Mythic: Worldbuilding 1
Let's talk worldbuilding! [Part 1]
Hello everyone! Welcome to the first Worldbuilding release for the world of Mythic. Let’s get right into some of the art and concepts I’ve been working on!
Disclaimer: This won’t include everything. This setting is being workshopped as we speak, and I’m still playing around with certain elements!
Notably, everything included here won’t necessarily be relevant to the first mini-series of Mythic, but may come up in later stories. Despite this, don’t feel like this is required reading before you start interacting with any other part of Mythic. This is for fun and so I can share stuff about the setting!
Let’s Start With Basic Setting Details
Most of this was already discussed or mentioned in Mythic: The Myth of Everlight, but I wanted to get more into it here for the sake of explanation. At the end we’ll get to some stuff that hasn’t come up yet!
Pantheon
The pantheon in Mythic consists of only two goddesses — the goddesses of the Night and Day. They are constantly at war with each other, and whichever goddess is winning determines whether there will be day or night.
Day/Sun Goddess: Almost universally revered because it’s so much safer in daylight.
Humans believe themselves to be made in her image, hence calling themselves “Godborn”. The Godborn are the only group in the Known world that portrays her as having a humanoid or physical form
Strongly associated with the creation and maintenance of magic in all its forms, and believed to have blessed the mortal races with the gift of sorcery. Thus, the ability from birth to cast magic is considered divine magic.
Strongly associated with life and crops; believed to have enchanted large sections of the world so that they can grow well even without sunlight.
Speculated to be weaker than her counterpart for some reason because it is Nighttime so much more often than it is Daytime. Notably, when the Divine Beast is in power, the Night is Eternal. When the Sun goddess is in power, it is not eternal day — the world moves to a day/night schedule like we have in the real world.
There are several theories as to what is making her weak. Some believe that the gifts she gave to the inhabitants of the Known World have weakened her, and must somehow be returned.
These gifts primarily include sorcery, enchanting nature to endure the Night, and Everlight, though Everlight no longer exists in the form it was given.
Because she gave the gift of Everlight to the dragons, she is sometimes depicted as a dragon with golden scales and no horns.
Night/Moon Goddess, “The Divine Beast”: It’s a much rarer occasion that people outright worship the Divine Beast. She’s more often depicted in a manner of respect and fear, or outright cursed.
Her dominion is the Night, and thus the nightbeasts that inhabit it. This has often earned her the title “Mother of Monsters”.
“Nightbeast” is a general term for any number of monsters that lurk in the darkness and will eat or attack mortals.
Known to have a true name, but invoking it would bring ruin upon your family for generations to come.
Frequent travelers of the Night will often keep small effigies of her holy symbol in the hopes that she will be kind to them and let them pass through the Night unhindered and unharmed. Results are dubious as to whether this works.
Depictions of the Night goddess have a tendency to depict her in a physical, monstrous form. Since no one has seen her form in the daytime, it can only be assumed what she actually looks like, if she has a physical form at all.
Whereas the sun goddess is associated with magic, the Divine Beast is associated with physical prowess.
Multiple cults exist surrounding her. Some believe the Night is a sort of challenge that they are meant to prove themselves against, while others believe that Night is the primordial state of the universe and should remain eternal.
Everlight and Fire
For the full myth, I highly recommend you check out The Myth of Everlight or its audio version. Anyway, here’s some thoughts I’ve had about the roles of Everlight and Fire in this setting!
Everlight — A gift from the Sun goddess to the dragons, a pure form of light and energy that was safe to handle. Often referred to as an “aspect of creation”, because using it in a forge allowed the dragons to create magical items. Other than what’s written in the Myth, frustratingly little is known about it. Current generations don’t even know what color Everlight was.
Fire — After Everlight became fire, there was a rush to preserve this remnant light source. The mortal races caught on quickly about what fire could and could not use as a fuel source.
Most Wood Variants: The first fuel source used to preserve and spread fire was wood. It tends to burn with an orange-red flame, similar to fire we would be accustomed to. In the haste to preserve fire, heavy deforestation occurred in certain regions that have not healed since.
A war was fought over this a long time ago, but the opposing parties (The Godborn and the Bandalari) still harbor a grudge to this day.
Nowadays, most wood variants are considered a fairly middle-class or well-to-do option for keeping your property safe and house warm.
If you live next to a forest, chopping down a tree is a viable option for a wood fire, so long as you bring a lot of light (and probably help) with you to stave off the nightbeasts.
For the well-to-do, they tend to pay well for firewood to encourage loggers to make the venture and bring back firewood. Being a logger is a very lucrative business, so long as you’re willing to risk it.
Pitchmud — When the countryside burned after Everlight was stolen, the char and ash from this event eventually found their way down mountains and hills and into rivers and lakes thanks to rainfall and other natural processes. There, they infused with the mud and riverbeds to create pitchmud. It is believed that, being created by a magically-started calamity, this mud still retains some minor magical properties: namely, it can be retrieved from various waterways and used as a fuel source for fire.
The concentration of pitchmud in water determines how well and how long it burns.
Concentrated pitchmud is black in color and noticeably more grainy than regular mud.
Fast-moving rivers or large bodies of water tend to have more dilute pitchmud. It still burns, but not as long and not as bright.
Stagnant water, especially bogs, is a great place to pull very concentrated pitchmud from, which will burn bright for a very long time.
Pitchmud and pitchmud fires smell absolutely AWFUL. The purer the pitchmud, the worse it smells.
Pitchmud fires tend to burn either brownish-orange (not very concentrated) or bright teal-mint green (highly concentrated).
Due to the horrible smell and method of retrieval, pitchmud is generally considered very undesirable as a fuel source. However, the fact that it is readily accessible in some form makes it the poor man’s fuel source of choice.
Firegems — By far the most expensive fuel source, retrieved from mines, purified, and paid for out the nose by wealthy patrons because they can create hot flames that burn in a variety of colors depending on the firegem.
Firegems can burn for days without provocation, which makes them a great investment, but also a huge fire hazard if you aren’t watching them.
Firegems create flames that mimic their colors and patterns, making them an exotic centerpiece in any rich family’s house.
Fires set by firegems have no distinct scent.
Some blacksmiths swear by certain types of firegems being able to produce better/stronger equipment when used as a forge’s fuel souce.
The purification process leaves behind a sort of unpurified dust, called Gemsalts.
Gemsalts — To call gemsalts a fuel source is being a little gracious, admittedly. They generally can’t be used to start or keep a fire going, but they can be tossed dramatically into a fire to make it burn a different color for 5-10 seconds. As a waste byproduct of firegem purification, they’re generally pretty cheap and used more like a party trick or visual aid for a story than anything else.
Dragon Forges
“…They knew this would not be enough though, not forever, so atop the nine tallest mountains of the world, the dragons created nine forges marked by monoliths of stone, from which light and smoke billowed year-round.”
-Myth of Everlight
The dragon forges were:
Fueled by Everlight, allowing them to create magical items
Massive. They were built by the dragons and for the dragons, meaning no other races could use the forges even if they tried. They’re speculated to have acted like homes for clans of dragons as well, considering they were known to have tunnel systems extending deep into the earth, which the dragons could retreat into for years at a time.
Placed atop the nine tallest mountains of the Known World, before they were summarily destroyed.
Exploration of the current nine tallest mountains has turned up absolutely no sign of the forges. People have also scoured some of the second tallest mountains with no luck either.
Many people believe the myth of Everlight to be just that: a myth. A time when dragons were friendly? Magical items? Fire that couldn’t burn you? It all seems far-fetched to some people, and the fact that no one has been able to find any evidence of them has only fueled this theory. Still, storytellers all over the Known World insist that the dragon forges are real, and will be found one day.
Many people are still looking them for several reasons.
Some of it is curiosity. People want to know if they are real, what they were like, and what answers and clarification they can give about how the ancestors lived.
Some believe that the dragons had to destroy the forges entirely because they couldn’t curse the Everlight there to be Fire, leading to the assumption that if a dragon forge was ever found, it would still be lit with Everlight and be able to create magical items.
To this point, there is a splinter theory as well that while there is no Everlight remaining, there is certainly some kind of powerful fuel source that it left behind in its place.
Some groups believe that if Everlight still exists here, it must be returned to the Sun goddess to allow her to regain her strength.
Map
I have a rough idea of how the map is going to look, but I’m not set on most of the details. Most of what I’ve been focusing on is this labeled region here:
This is the part of the coastline where Mythic’s first story will be taking place.
The Godlands belong to the humans who believe they are made in the image of the Sun goddess, the Godborn. They believe their land is holy, and that it was the center of creation; ie, the first thing to ever be created by the goddesses.
There are humans that don’t believe themselves to be Godborn, but they generally don’t stay in one place, much less the Godlands themselves. They travel far and wide in caravans, and generally are just referred to as the Wanderfolk.
So’litore (so-li-TOR-ray) is a small fishing nation along the coastline that used to be part of Bandoska. It contained a grand forest a long time ago, but the Godborn humans cut most of it down to fuel their fires not long after the loss of Everlight. This blatant invasion and pilfering of resources provoked a war with Bandoska that left So’litore mostly uninhabitable. Bandoska lost this war, but ultimately the Godborn had no more interest in So’litore without its forests and did not conquer it as part of their territory.
Still, to this day, So’litore has a high population of Godborn humans.
Duurmanshor (DER-man-shore) and its inhabitants have very little written about them thus far.
Bandoska (ban-DOSh-ka) is the island home of the Bandalari (see below for more details), connected to the mainland by a single bridge right on the cusp between So’litore and Duurmanshor. The main island is notoriously difficult to get onto, as most of the island’s shores are difficult to climb cliffs, and the Bandalari people themselves are very suspicious of outsiders and guard the bridge to their homeland with great zeal.
One of the most prominent buildings on Bandoska is a large structure on the northernmost cliff, suspected to be a castle, but may also be some kind of school for learning magic.
The Known World is relatively small, if only because it is bordered by huge mountains with little worth conquering on the other side. The dragons left the Known World for these mountains and what lay beyond long ago, and will kill anyone that attempts to cross into their territory.
The Bandalari
Concept art of the Bandalari, the inhabitors of the island nation of Bandoska.
Physical
The Bandalari people are one of the most fascinating and secretive groups of the Known World. They have upper bodies and faces similar to humans, though they tend to sport wide, bovine-esque noses and squared facial features, not to mention a variety of different horn types depending on their heritage.
The lower body of a Bandalari is furred and often compared to a cow or other hooved mammal, much like a minotaur or satyr in our world. They also sport tails with large tufts at the ends.
Perhaps most notably are the Bandalari’s large wings, which can fall at their back like a cape or extend out similar to a moth’s wings. These wings are incapable of powered flight, but do allow for long-distance gliding and controlled falls.
The Bandalari are a very colorful people; the color of their skin, fur, hair, and wings vary widely and are not standard across the species. Fur and hair colors humans would consider unnatural, like blue or green, are less common in Bandalari, but not nonexistent. Essentially, I could have colored my Bandalari concept art any number of ways and still been accurate! Additionally, wing color is not inherited genetically and no one is entirely sure what determines it.
Social and Magic
Perhaps the most interesting part about the Bandalari is their society. They live on the islands of Bandoska off the coast of the Known World. This has made the Bandalari fairly isolated from the rest of the world, but that is the way many have preferred it for one simple reason: Magic.
Unlike all the rest of the races in the Known World, the Bandalari claim that they can teach magic. No Bandalari child has ever been born with magic, but all of them have the capacity to learn it at any point in their lifetime. Much rumor and speculation surround this claim. Some believe that they are lying, or that if they are telling the truth, they gained this power through heretical means. Some wonder if this ability to learn magic is innate to the Bandalari, or if a human could learn magic given the chance.
Bandoska and its people have thus far entertained none of these claims, remaining largely closed off to the rest of the world.
Though they are wary of all those that are not of Bandalari blood (or personally ordained by their rulers to cross into their territory), they are especially wary of humans, including the non-Godborn, due to centuries-old tensions over the war and loss of So’litore.
The Bandalari are known for their guards being warrior-mages, adept at augmenting their fighting with magic. Lengthy spells are often seen cast from large tomes, but every Bandalari can keep two spells prepared at all times by inscribing runes upon their horns and hooves.
Because of the Bandalari’s ability to learn magic as opposed to being gifted magic at birth by the Sun goddess, Sun goddess worship is less prominent amongst Bandalari.
This is also the reason why they and the Godborn don’t get along, because the Godborn think they are either lying or their method of magic is entirely heretical.
The Bandalari have been accused by the Godborn of having struck a deal with the Divine Beast for their magical martial prowess. Bandoska and its people have refused to dignify this with a response.
And that’s all for now! I’m so excited to be sharing details about this setting as they come up and I hope you find it as interesting as I do! As mentioned before, this isn’t necessary information to know before reading any other part of Mythic. This is a way for me to show you lore and worldbuilding as it’s being developed, not a homework assignment!
Thank you all for reading, looking forward to the start of Mythic’s mini-series!
Just kidding, I'm really excited by all this setting has to offer 😄
That's all well and good but what's THRUM??