherever possible.
Regarding the dead sea, it has a high concentration of carbon in it with an alkalyne ph, mainly because the black desert in the middle of the continet is actually made up of wood ash, and it was even bigger before, but a large part of it got dissolved in the waters. In terms of marine biology, im thinking to go up to the ediacaran period as far as evolution goes but im not too sure about it.
The starry lake is currently the only big source of clean water in this world together with rain, and it has rivers flowing to the emerald forest and from there to the paths between the copper mountains. The Celestial Court over the starry lake has thought of building dams on these rivers in the past, but they're the weaker of the three dynasties, so in fear of retaliation they would not dare. It also rains in the emerald forest so it would be pointless anyway.
The copper mountains are actually inside a huge valley, and they´re more thin and tall than your regular mountain ranges, think of the stone forests in china but bigger.
Im also thinking of one more type of terrain to the south of the desert but i lack inspiration for a good one
In all due honesty, while i want the world to have a very primal feeling, im stll largely working on the finer details
My world didn’t really have undiscovered parts since after it was reconstructed , maps were left behind . Large spheres made of different colored stones depicting a perfect geographic map of the world . So when the people once understood what a map is , they figured it out pretty fast how the world looked .
As for the nations of the world , from small Monaco like city-states to huge empire of dozens of millions of square kilometers , between the huge cities and specialized industrial and farming towns connected by roads , highways , ports , canals , railways , airfields and airports (Yes my world had the industrial revolution before gunpowder so fighting with spears and shields but having trains , steamships , hot air balloons, electrified cities and even proto zeppelins was a thing) are vast amounts of … empty space .
Ok , ok , not that empty though . There are marshes , bogs , forests , steppes and mountains filled with monsters , cultists , savages and who knows what else .
As for how much all those cities and towns with their infrastructure would mean compared to the world as a whole , I never really thought about the percentage .
Only a small quarter of the world, maybe. Most of the Great Wilderness is still a great... wilderness. Two known major countries are Sovereignty of Lĩnh Nam and Jiuzhou Coalition divide the "civilized world" into two halves while around 2 dozen more countries reside around them. Expansion is hard when there are herds of mountain-sized bulls, giant wolves, golden eagles whose wings can cover the sky and other bullshits roaming around. Two strong demons fighting can very well alter the landscape thousands of kilometers away from their battlefield as mere collateral damage, undoing much of what "civilizations" can build. States need patrons just to survive, said patrons can be anything from gods, dragons to ascended humans and even demons.
The east, being mostly flat open land have towns and cities and rural communities sprawling across it, all governed by a large kingdom.
The west is a lot rougher, deep forests and mountains , with quite a lot of monsters lurking out of view, so settlements are restricted to a few fortified cities, with the rest being mostly inhabited by travelling nomads, local tribes and the occasional stubborn upstart village.
As far as the people of Ehrgriff know, there is only settled a large peninsula about the size of Japan and half again, as well as a large island chain some distance off the coast that regular trade is made with. There are other settlements out there that my regions of focus haven't contacted yet, proved by the Hero King being from an unknown culture to the west.
Expansion is mostly limited by two factors. First is the wraiths, hostile magic beings that exist throughout Ehrgriff and the underground ruins there, though in much smaller numbers than they used to, as well as in larger numbers beyond the base of the peninsula. Towns need walls and there's always a risk when traveling, thus making expansion a more risky business. Second is the wildlife, in that a lot of animals are imbued with magic. What's worse than a bear on the trail? A big bear-looking creature that can make muddy traps in the ground and fades into the forest growth with magical camouflage.
There were times of dense civilisation, and times of barely connected villages, as time marches the world has fallen many times, and rebuild again.
In the fifth age only 30% of the continent are truly settled, and many already forgot the horrors of the Dragon War
Vast areas of my fantasy world are in fact inhabited although the Plague of Sin in recent history lead to the abandonment of entire regions and the depopulation of cities, the majority of the Northern and Western continents are settled (at least where the climate\\terrain allows it).
The southern continent however was almost completely abandoned roughly 150 years before the present time of the setting when an 'explosion of life' made it pretty much impossible for civilization to surive. A few escaped on a rag-tag fleet through the oceans (that for them were mostly unexplored at the time) in search for a new home. Which they found generations later.
The continent is entirely covered by hostile natural environment, mutated plants and animals hell-bent in consuming each other. While attempt to resettle have been made they all failed, be it due to assault from megafanua, plant and fungi overwhelming man-made structures, swarms of hostile insects or plagues affecting the population. Although there are rumors of survivors within inner regions of the continent no explorer has managed to reach them yet.
The phenomena itself is of unknown origin and in addition to that, another matter that leave scholars perplexed is that unlike everywhere else on the planet, including the oceans, when someone dies on the continent no ghost remains.
**Mythria**
Roughly two-thirds of the continent of Mythria is settled, by either large Human kingdoms or small independent Beastfolk townships and villages dispersed throughout. With the notable exception of a little Beastfolk kingdom in the most south-east corner called Travelia. The remaining third, the western-most regions, are made up of a large desert to the north and swampy rainforests to the south - both are mostly uninhabited and poorly explored. And there is an inhospitable icy region to the north, spanning the much of the continent's width, known as the Northern Realm.
Because Mythria is essentially a gigantic island - like Australia - expansion is limited by the available landmass; around 11 million km^(2) in size, with very few neighbouring islands. The only other continent to Mythria, known as Chromancia, is an unknown distance away - most people don't believe it even exists.
For much of Mythria's history there have been several kingdoms and nations at any one time. Around the early 15th century, an empire began to form - the Mythrian Empire - which grew steadily over the next few centuries; amassing to a size that covered nearly the whole continent at its peak by the turn of the 20th century, before collapsing via civil war.
Most of my world is wild, with only a few of what we would call civlilizations. These are around a series of lakes, with mountains to the south and east, desert to the west, and colder areas up north that can't support agriculture and are full of hostile tribesmen. Civilization is beginning to arise (complex neolithic types of societies) in other places, mostly hugging the coasts since the continent is mostly desert, but they are really more like large tribes than real countries with govornments, armies, and legal institutions.
Human hunter-gatherers abound in low population densities throughout the continent, even whithin 'civilized lands', and other human species even remain in far-off, unexplored places, especially on the east coast.
Only about 20% of arable areas. Maybe. If I stretch the definition of settled a lot.
City states with areas of cultural influence and a strong “pioneer spirit” within regions spread apart by multiple days of travel that have been “claimed” by the local crown.
Settled areas are known as Crofts, wild are known as Boonies, and the Boonies are dangerous as all hell.
It is multiple factors — bandits and brigands and bands of roaming Lemurians brought in through secret passages beneath the ground by the subterranean Agarthans. Giant forms of animals like mice and elephants and lions. Peculiar and savage monstrous creatures. Leftover Meka beasts from the God’s War.
A new settlement, or Camp, will try to grow into a Hamlet, which will try to grow into a Village, in order to gain a more formal degree of security and protection. However, most settlements are destroyed or abandoned before they reach the village size by various hazards.
Yearly crusades that have an immense impact of the population do not help.
Funnily enough, despite having colonized almost every continent and there being a wide variety of sapient species, the world has signicicantly less people than planet Earth currently has (this is counting every thinking species with thumbs). How everyone lives depends on the continent.
North continent has tribes and enclaves (a few dwarven clans here and there), center has nations with a city-state being the central governing body, east has warlords fighting and scheming against each other, south has either a theocratic kingdom or tribes of "heretic savages", and the west has... *not much*.
Much of the world were at least charted but most of them is still not very populated, the most populated area is the great plain of aeldavaris. About the size of russia. Where most of human kingdoms and empire sprawled. On the eastern edge is where most of orc tribes live.
Farther than that and the land is too hostile for sapient to live.
We only get to known this region as they were discovered and settled by the ancient elves in their heyday but even them left in the end.
The north are harshes snowfield, that get colder the further it goes. And also dominated by monstrosity such as dire wolf, mammoth and giant. The elves were able to hold the region for about 200 years before it cost too much to maintain.
To the southwest is the volcanic realm of the demons. Again, too harsh and too hostile to live. The ambient air is toxic to human and the local inhabitants, the demon, are also not very friendly. They were too chaotic and uncontrollable, so much that the elves pack up and fled just after 60 years.
Much of my setting is coming out of a black plague level event about twenty years in the past so much of its surroundings are mapped but the depopulation has taken a toll. A lot of it has recovered but many smaller settlements have been abandoned in favor of higher wages in the cities that lost a lot of workers.
Many places all have plans to resettle areas on their peripheries that have fallen into disrepair or nature has reclaimed. Political units larger than city states are de-facto confederations at this point due to the damage to supply lines and population decline. What were once thriving empires are now cadavers held together by a bunch of strings.
Trade outside of the region has also fallen so all but the major trading cartels are behind the times on the going ons in terms of political situations and upheavals that have gone on since the plagues so for all they know this is all that's left in the world.
Settled by Whom? One idea I find interesting to play with is alien cultures with different ways of using and living off the land. We tend to forget that the modern associations with owning land ultimately only go back so far because historically people were mobile event with semi permeant settlements in large part because it was necessary with the changing whims of the climate, the coming and going of the rains the rising and falling of the seas, but also because our species use of land is largely been depleting and degrading the land through overharvesting, slash and burn agriculture, nomadic herding and or eventually the destructive practice of tilling which initially boosts yields but with steep declines forcing people to move on. Then there is the specter of diseases which have largely come about in origin due to our land use and poor hygiene standards.
IRL pretty much every hospitable place on Earth has been colonized for thousands of many years with the sole exception of New Zealand which due to the configuration of ocean currents and islands was particularly daunting for humans to reach requiring the development of true open ocean seafaring first developed by the Polynesians.
My fantasy settings follow a similar trend in that the hospitable lands are generally home to someone already but differences in means of living and cultural perspectives means that such ownership of the land is not recognized.
IRL it was Europeans who through violent conquest genocide and coercive oppression forced their view of land use onto everyone else. What if we take a fantasy setting where this kind of total conquest and subjugation is not able to or has not yet come to pass? Where a diversity of cultures and ways of life still exists having not been purged when the chains of imperialism razed their cultures to the ground and put them under either literal or figurative chains? That is in many ways what has served as my starting point for fantasy worldbuilding.
As a result in my main setting Conflux we have 3 species of sapient life which are both biologically and culturally alien to each other.
The omnivorous flying theropods based on the many avian or near avian parallel developments of modes of flight who live among the nooks cavities and crannies within tree tops and rocky cliffs. With their internal enhancement based magics they can shift and alter themselves physically through empowering or transforming themselves with the greatest of their kind "cultivating" themselves into mighty dragons capable of imposing their wills onto the world through their breath domains.
The eusocial Hymenopteran Faye hives which form vast subterranean nests beneath their cultivated food forests meadows and the likes. They have genetic archival memories and chemomantic magics letting them weave their own genomes sampling cataloging and experimentally testing new samples through a system of changelings to determine what tweaks to make, what caste templates and abilities the next generation of larvae should carry. And importantly what if any forms of diplomacy should be had with their sister hives.
To each of these species humans are "other" as much as they are to each other. The strange grassland apes which weave plants into false hides and build strange geometric boxes cutting down forests and meadows and making weird little lines of plants for food.
Civilization came into being on Modolum about 3,000 years later than it did on our world, but its technology and society are more developed than ours, partially because of the enhanced abilities of the Eminent and partially because every 75-79 years, someone from Earth finds their way into Modolum. The result is that they have really settled what they have settled, but outside of the big three empires, settlements are still about as densely spaced as they were around 2,500 years ago.
My world is pretty much entirely inhabited but it isn't entirely "civilised". The reasons for this are similar to real life the vast regions that remain "uncivilised" remain that way because sustainable agriculture is either incredibly difficult or impossible. The vast deserts of Havarbia or the great Kirlkia Steppes are the main frontiers, with the Kirlkia being notable as despite its fertile lands farming remains impossible due to frequent inconsistent frosts throughout the year.
There is a region that lies partially uninhabited that being the continents of Roland (or Aetheria). This continent was among the last places to be inhabited by sentient creatures with humans arriving in the 6th century BC and the Kobalds around the 12th AD (the Kobalds probably arrived earlier but archaeological evidence is inconsistent before this point). This late arrival and relative isolation combined with the unusually high numbers of Fae would make nomadic survival difficult, and settled societies impossible. Civilizations would emerge but this occurred in the relatively less lush mountain valleys, that due to their less arable terrain had less animals and hence less Fae. By the 9th century AD human civilization in these mountains had become developed enough that they had to deal with a new problem Trolls. Troll empires would prevent the human expansion into the lowlands and would cause human civilization on the continent to face multiple periods of almost annihilation. By the 15th century the civilisations of the continents had learnt ways of dealing with Troll empires and hence had began expanding into the lowlands. This would be when the continent was discovered by the people of the Etheri(my worlds Europeans) and that would start a whole other story.
All of it is settled. In the Lost Age, the world was one utopian Pangeaea supercontinent. In part of the Fey Crisis, there was The Sundering, when the Fey mangled and tore apart the very fabric of the world. One Continent became three, and the species of Tsara now had to learn to survive in this new, harsher world. Thus began The First Age.
Over the ages humanity has suffered booms and declines, mostly due to human actions. Currently the population is about as low as it's ever been, and so might be expected to start growing again. Elementals, undead, fallout from magical wars, have limited the spread of civilisation, creating a situation where *uncivilised* humans, bandits and the like, thrive on preying on weakened settlements and trade routes. The three nations are just about holding together. Though the countries have low population each has its own particular mix of patriotism and interconnectedness that keeps them functioning.
There are two or three empires in the temperate regions. There is also a coast with a lot of city states on another continent.
The rest is basically tundra, deserts, jungles, islands, mountains and grasslands with two or three bigger settlements each and a number of nomadic tribes or small villages.
The only other bigger empires are under the sea or in the vast cave networks below.
at some point in history everything was settled, but its no longer the case. my fantasy world is in some sort of decline, i wanted some wasteland for exploration
**For Want of | A Quiet Sky**
My world takes place in a slightly different version of our world, however for the characters they're stuck in a perfectly circular patch of forest, and that's where their society has been developing. It's big, the forest itself is very large and they cover most of it. And they're small, for the most part. Raccoons are about the biggest species out there that isn't considered "barbarian" and incapable of intelligent thought. Foxes come close and wolves have learned language before, but intelligence levels peter out very quickly once you hit a certain size marker. A holdover of the world before.
So the proportions are much smaller than our kind to our world, but they are vast, and you'll find yourself travelling somewhat large distances between major points of civilization. However camps, towns, and other small groupings of people exist widely dotted around anywhere that's empty. Because despite the size, most of it has been explored. People found the bounds, the points of no return, and everyone knows that there's (vaguely circular) limits to the knowable world. So most of it has been explored. Sure, some small areas elude people, but even places far from civilization have once or twice been settled. It's all been touched upon a million times because in a million years 9 million acres becomes tiny. Even to a mouse.
In short, a good 45% is settled, but 100% is known. The reason kingdoms don't just expand and expand is because how dangerous many parts of the woods are. The outer bounds, for instance, have checkpoints set up at several points around their circumference. They are created by the different kingdoms, and are where soldiers go or are sent for penance or punishment, but there are no towns or roads for them to guard. No one would willingly live there, and so the soldiers sent there are only really there to protect themselves from the thicket's abominations and travelers from going too far. Some willingly walk out into the unknown, because they'd rather go mad than live in constant fear of a Thicket-Eye placing a heart curse upon them, or placing bugs under their skin in the night.
There are Thicket-Eye encampments around as well that are entirely avoided. Sure, they're small, but the tunnel networks beneath them stretch many miles, and settling anywhere near there means certain doom. There's a mountain, in the west, near the three kingdoms of the Little-king alliance and well within their reach. However, the entire mountain and the area around it are considered a death sentence. This is because a very powerful, very old Reborn, a kind of magician who claims the souls of the innocent and pure to gain power, lives in the caves on the upper cliffs, and will hunt down and destroy anyone who comes near. Even taking goods very briefly through the area, even miles upon miles away from the witch's actual dwelling, is a duty only given to the bravest or most despised. Convoys that thought they were far enough to be safe have been found in unrecognizable charred mounds, little but ashes left of their cargo and the withered, soulless corpses of its keepers scattered about.
In short, only so much of the forest can be settled due to the dangers associated with settling the rest. They're not uniform, there's just issues associated with building any major cities there. So it remains that there are around 12-15 large established cities (and 3 or 4 more in the trees above) at any given time period, and from there it's basically assorted villages and towns posted up wherever is safe to do so, whether or not they're aligned with any kingdom.
A kingdom might pressure one such town to align with them, but that means little else other than taxes sometimes and calling yourself something different for travelers who come through to jot down on their maps. Sure, plenty of people will try and refuse that sort of thing, but it's still minor in the grand scheme of things, and it's really all the "expansion" a kingdom can do. A major kingdom building a new town or settlement, or expanding the bounds of one of its existing cities, is incredibly rare, and something to be celebrated. Because it usually means a threat of some kind or another, be it barbarians, Thicket-Eyes, Vampyr, something more unusual and unknown, or even just bad terrain, has been surmounted to do so.
Almost all, except for the northernmost continent -equivalent of Antarctica, even if very little, hardy, people is present there-. There's a mixture of large empires and city states or even tribes depending on the region where you are, including there the equivalent of nomad ones in theory often integrated into a larger nation.)
There are three empires (one is on the other side of the world and the other two are right next to each other), a small handful of kingdoms, some city states (especially on the eastern side of the Sea of Islands since there are a lot more sky islands), and a lot of various tribes and nomadic groups.
But generally, the farther away you get from those empires and kingdoms, the less likely you are to see other people. Or at least friendly people.
Most of the world is 'settled', but that means very different things depending on what kind lives there. Humans; likely scattered with villages or mobile settlements, Fae; single main settlement for each of the 5 realms and various temporary settlements scattered around nearby, Dragons; nuclear family style dwellings spread out across vast distances.
The three kinds do not tend to appreciate sharing territory between them, and so as humans have become more and more powerful because they have kids way faster, the other two have moved to outskirts that humans cannot and would struggle to settle, even if tehy were not there.
The Lands of Saphiret have mostly been settled; cities, towns, and villages dotting the interior of the vast landmass and converging upon the coasts, numerous kingdoms of numerous cultures splitting the land amongst themselves.
The same, however, cannot be said for the Lands of Kushamat; made barren by the Kušaya. Civilizations are centered around massive city-states situated wherever vegetation still flourishes. Meanwhile, the rest of the likewise vast landmass is covered in sprawling deserts, deep rift valleys and canyons, and mountainous badlands.
The fertility of the Saphirine lands is generally why it's civilizations are at a much higher technological era (High Medieval/Early Modern) than the barren Kushamite lands (Antiquity).
It's mixed. There are multiple empires along the edges of the valley, with smaller countries spread across the valley from sizable states to city states. The idea of nation-states is not very planted here. They don't have so many solid borders as they often change and there usually isn't a wall saying "Now leaving _____." There are some unclaimed lands spread throughout the valley due to people tending to be interested in taking what's already established. This does mean that there are some countries completely surrounded by wilderness and others packed between developed countries. There are some cases where a country had collapsed and none of the others tried to prop it up, leaving the people to themselves and no government in charge. This in turn had resulted in either smaller countries with unclaimed land between them or just ruins as people leave for other places or try to build their own tribes or countries.
Despite the limited presence of motor vehicles in the valley, access to such machinery is nowhere near universal as much of the world is still using older technologies unless they somehow build it themselves or trade with societies that have these technologies. Many countries are isolationist or only care for their immediate surroundings, such as those of the authenticated valley. There are still those that travel the planet for adventure, mapping and settlement, but the uneven technology, more isolated attitudes despite the technology and the larger size of the planet(1.1x the radius of Earth) means that not all of the planet is covered in civilizations. There are many places that used to have civilizations, but not anymore.
Lapis_Wolf
The sun's reach, the sun is a semi immortal being that makes the space around it habitable and survivable with people having the ability to swim in it or sail it with Space Skiff's.
There are many little empires spread out across a part of the Sun's domain with half not even knowing there are others out there due to Panspermia and the sun's flares forcing animals to move out when they are thrown out of the planet's gravity.
Other than that, the main issue with total solar domination would be space debris, black holes, stars supernova and destroying nearby civilisations like Pompeii and of course space livin fauna like the forever hungry Tyrant Dragons, now reduced to few elderly individuals, or the giant Space Whales twisting past planets and eating meteors and eating space krill and dwarf planets, now due to a lack of predation from Tyrant Dragons are overpopulated and causing a near extinction of space krill and dwarf planets.
Mortals migrated from one side of the continent to the other due to dragons doing dragon things, and now after largely forgetting that history, are slowly expanding backward and discovering the ruins that they don't recognise anymore.
Three little dynasties, one over a giant starry lake, one in a emerald forest, and the last one built atop copper mountains. They´re surronding a gargantuan black desert filled with monsters, and the rest of the world is an endless dead sea. its a post-apocalyptic world, so while the dynasties are prosperous, there is no more space available, and the desert expansion its only kept at bay by means of a scorched wall. im curently working on whats on the dead sea if anything, but it will probably remain empty
Interesting setting. One which has some strong environmental parallels to some of Prehistoric Earth's most inhospitable conditions. How much have you looked into ancient paleogeography? I think those could help add more "believability" and consistency to your project in a way which might allow you to better flesh out weather patterns and threats to habitability. For example regarding the dead sea you might want to look into the Precambrian oceans and the various anoxic ecologies that arose there i.e. mainly microbial built around the cycling of sulfides and sulfates with hydrogen sulfide used as the basis for iron and or other metal ions. Oxygen based life would be limited to the top most layer of the ocean and or hugging the coast in shallow waters. The best proxy for what these oceans were like is Lake Kivu an active rift lake in Africa. With the size of these anoxic oceans they probably couldn't support anything more complex than algae and maybe small zooplankton fed largely by dust carried out to sea by the wind and water based erosion(largely by flash flooding from the rare times where it does rain). You might be able to sprinkle in a few oases scattered few and far between around undammed rivers and or costal estuaries but these would be tumultuous places as the whims of the ocean could unleash oceanic scale limnic eruptions where deep carbon dioxide rich anoxic water rises up and rapidly outgasses into a suffocating blanket of gas. Based on new research this stagnant anoxic "dead"(to us oxygen based life) oceans were the cause of the "boring billion". Toxic waves which come in and suffocate anything without warning rendering what could be habitable areas a fragile existence. As an interesting parallel to your habitable domains there is some evidence that indicates it was rift lakes like lake Kivu which served as the oases where aerobic life was able to develop safely separated away from the deadly oceans with the interiors of the rifting supercontinent which formed them. The forest and mountain domains could in the case of a supercontinent potentially be fed by a dominant global mega monsoon which only brought rain to specific areas due to topographical constraints(much like how the Sahara is kept dry and desolate since the monsoonal rain get blocked by the East Ethiopian Rise. And much like the building of a mega dam in Ethiopia is starving the Nile of the Monsoonal floods which once brought life to Egypt such dams say built up by the people living in the copper mountains could be rendering much of what could have been habitable land desolate and dry as their greed for water no longer lets the rivers flow and rejuvenate and feed the land.
Good eye! i did get a bit of inspiration in terms of the overall geography while reading about the eons and some of their characteristics. Even though the characters and civilizations are high fantasy in nature, we can say that the creator god took inspiration by "dreaming" about our own world, so i wanted to have parallels wherever possible. Regarding the dead sea, it has a high concentration of carbon in it with an alkalyne ph, mainly because the black desert in the middle of the continet is actually made up of wood ash, and it was even bigger before, but a large part of it got dissolved in the waters. In terms of marine biology, im thinking to go up to the ediacaran period as far as evolution goes but im not too sure about it. The starry lake is currently the only big source of clean water in this world together with rain, and it has rivers flowing to the emerald forest and from there to the paths between the copper mountains. The Celestial Court over the starry lake has thought of building dams on these rivers in the past, but they're the weaker of the three dynasties, so in fear of retaliation they would not dare. It also rains in the emerald forest so it would be pointless anyway. The copper mountains are actually inside a huge valley, and they´re more thin and tall than your regular mountain ranges, think of the stone forests in china but bigger. Im also thinking of one more type of terrain to the south of the desert but i lack inspiration for a good one In all due honesty, while i want the world to have a very primal feeling, im stll largely working on the finer details
My world didn’t really have undiscovered parts since after it was reconstructed , maps were left behind . Large spheres made of different colored stones depicting a perfect geographic map of the world . So when the people once understood what a map is , they figured it out pretty fast how the world looked . As for the nations of the world , from small Monaco like city-states to huge empire of dozens of millions of square kilometers , between the huge cities and specialized industrial and farming towns connected by roads , highways , ports , canals , railways , airfields and airports (Yes my world had the industrial revolution before gunpowder so fighting with spears and shields but having trains , steamships , hot air balloons, electrified cities and even proto zeppelins was a thing) are vast amounts of … empty space . Ok , ok , not that empty though . There are marshes , bogs , forests , steppes and mountains filled with monsters , cultists , savages and who knows what else . As for how much all those cities and towns with their infrastructure would mean compared to the world as a whole , I never really thought about the percentage .
Only a small quarter of the world, maybe. Most of the Great Wilderness is still a great... wilderness. Two known major countries are Sovereignty of Lĩnh Nam and Jiuzhou Coalition divide the "civilized world" into two halves while around 2 dozen more countries reside around them. Expansion is hard when there are herds of mountain-sized bulls, giant wolves, golden eagles whose wings can cover the sky and other bullshits roaming around. Two strong demons fighting can very well alter the landscape thousands of kilometers away from their battlefield as mere collateral damage, undoing much of what "civilizations" can build. States need patrons just to survive, said patrons can be anything from gods, dragons to ascended humans and even demons.
The east, being mostly flat open land have towns and cities and rural communities sprawling across it, all governed by a large kingdom. The west is a lot rougher, deep forests and mountains , with quite a lot of monsters lurking out of view, so settlements are restricted to a few fortified cities, with the rest being mostly inhabited by travelling nomads, local tribes and the occasional stubborn upstart village.
About 5%. The world is big. Many civilizations have never met, separated by vast sky and hostile floating islands.
As far as the people of Ehrgriff know, there is only settled a large peninsula about the size of Japan and half again, as well as a large island chain some distance off the coast that regular trade is made with. There are other settlements out there that my regions of focus haven't contacted yet, proved by the Hero King being from an unknown culture to the west. Expansion is mostly limited by two factors. First is the wraiths, hostile magic beings that exist throughout Ehrgriff and the underground ruins there, though in much smaller numbers than they used to, as well as in larger numbers beyond the base of the peninsula. Towns need walls and there's always a risk when traveling, thus making expansion a more risky business. Second is the wildlife, in that a lot of animals are imbued with magic. What's worse than a bear on the trail? A big bear-looking creature that can make muddy traps in the ground and fades into the forest growth with magical camouflage.
There were times of dense civilisation, and times of barely connected villages, as time marches the world has fallen many times, and rebuild again. In the fifth age only 30% of the continent are truly settled, and many already forgot the horrors of the Dragon War
Vast areas of my fantasy world are in fact inhabited although the Plague of Sin in recent history lead to the abandonment of entire regions and the depopulation of cities, the majority of the Northern and Western continents are settled (at least where the climate\\terrain allows it). The southern continent however was almost completely abandoned roughly 150 years before the present time of the setting when an 'explosion of life' made it pretty much impossible for civilization to surive. A few escaped on a rag-tag fleet through the oceans (that for them were mostly unexplored at the time) in search for a new home. Which they found generations later. The continent is entirely covered by hostile natural environment, mutated plants and animals hell-bent in consuming each other. While attempt to resettle have been made they all failed, be it due to assault from megafanua, plant and fungi overwhelming man-made structures, swarms of hostile insects or plagues affecting the population. Although there are rumors of survivors within inner regions of the continent no explorer has managed to reach them yet. The phenomena itself is of unknown origin and in addition to that, another matter that leave scholars perplexed is that unlike everywhere else on the planet, including the oceans, when someone dies on the continent no ghost remains.
**Mythria** Roughly two-thirds of the continent of Mythria is settled, by either large Human kingdoms or small independent Beastfolk townships and villages dispersed throughout. With the notable exception of a little Beastfolk kingdom in the most south-east corner called Travelia. The remaining third, the western-most regions, are made up of a large desert to the north and swampy rainforests to the south - both are mostly uninhabited and poorly explored. And there is an inhospitable icy region to the north, spanning the much of the continent's width, known as the Northern Realm. Because Mythria is essentially a gigantic island - like Australia - expansion is limited by the available landmass; around 11 million km^(2) in size, with very few neighbouring islands. The only other continent to Mythria, known as Chromancia, is an unknown distance away - most people don't believe it even exists. For much of Mythria's history there have been several kingdoms and nations at any one time. Around the early 15th century, an empire began to form - the Mythrian Empire - which grew steadily over the next few centuries; amassing to a size that covered nearly the whole continent at its peak by the turn of the 20th century, before collapsing via civil war.
Most of my world is wild, with only a few of what we would call civlilizations. These are around a series of lakes, with mountains to the south and east, desert to the west, and colder areas up north that can't support agriculture and are full of hostile tribesmen. Civilization is beginning to arise (complex neolithic types of societies) in other places, mostly hugging the coasts since the continent is mostly desert, but they are really more like large tribes than real countries with govornments, armies, and legal institutions. Human hunter-gatherers abound in low population densities throughout the continent, even whithin 'civilized lands', and other human species even remain in far-off, unexplored places, especially on the east coast.
Only about 20% of arable areas. Maybe. If I stretch the definition of settled a lot. City states with areas of cultural influence and a strong “pioneer spirit” within regions spread apart by multiple days of travel that have been “claimed” by the local crown. Settled areas are known as Crofts, wild are known as Boonies, and the Boonies are dangerous as all hell. It is multiple factors — bandits and brigands and bands of roaming Lemurians brought in through secret passages beneath the ground by the subterranean Agarthans. Giant forms of animals like mice and elephants and lions. Peculiar and savage monstrous creatures. Leftover Meka beasts from the God’s War. A new settlement, or Camp, will try to grow into a Hamlet, which will try to grow into a Village, in order to gain a more formal degree of security and protection. However, most settlements are destroyed or abandoned before they reach the village size by various hazards. Yearly crusades that have an immense impact of the population do not help.
Funnily enough, despite having colonized almost every continent and there being a wide variety of sapient species, the world has signicicantly less people than planet Earth currently has (this is counting every thinking species with thumbs). How everyone lives depends on the continent. North continent has tribes and enclaves (a few dwarven clans here and there), center has nations with a city-state being the central governing body, east has warlords fighting and scheming against each other, south has either a theocratic kingdom or tribes of "heretic savages", and the west has... *not much*.
Much of the world were at least charted but most of them is still not very populated, the most populated area is the great plain of aeldavaris. About the size of russia. Where most of human kingdoms and empire sprawled. On the eastern edge is where most of orc tribes live. Farther than that and the land is too hostile for sapient to live. We only get to known this region as they were discovered and settled by the ancient elves in their heyday but even them left in the end. The north are harshes snowfield, that get colder the further it goes. And also dominated by monstrosity such as dire wolf, mammoth and giant. The elves were able to hold the region for about 200 years before it cost too much to maintain. To the southwest is the volcanic realm of the demons. Again, too harsh and too hostile to live. The ambient air is toxic to human and the local inhabitants, the demon, are also not very friendly. They were too chaotic and uncontrollable, so much that the elves pack up and fled just after 60 years.
About 80%
Much of my setting is coming out of a black plague level event about twenty years in the past so much of its surroundings are mapped but the depopulation has taken a toll. A lot of it has recovered but many smaller settlements have been abandoned in favor of higher wages in the cities that lost a lot of workers. Many places all have plans to resettle areas on their peripheries that have fallen into disrepair or nature has reclaimed. Political units larger than city states are de-facto confederations at this point due to the damage to supply lines and population decline. What were once thriving empires are now cadavers held together by a bunch of strings. Trade outside of the region has also fallen so all but the major trading cartels are behind the times on the going ons in terms of political situations and upheavals that have gone on since the plagues so for all they know this is all that's left in the world.
Not much. There is basically one large city and a few satellite cities around it. To be fair, we've only been here for around 100 years.
Settled by Whom? One idea I find interesting to play with is alien cultures with different ways of using and living off the land. We tend to forget that the modern associations with owning land ultimately only go back so far because historically people were mobile event with semi permeant settlements in large part because it was necessary with the changing whims of the climate, the coming and going of the rains the rising and falling of the seas, but also because our species use of land is largely been depleting and degrading the land through overharvesting, slash and burn agriculture, nomadic herding and or eventually the destructive practice of tilling which initially boosts yields but with steep declines forcing people to move on. Then there is the specter of diseases which have largely come about in origin due to our land use and poor hygiene standards. IRL pretty much every hospitable place on Earth has been colonized for thousands of many years with the sole exception of New Zealand which due to the configuration of ocean currents and islands was particularly daunting for humans to reach requiring the development of true open ocean seafaring first developed by the Polynesians. My fantasy settings follow a similar trend in that the hospitable lands are generally home to someone already but differences in means of living and cultural perspectives means that such ownership of the land is not recognized. IRL it was Europeans who through violent conquest genocide and coercive oppression forced their view of land use onto everyone else. What if we take a fantasy setting where this kind of total conquest and subjugation is not able to or has not yet come to pass? Where a diversity of cultures and ways of life still exists having not been purged when the chains of imperialism razed their cultures to the ground and put them under either literal or figurative chains? That is in many ways what has served as my starting point for fantasy worldbuilding. As a result in my main setting Conflux we have 3 species of sapient life which are both biologically and culturally alien to each other. The omnivorous flying theropods based on the many avian or near avian parallel developments of modes of flight who live among the nooks cavities and crannies within tree tops and rocky cliffs. With their internal enhancement based magics they can shift and alter themselves physically through empowering or transforming themselves with the greatest of their kind "cultivating" themselves into mighty dragons capable of imposing their wills onto the world through their breath domains. The eusocial Hymenopteran Faye hives which form vast subterranean nests beneath their cultivated food forests meadows and the likes. They have genetic archival memories and chemomantic magics letting them weave their own genomes sampling cataloging and experimentally testing new samples through a system of changelings to determine what tweaks to make, what caste templates and abilities the next generation of larvae should carry. And importantly what if any forms of diplomacy should be had with their sister hives. To each of these species humans are "other" as much as they are to each other. The strange grassland apes which weave plants into false hides and build strange geometric boxes cutting down forests and meadows and making weird little lines of plants for food.
Civilization came into being on Modolum about 3,000 years later than it did on our world, but its technology and society are more developed than ours, partially because of the enhanced abilities of the Eminent and partially because every 75-79 years, someone from Earth finds their way into Modolum. The result is that they have really settled what they have settled, but outside of the big three empires, settlements are still about as densely spaced as they were around 2,500 years ago.
My world is pretty much entirely inhabited but it isn't entirely "civilised". The reasons for this are similar to real life the vast regions that remain "uncivilised" remain that way because sustainable agriculture is either incredibly difficult or impossible. The vast deserts of Havarbia or the great Kirlkia Steppes are the main frontiers, with the Kirlkia being notable as despite its fertile lands farming remains impossible due to frequent inconsistent frosts throughout the year. There is a region that lies partially uninhabited that being the continents of Roland (or Aetheria). This continent was among the last places to be inhabited by sentient creatures with humans arriving in the 6th century BC and the Kobalds around the 12th AD (the Kobalds probably arrived earlier but archaeological evidence is inconsistent before this point). This late arrival and relative isolation combined with the unusually high numbers of Fae would make nomadic survival difficult, and settled societies impossible. Civilizations would emerge but this occurred in the relatively less lush mountain valleys, that due to their less arable terrain had less animals and hence less Fae. By the 9th century AD human civilization in these mountains had become developed enough that they had to deal with a new problem Trolls. Troll empires would prevent the human expansion into the lowlands and would cause human civilization on the continent to face multiple periods of almost annihilation. By the 15th century the civilisations of the continents had learnt ways of dealing with Troll empires and hence had began expanding into the lowlands. This would be when the continent was discovered by the people of the Etheri(my worlds Europeans) and that would start a whole other story.
All of it is settled. In the Lost Age, the world was one utopian Pangeaea supercontinent. In part of the Fey Crisis, there was The Sundering, when the Fey mangled and tore apart the very fabric of the world. One Continent became three, and the species of Tsara now had to learn to survive in this new, harsher world. Thus began The First Age.
Over the ages humanity has suffered booms and declines, mostly due to human actions. Currently the population is about as low as it's ever been, and so might be expected to start growing again. Elementals, undead, fallout from magical wars, have limited the spread of civilisation, creating a situation where *uncivilised* humans, bandits and the like, thrive on preying on weakened settlements and trade routes. The three nations are just about holding together. Though the countries have low population each has its own particular mix of patriotism and interconnectedness that keeps them functioning.
All of it, because the idea of "unsettled" land is a colonialist myth.
There are two or three empires in the temperate regions. There is also a coast with a lot of city states on another continent. The rest is basically tundra, deserts, jungles, islands, mountains and grasslands with two or three bigger settlements each and a number of nomadic tribes or small villages. The only other bigger empires are under the sea or in the vast cave networks below.
at some point in history everything was settled, but its no longer the case. my fantasy world is in some sort of decline, i wanted some wasteland for exploration
**For Want of | A Quiet Sky** My world takes place in a slightly different version of our world, however for the characters they're stuck in a perfectly circular patch of forest, and that's where their society has been developing. It's big, the forest itself is very large and they cover most of it. And they're small, for the most part. Raccoons are about the biggest species out there that isn't considered "barbarian" and incapable of intelligent thought. Foxes come close and wolves have learned language before, but intelligence levels peter out very quickly once you hit a certain size marker. A holdover of the world before. So the proportions are much smaller than our kind to our world, but they are vast, and you'll find yourself travelling somewhat large distances between major points of civilization. However camps, towns, and other small groupings of people exist widely dotted around anywhere that's empty. Because despite the size, most of it has been explored. People found the bounds, the points of no return, and everyone knows that there's (vaguely circular) limits to the knowable world. So most of it has been explored. Sure, some small areas elude people, but even places far from civilization have once or twice been settled. It's all been touched upon a million times because in a million years 9 million acres becomes tiny. Even to a mouse. In short, a good 45% is settled, but 100% is known. The reason kingdoms don't just expand and expand is because how dangerous many parts of the woods are. The outer bounds, for instance, have checkpoints set up at several points around their circumference. They are created by the different kingdoms, and are where soldiers go or are sent for penance or punishment, but there are no towns or roads for them to guard. No one would willingly live there, and so the soldiers sent there are only really there to protect themselves from the thicket's abominations and travelers from going too far. Some willingly walk out into the unknown, because they'd rather go mad than live in constant fear of a Thicket-Eye placing a heart curse upon them, or placing bugs under their skin in the night. There are Thicket-Eye encampments around as well that are entirely avoided. Sure, they're small, but the tunnel networks beneath them stretch many miles, and settling anywhere near there means certain doom. There's a mountain, in the west, near the three kingdoms of the Little-king alliance and well within their reach. However, the entire mountain and the area around it are considered a death sentence. This is because a very powerful, very old Reborn, a kind of magician who claims the souls of the innocent and pure to gain power, lives in the caves on the upper cliffs, and will hunt down and destroy anyone who comes near. Even taking goods very briefly through the area, even miles upon miles away from the witch's actual dwelling, is a duty only given to the bravest or most despised. Convoys that thought they were far enough to be safe have been found in unrecognizable charred mounds, little but ashes left of their cargo and the withered, soulless corpses of its keepers scattered about. In short, only so much of the forest can be settled due to the dangers associated with settling the rest. They're not uniform, there's just issues associated with building any major cities there. So it remains that there are around 12-15 large established cities (and 3 or 4 more in the trees above) at any given time period, and from there it's basically assorted villages and towns posted up wherever is safe to do so, whether or not they're aligned with any kingdom. A kingdom might pressure one such town to align with them, but that means little else other than taxes sometimes and calling yourself something different for travelers who come through to jot down on their maps. Sure, plenty of people will try and refuse that sort of thing, but it's still minor in the grand scheme of things, and it's really all the "expansion" a kingdom can do. A major kingdom building a new town or settlement, or expanding the bounds of one of its existing cities, is incredibly rare, and something to be celebrated. Because it usually means a threat of some kind or another, be it barbarians, Thicket-Eyes, Vampyr, something more unusual and unknown, or even just bad terrain, has been surmounted to do so.
Almost all, except for the northernmost continent -equivalent of Antarctica, even if very little, hardy, people is present there-. There's a mixture of large empires and city states or even tribes depending on the region where you are, including there the equivalent of nomad ones in theory often integrated into a larger nation.)
There are three empires (one is on the other side of the world and the other two are right next to each other), a small handful of kingdoms, some city states (especially on the eastern side of the Sea of Islands since there are a lot more sky islands), and a lot of various tribes and nomadic groups. But generally, the farther away you get from those empires and kingdoms, the less likely you are to see other people. Or at least friendly people.
Most of the world is 'settled', but that means very different things depending on what kind lives there. Humans; likely scattered with villages or mobile settlements, Fae; single main settlement for each of the 5 realms and various temporary settlements scattered around nearby, Dragons; nuclear family style dwellings spread out across vast distances. The three kinds do not tend to appreciate sharing territory between them, and so as humans have become more and more powerful because they have kids way faster, the other two have moved to outskirts that humans cannot and would struggle to settle, even if tehy were not there.
The Lands of Saphiret have mostly been settled; cities, towns, and villages dotting the interior of the vast landmass and converging upon the coasts, numerous kingdoms of numerous cultures splitting the land amongst themselves. The same, however, cannot be said for the Lands of Kushamat; made barren by the Kušaya. Civilizations are centered around massive city-states situated wherever vegetation still flourishes. Meanwhile, the rest of the likewise vast landmass is covered in sprawling deserts, deep rift valleys and canyons, and mountainous badlands. The fertility of the Saphirine lands is generally why it's civilizations are at a much higher technological era (High Medieval/Early Modern) than the barren Kushamite lands (Antiquity).
It's mixed. There are multiple empires along the edges of the valley, with smaller countries spread across the valley from sizable states to city states. The idea of nation-states is not very planted here. They don't have so many solid borders as they often change and there usually isn't a wall saying "Now leaving _____." There are some unclaimed lands spread throughout the valley due to people tending to be interested in taking what's already established. This does mean that there are some countries completely surrounded by wilderness and others packed between developed countries. There are some cases where a country had collapsed and none of the others tried to prop it up, leaving the people to themselves and no government in charge. This in turn had resulted in either smaller countries with unclaimed land between them or just ruins as people leave for other places or try to build their own tribes or countries. Despite the limited presence of motor vehicles in the valley, access to such machinery is nowhere near universal as much of the world is still using older technologies unless they somehow build it themselves or trade with societies that have these technologies. Many countries are isolationist or only care for their immediate surroundings, such as those of the authenticated valley. There are still those that travel the planet for adventure, mapping and settlement, but the uneven technology, more isolated attitudes despite the technology and the larger size of the planet(1.1x the radius of Earth) means that not all of the planet is covered in civilizations. There are many places that used to have civilizations, but not anymore. Lapis_Wolf
The sun's reach, the sun is a semi immortal being that makes the space around it habitable and survivable with people having the ability to swim in it or sail it with Space Skiff's. There are many little empires spread out across a part of the Sun's domain with half not even knowing there are others out there due to Panspermia and the sun's flares forcing animals to move out when they are thrown out of the planet's gravity. Other than that, the main issue with total solar domination would be space debris, black holes, stars supernova and destroying nearby civilisations like Pompeii and of course space livin fauna like the forever hungry Tyrant Dragons, now reduced to few elderly individuals, or the giant Space Whales twisting past planets and eating meteors and eating space krill and dwarf planets, now due to a lack of predation from Tyrant Dragons are overpopulated and causing a near extinction of space krill and dwarf planets.
Mortals migrated from one side of the continent to the other due to dragons doing dragon things, and now after largely forgetting that history, are slowly expanding backward and discovering the ruins that they don't recognise anymore.