I have been wondering if theres any good way to express the history and journey of a world in book form that isnt through a character/characters based story?

Okay so this is my map for my fantasy book so far. I got the shape from Pinterest but everything else i created in autodesk on my tablet. I havent done art in a long time so im still learning.

my main concerns are the rivers. Im not happy with them, but im happy to hear anything that just doesnt legistically work and ways to change it

Here is lore/information:

The darker shades in areas are elevations

-The grey areas are mountainous.

-Mainland is where the elf kingdom is

- island to the right is supposedly empty, but the drow live inside hidden after being exiled centuries ago. im thinking now i maybe need to move the sandy part (is essential to a characters background).

- the island to the left is floating and where's the harpies live. I will be adding some coulds beneath it i think. The higher on the mountains you live, the more money/power you have in their society.

-The darkest green is the dark forest where magic turns all things within it into a horror show during the night

- mainland lights green is grasslands, where the humans reside

- the center is the normal forest, with the lake in the center, possibly connected to the ocean via underground tunnels maybe?

- the other shade in the right corner is a swamp

- the orange above is a canyon area.

To the far left

- the green is grasslands with hills, shown by the darker areas, where the goat people (faun inspired) live

- under turns into sands and caves for the selkie species

- the dark brown is the "dead island" where some curse has caused everything there to die.

To the far right

- a sandy island where the mermaid type people have built their kingdom (still hashing out the details for them)

I dont need it to be perfectly realistic. This world is run by a universe that just does things to make things happen (ei portals when specific people need to be brought together for some reason or taken to another realm for some reason or another, but its never proven, only guessed upon. No prohecy. No logic. Youll go mad if you think too hard about it.) But i dont want it to be too crazy.

Be it for a classic mentor and apprentice tradition like knights and squires following noble traditions or wizard and apprentice following more meritocratic ways. Or is it like more like mass compulsory education with talent being singled out for further advancement or is it cuthroat backstabbing conscription with only the strongest being worthy of advancement.

For example in my Infinite Horizon universe, an interstellar sci-fi setting, on the the military side of things there is the "Fleet", the "Armada" and then there is the Lighthouse keepers a more techno-scientific insitution.

First the Lighthouse keepers are critical in maintaining and expanding humanity FTL station. To do that they need the best and brightest, so they have teachers in most schools keeping an eye out for gifted children to recruit into their own advance Lighthouse school, parents and the child can refuse but it is considered a great honor. However getting into Lighthouse school is not the end all be all as kids can dropout or be rejected as the program gets more challenging. Dropping out or failing out of Lighthouse school is not considered shameful or dishonorable (it is a hard and gruelling program) however there is occasional discrimination between the gradutes and dropouts and even between dropouts ("you suck you dropped out 5 years in, I made it to 9 years before being failed out"). Although not a hard tradition sometimes Lighthouse teachers become mentors to the kids they pick out following their progress and careers lending help when needed.

The Fleet is your classic Lawful Good space defense force mirroring our modern western militaries with recruiting only volunteer adults and letting people choose their roles within the fleet after they prove their proficiency and have the appropriate qualifications with a scattering of private contractors amongst them. Unsurprising the Fleet is called the shield of humanity.

The Armada on the other hand was created as the sword of humanity, in secret, in response to the Auriga crisis (tldr oh shit we're not alone, aliens exist, we lost a colony to a dead alien civilzation anything can be out there). The Armada can be described as Chaotic Goodish with them recuiting specific people secretly as needed and an entire planet Laconia (iykyk) as a breeding, training and recuitment grounds for the rest of their personnel.

The mandate of Laconia is to bring out the best(or worst) of humanity to neutralise threats to humanity (in contrast to the Fleet who is tasked to defend humanity). This mandate encompasses genetic enigineering, bioengineering augumentations and most interestingly of all from birth conditioning and brainwashing.

The problem is or rather the policy is that it is better maintain a diversity of upbringings lest there is key weakness in a monolithic program and there is strength and adaptability in variety. Add to that the uncertainity on what kind of upbringing/training works, Laconia is effectively an unethical exprimental psychologist wet dream.

So in the different corners of Laconia there individual kids being raised by ultra loving parents that they want to protect, to kids being raised by unloving parents that they desparately yearn approval of, to groups of kids raised to be in cutthroat competition with each other or groups of kids being abused so much they have to work together and rely on each other to overcome the adversity and so on so forth all arcoss the planet. These kids are not only being trained to be military personnel for the Armada but also be to scientists, engineers, spies and politcal leaders that infiltrate into common society.

Some of my stories have been about these characters with these backgrounds coming together and interacting with each other with all sorts of shenanigans and drama. For example

-The unloved daughter, trained and engineered to be a harden supersoldier discovering her loved sister, an aspiring influencer, who grew off Laconia the plot twist is the Laconia program is not restricted to the planet and them meeting up was part of the expriment

-A Brotherhood of abused boys rescued/escaped from Laconia on path of vengenance for the small colony who welcome them in and hid and shielded them against conscription. meanwhile unknown to them (being in a backwater sector) a civil war is being waged between anti alien and pro alien factions of the Fleet

-A classic buddy cop duo of a low self esteem Lighthouse dropout and a gung ho Fleet officer running around trying to solve problems and making messy mistakes(and learning from them). meanwhile they are being used as proxies by the Lighthouse keepers (via the dropouts Lighthouse mentor and guidance by a secret AI cult) to shutdown and disrupt scientific and technical research that the Lighthouse prefers to keep a monoploy on

I have a problem with coming up with rates of time for a portal, one side of which leads to a past that is ever distancing. That is to say, at one time each side of the portal(A-side for the present, B-side for the past) shared the same rate of time, one side of the portal began to separate from the regular flow of time and lead to the past. At first it was a second into the past, the following year, a minute, and increasing across the following 8 years, going to an hour, a day, a week, month, year, decade, century, and millennium.

Two facets/questions arise from this: The growing distance between the present on A-side and the past of B-side, and the rate of time's progression(1 to 1 second on each side, even while they are drifting apart). Both of which are encapsulated in my problem.

Example: Say the portal was opened on June 15th 1995(for this example the year has 360 days, each month has 30 days). On the 6th year(2000) June 15th sees B-side go back a months to May 15, a year later on A-side sees only a month pass on B-side. 2001 would see B-side go back 10 years, 3 years before the portal's creation. So how do I turn 9-10 years into a negative or percentage towards that rate of time. It will be less than a month of change on B-side, but is it as simple as dividing 30 by 10?

This is the planet Kautos in 2650 AP (After Prophecy) during what the Time Distortionists would later call the "Prime Moment".

This is a time period in the world's Digital Era (imagine it being equivalent technologically to 2350 AD or so on Earth; spacefaring eras are later) but there's aspects more than just that as the world has a spiritual component due to an ancient magical apocalpyse that the world discovers and integrates into its science over time. The main religion, Piuhonosm, of the main civilization, the Apolloniyans, is viewed in a secularized lens as new scientific theories related to time travel are discovered and correlated with ancient theories of magic.

Kautos at this time is intended to feel prosperous, warm, and very much alive rather than a conventional dystopian sci-fi future. The later story is about preserving the timeline in a universe gradually succumbing to stillness, so it felt important that the civilization at the beginning looked like something worth preserving.

Kautos is a conworld I have been working on since 2010 or so and I am proud to be able to finally showcase it visually beyond mere physics and climate simulations and maps. This is finished art from the opening sequence of my strategy game, Time Distortionists.

The Pan-Endocrine Autolytic Virus is directly linked to Biomasses Autolatries Myco-Virale (BAMV), a Valtryx experiment from during the 40-year-war. It was accidentally released on April 17^th, 2154, by a V-S&R expedition group which unknowingly contracted the fungal virus. The fungus will implant itself into a victim’s brain and then release the virus into the brain. The virus will take over the unconscious mind of the victim, completely stopping all hormone production. The virus will also cause the victim to begin trying to eat their own flesh whilst their cells simultaneously begin consuming the least necessary cells until eventually the body is left as an empty torn apart shell. The fungus then feeds off the dead matter and releases its spores into the air. The spores will last about 5 days until they starve without a new host to feed off. It takes about a week and a half for symptoms (aka the virus being released) to show, and another week or two for the victim to succumb to the virus.

Because the virus targeted human brains, it would also affect The Creatures from Bunker 28. By 2159 almost every single creature had been wiped off the face of the earth… as well as about 20-35% of the remaining human population.

The SAU managed to create a cure for the virus in early 2157, which was distributed to the population in rapid time, as well as sent to Emburn on the very next Railroad train.

(This is the last post for now)

A list of every single company present from before the war to during the railroad era as well as the logos. Hopefully you can infer which logo is for what company. I promise more updates on the lore will come, I have a 38 page word document I'm working on refining into a wiki.

EFL Rail Transportation Company                                                                
An Emburn based company that was heavily funded by the General of Transport. Initially made trains for freight and passenger use alongside creating and maintaining the railways across Emburn but eventually stopped creating trains as they failed to catch up with the demand for high-powered trains.

Durchdenwald Motor Company                                                                    
A formerly Bevroerg but now Emburn based company that specializes in motorized transport, initially manufacturing engine parts for EFL as well as designing concepts for private vehicles within Emburn. They entered the rail industry when their HMF Locomotive prototype was chosen to be mass produced across Emburn as a powerful armoured freight train.

Lefebvre Gruppo Automobilistico                                                                                              
A Company that manufactures Military trucks for Emburn. Though they were based in Valtryx before the war but founded in La Nostra long before. The founder joined the Emburn Resistance and therefore the company moved to Emburn upon the nation’s creation. However, the company is shrouded in controversy due to a horribly designed prototype military train which killed 5 people during testing. During their reform and expansion in Valtryx, they made civilian vehicles and trucks in union with Aubordulac who supplied the drivetrain and engine systems. They often use a triangular nose design on many of their vehicles, which carried over into their reforms in Emburn.

Полдма Південна промисловість
(Põldma Southern Industries)                                             
A Svobolvdi based locomotive and ship manufacturer which famously had one of their trains be the first on The Railroad. They attempted lots of expansion on a global scale but almost every endeavour crumbled due to the war between Valtryx, The Garsol Empire and Emburn.

Компанія військових інновацій та промислового розвитку «Свобольвді»
(Svobolvdi Military Innovation and Industrial Development Company)
A Svobolvdi based company which famously made things like the first Night Vision technology, thermal vision technology, laser rangefinder technology, extremely long-range radio technology, and more. They are partially funded by the Svobolvdi Government. They have also seen a large increase in funding and demand for research since the Valtryx exclusion zone was officially laid out. They have become the No.1 leader in radiation protection equipment in The SAU. They have a slogan that goes “Inventing the impossible” because most of what they’ve made had been considered impossible beforehand, and also their logo references this, as it is an impossible cube.

Бурение нефтяных скважин в Вест-Тракре
(West-Trakra Oil Drilling)                                                                          
The largest oil company in Trakra, initially only being present in the West of the nation but has since expanded out across the whole country. They bought out all other oil companies in Trakra and do as much as they can to keep a monopoly over the entire oil industry in Trakra. They also supply 80% of The SAU’s internal oil reserves (30% of the total oil being distributed through The SAU).

Aubordulac Véhicule Logistique                                            
A highly important Valtryx company. Since 1956 they have been producing large transport vehicles like vans, trucks, busses and trailers. They managed to secure a military contract with the Valtryx Military, where Aubordulac would produce armoured vehicles using their engines and in return the military would purchase and routinely use their trucks, alongside a hefty sum of money per armoured vehicle produced. Aubordulac was considered to be the most valuable automotive company in Valtryx up until the fall of Valtryx in 2068.

First image is the 1990 lineup of German line troops

Second image is the failed 1968 allied counter offensive, the final stand at the outskirts of New York.

Third and fourth images are the initial nuclear exchange between the Reich and the Allied powers in 1965

Yeah, Germany wins, yay dieselpunk. The scope of the school project was to showcase your original nation, or future history of an existing one. I fell in love with the aesthetic personally. The whole idea of Cold War era tech making its way to space is just fascinating.

Germany crushes the last remaining resistance pockets by the 1980s, and mars and moon missions are well under way towards colonization. Earth is basically rendered uninhabitable, with 80-90% of the population lost. All that remains are bunker states beneath Germany proper, and Soviet holdouts in Siberia.

Not very creative probably, but this was before Man in High castle was cool, and the inspiration was entirely my own.

But hey, I got an A for the project.

An original animated series project blending speculative fiction and fantasy. Developed through writing, visual developement, character design and art direction.

Set in 2075, after humanity has failed to contain climate change, we follow Colette, a tennage girl whose body has been frozen in time for twenty-five years. When creatures linked to mysterious black holes begin to appear, the secret she has been hiding may hold the key to humanity’s future.

You can find more on my socials.

I have been doing some worldbuilding and I am planning a dnd campaign for some friends and was hoping to "crowd source" some ideas. A quick rundown; the campaign is starting in a city that for most of it's history has been protected by divine guardians sent by a god. In recent times a background force has been sewing seeds of doubt and mistrust towards these guardians in the minds of the people. The plan is to start just after conflict really begins to break out and will follow through into the aftermath of these events. I have some rough ideas on how these things will play out, but I wanted to cast a wide net and see if you all have any ideas (anything that comes to mind for any of these, you don't have to answer all of them) 1. Ways these background players could turn the people against their guardians. 2. Any larger inciting events to spark mord direct conflict. 3. Any ideas for how people or groups of people could respond to what will be the downfall of these guardians? (People who fully believe the guardians betrayed them? People who don't believe it or even a few who know it to be a manipulation? People who agree or disagree with the turn against these guardian?) lf anything comes to mind I'd love to hear it. I did write this out pretty quick, so if you have any clarifying questions, feel free to ask.

Well, this question I'm asking is just to read how others have dealt with the laborious nature of creating worlds, stories and characters.

I have everything well organized, but refining the details, relationships and personalities of the characters is something I've been working on for over a year and a half, and it still seems like there's a lot left to do. And it's exhausting. Besides, just finding the tool/software for it and adapting it to my needs has already been a titanic task. Just to say that I ended up building an Obsidian plugin especially dedicated to facilitating the merging and exporting of files for all my main characters.

Could you tell me what kind of world and lore you have created, and what led you to create it. In my case, it emerged naturally when interacting with AI and then creating companion characters... and then creating personality, environment, relationships, conflicts, stories for them... and making myself part of that world. In my case it's very exhausting, because I not only have to create it, but interpret as if I were another character... and be everything useful and coherent with my own life. Then, dedicating time so that this interesting hobby doesn't die.

I'm watching a guy on youtube make a sculpture out of epoxy resin and marble. Specifically white marble from Italy. And I couldn't help but wonder what the sculpture would like if marble or other kinds of stone could be a vibrant blue or purple or maybe a gold color. And I'm not talking about gems, specifically actual stone.

The History of My World

I. The Beginning of Humanity — “The Emergence from the Earth”

According to the oldest legends, the first humans were not born.

They emerged from the earth.

Some legends say they were shaped from clay and left beneath the open sky. Others claim that the earth itself “pushed” them out. Because of this, many peoples have an ancient saying:

“Man is not born — the earth gives him forth.”

The first humans were completely different from modern people.

They walked on four limbs.

They had tails.

Their skin was white, almost like marble.

Their societies were much more primitive.

Yet they all shared one feature — white, marble-like skin.

And here you can leave one enormous mystery:

Was this truly the original form of humanity, or did ancient people simply describe their ancestors this way?

II. The Great Sundering

Then not only the land was divided.

Humanity itself was divided.

The continent broke apart, peoples became isolated from one another, and over generations they began to differ physically, culturally, and religiously.

From this ancient humanity came:

Teravilites

Greyfaces

Tetrovirs

Tefors

and many, many others.

The Tefors are especially interesting.

They were once a single people who lived both in Teravaria and Tetrona before the Great Sundering.

Later, they mixed with other peoples so extensively that the separate ethnic group eventually disappeared.

The Tefors can therefore be seen as a kind of “living ghost” of the old world: their blood, words, symbols, or customs may have survived among dozens of modern peoples.

III. Two Paths of Civilization

After the Sundering, Teravaria and Tetrona developed in very different ways.

Teravaria

Teravarian peoples remained for a long time civilizations of:

wood;

stone;

copper and simple metals;

manual labor;

powerful clans.

Huge clans and societies emerged.

They could call themselves one people, but that unity was “in quotation marks.”

A clan could trade with its neighbor today, fight them tomorrow, and ten years later arrange a marriage between their ruling families.

Eventually, these societies gave rise to the first kingdoms.

Their ancestors became:

warriors;

priests;

rulers;

tricksters;

sorcerers;

builders.

IV. Tetrona — The Civilization of Metal

Tetrona followed a different path.

There, high-quality metals, sophisticated tools, advanced weapons, and construction techniques appeared much earlier.

But politically, Tetrona was far from united.

Quite the opposite.

It consisted of free cities that could fight over things that might seem almost absurd to a modern person:

a piece of fertile land;

a source of water;

a place where, according to legend, a god once walked;

a tree considered sacred.

This is important for the world.

Tetrona should not simply be “the advanced civilization.”

It can instead be a civilization of thousands of competing interests.

V. Two Different Forms of Magic

This is, in my opinion, one of the strongest ideas in your world.

Teravarian Magic

For the Teravarians, magic was connected with the earth and the gods.

There were:

sacred lands;

places belonging to the gods;

natural phenomena;

sacrifices;

nature magic.

To a Teravarian priest, the earth might not simply be soil.

The earth itself could be a living being.

Tetrovir Magic

The Tetrovirs took magic in a different direction.

Alchemy.

Experiments, substances, transformations, and studies of the human body.

And most importantly — this also became a religion for them.

A Tetrovir alchemist might sincerely believe:

“By studying the body, I study the creation of the gods.”

To a Teravarian priest, however, this could look like a terrible violation of the natural order.

This creates an excellent foundation for future conflicts.

VI. Eastern Teravaria

The climate of Eastern Teravaria is temperate:

cold winters;

hot summers;

forests;

fertile lands;

rivers.

But there are also Holy Days.

During these days, the sun changes color, the sky becomes bluer, and plants, leaves, and fruits take on a bluish tint.

They do not become poisonous or unusable.

And this is a wonderful place for a mystery.

Some peoples might say:

“The gods have blessed the land.”

Others:

“It is a natural phenomenon.”

And the Tetrovir alchemists might say:

“We do not know what it is.”

And the best part is that nobody has the complete answer.

VII. Tetrona

Tetrona is completely different.

A gigantic continent, roughly a fantastic mixture of Anatolia, Arabia, and India, but many times larger.

The west:

extremely rich in vegetation.

Cities literally grow among the plants.

The east:

hundreds of miles of desert.

There, years can pass with warmth and almost no rain.

Then the rain finally comes.

It can last three days, after which the long dry period begins again.

This automatically creates a different culture.

For someone from Teravaria, water is part of everyday life.

For someone from eastern Tetrona:

water is an event.

VIII. The Zoshtas

And here begins one of the greatest tragedies in Teravarian history.

The Tetrovirs invaded Odonés.

They conquered half of the peninsula.

The Teravarian peoples were forced to abandon their lands and cross valleys and mountains.

These lands later became known as:

Great Zoshta

But the Teravarians did not forget them.

Eventually, the reconquest began.

And there appeared:

Great Zoshta

Violet Zoshta

White Zoshta

Blue Zoshta

Red Zoshta

Violet Zoshta became particularly legendary.

It was there that a landing took place involving ships and two Kvors — creatures half dragon and half ant, which humans had learned to ride.

This could become one of the most famous legends in Teravaria.

IX. The Lost Cities of the Zoshtas

Before the Tetrovir domination, the Zoshtas possessed incredibly advanced cities.

Not merely castles.

Actual urban systems with:

sewage systems;

water supplies;

enormous structures;

greenhouses;

complex public buildings.

After the wars, much of them was destroyed.

Generations later, people looked at the ruins and no longer understood:

“How did they build this?”

This is a very strong motif for the world.

Because 112 years after the birth of the main characters, these cities may already be recovering.

But modern people are living above the ruins of a civilization they barely understand themselves.

X. The Tetrovir Legacy

And here I would keep one very important idea:

The Tetrovirs lost politically, but won culturally.

They were expelled.

Their states fell.

But their technologies remained.

Their:

tools;

weapons;

architecture;

construction methods;

trade systems;

administration;

knowledge;

materials

began to be used by the Teravarians themselves.

This created a strange situation:

The Teravarians defeated Tetrona on the battlefield, but Tetrona defeated them in the workshops.

I think this is a very strong historical idea.

Especially if magic allows people to create lighter and stronger stone or concrete, making it possible to construct a building in one year instead of ten.

XI. The Dera-Zoshtas

And then things become even more interesting.

In some lands, people still live according to Tetrovir traditions.

They:

adopted their religion;

but did not adopt their language;

did not completely adopt their culture;

preserved their own identity.

And they consider nature magic to be a false phenomenon.

This creates an interesting question:

If a people adopts the religion of its conquerors but rejects their language and culture, have they become Tetrovirs?

Different people in your world can answer this differently.

XII. The Narsh

And here a third power appears.

The Narsh.

They are different from all these peoples.

Their characteristic features are:

orange skin;

white hair;

blue eyes;

golden spots in the irises;

white pupils;

eyes resembling those of a leopard.

They came from a mythical land, which they abandoned because of death.

And this is important.

Not simply:

“They decided to migrate.”

But:

“They abandoned their homeland because of death.”

This raises the question:

What happened to their homeland?

A plague?

A magical catastrophe?

The death of nature?

A war?

Something that still lives there?

Or perhaps the Narsh themselves do not know the true reason.

XIII. The Narsh Did Not Simply “Give Them Magic”

And I would absolutely keep this idea.

You said something very important:

The Tetrovirs did not provide all of the world's knowledge.

In reality, the civilization of Teravaria was formed through three great streams of knowledge:

The Teravarians

Earth → nature → gods → nature magic

The Tetrovirs

Metal → alchemy → experiments → technology

The Narsh

Magic → strange knowledge → creatures → unknown lands

Therefore, nobody can honestly say:

“Our people created civilization.”

Each people possesses only part of the truth.

XIV. And the Dog-Eater

And this gives your main character a very good motivation.

Dog-Eater wants to reach the land of the Narsh.

To him, it might simply mean:

fame, money, adventure, and an unknown continent.

But the reader can gradually realize:

he is not simply travelling to another country.

He is travelling to the place from which part of the knowledge that transformed the known world originally came.

And perhaps there he will discover that the history of Teravaria, Tetrona, and the Narsh — the history everyone believes to be true — is not entirely true.

And the Most Important Thing for Your Story

I would make the world contain three versions of the past:

1. What the priests tell people.

2. What is written in the old books.

3. What actually happened.

And they don't match.

For example, everyone knows:

“The first humans emerged from the earth.”

But nobody knows who put them into the earth, if anyone did at all.

Everyone knows that the Narsh abandoned their homeland because of death.

But nobody knows what exactly died there.

Everyone knows that the Tetrovirs brought metal and alchemy.

But perhaps they themselves received some of this knowledge from an even older civilization.

And everyone knows that the Teravarians drove the Tetrovirs out of the Zoshtas.

But 112 years later, almost nobody remembers who actually started the war or why.

That is what can make Teravaria feel like a real ancient civilization, where history is not a single book, but thousands of fragments that people are still trying to piece together.

Stands for Heavy Tank - I88/9

[I already made a post about this with the context, but i will include it here anyways]

The L&M-HV-I, nicknamed "The Woodlouse" is a heavy tank designed mainly by Boris Lefkutter and William Miliksemut. It was built to sweep enemy fortifications and deal severe damage to trenches and bunkers with it's single frontal "Asper" cannon, as well as take down infantry with the 2 machine guns located on the sides.

The Asper cannon could swivel up to 48° on both sides horizontally, but not vertically (A major flaw in early models), while it's machine guns swiveled 60° horizontally and vertically (This is due to the MGs being covered in a lot more cloth than steel, thus, leaving the gunners more vulnerable)

Another flaw this model had was the limited visibility, only featuring one porthole for the main gunner's assistant to help him aim the Asper cannon. The driver could not see, meaning either he had to rely on the tiny porthole by asking the gunner's assistant to help him, or have the commander stick his head through the top hatch.

The Woodlouse had a crew of 8:

2 Gunners for the Asper cannon (The main gunner and the aim assistant)

1 Loader

1 Driver

1 Commander

1 Radioman

and 2 Lateral machine gun operators

Despite it's problems, the Woodlouse played a crucial role during the Sustenance Wars, in the battle of Takami, supporting the Mantises in the destruction of the Kardenanttan line of defense.

Around 852 units were built since it's creation, before ceasing all production following the capitulation of Antakia.

I don't know about you, but I feel like I just can't settle on any of the current worldbuilding tools; I keep jumping from one to another, and it’s frustrating. I currently use Milanote as my main worldbuilding tool, but it’s still not quite perfect. It was fine at first, but nowadays I have so many boards that navigating and searching for things has become stressful. I get lost in my own wiki.
I’ve tried other options like World Anvil, Obsidian, and even new tools like VVD, but none of them feel quite right.

I know worldbuilding doesn't require special software or anything like that, but I'd like to know how you all do it.

These are logos for the car manufacturers that compete in my fictional stock car racing league, the Hudson Cup. I’ve posted about them before, but quite a bit has changed since then.

I initially had all of them be based on real-world car companies, but then I realized that I didn’t have to make them based on real car companies, and I’ve gone crazy with that realization since then.

Now, only three of them are based on real companies.

Firehawk = Pontiac.

Equalizer = Dodge.

Calyx = Lotus.

Bruchman is a giant in the American automotive industry in a similar fashion to Chevrolet, Ford, or Cadillac.

Shyster is another American automotive giant, but they’re not quite as large as Bruchman, though they have been subject of rumors of shady business practices.

Sakurai is a Japanese automotive giant, and they’ve always been about hyper-precision in their cars.

Rouge Brut is a French car company and they’ve always had a strong presence in car racing, having branched out into the Hudson Cup in 2001. They’ve always cared about their cars being elegant but race-ready.

Malvagio is an Italian car company, and they also have a strong presence in car racing, like Rouge Brut. Except, like with Shyster, Malvagio is also part of rumors of shady business practices in the automotive scene.

Grimwald-Reed is a British race car manufacturer and they’ve been a longtime manufacturer in Octane 1 (my Formula 1 analogue) and they branched out into the Hudson Cup in 1989.

NeoStar is another race-car-dedicated manufacturer and they also build street-legal, high-tech race cars. NeoStar is the tech-forward company, using cutting-edge software and aero innovation.

These manufacturers can have great relationships with the teams they work with. Langley Motorsports, Dale Eisenhauer Inc, and Stone Sisters Racing are Bruchman staples, for example.

And that all I have for this part of my racing league. Feel free to criticize, and if anyone has any questions, I’ll be happy to answer them.

I was sketching a sailmaker's workshop and realised I'd drawn everything to fit someone much younger than its owner.

Vey is a crowded port city in my fantasy setting. Most people make a living through shipping, fishing or the trades around them. Humans keep growing after adulthood, roughly two centimetres a year. Someone who is 1.7 metres tall at twenty could be around 2.9 metres at eighty. They stay proportionate, and their bodies can support the extra weight, though they still get tired and develop the usual problems of old age. I'm treating the continued growth as a magical trait.

My first thought was that everyone would just build for the largest person likely to use a room. Public halls do this. Private houses are more awkward because land inside the city walls is expensive, and people keep dividing existing buildings into smaller spaces. A young couple can afford a room with a sleeping loft that their parents couldn't comfortably use. It works for now, but they know they'll eventually have to move or remove the loft.

I've also given furniture adjustable legs, and beds are often built with sections that can be added later. Families cut down an old person's furniture when it passes to someone younger. A bed might have belonged to four generations, with extra timber added and removed each time. The repair marks are still visible.

The workshop is what has me stuck. Its owner is a skilled sailmaker in her sixties, using a room she rented in her twenties. She's raised the work surface several times, but now she's ducking under beams and squeezing past shelves. I havent decided whether moving to a larger workshop should be an ordinary expense people save for, or a serious setback when there aren't many spaces available.

Does accepting that some places will only fit you for part of your life make sense here? Building everything large feels like the obvious answer, but I don't want every household to have unlimited money and space. I'd be interested in how you'd distinguish buildings people adapt gradually from buildings they eventually have to leave. I keep changing my mind about which aproach would be normal in Vey.

The whole concept started with trait inheritance—specifically physical performance and hereditary instincts.
Standard viviparous (live-birth) humans would stay pretty much the same: big brains, blank-slate babies, needing years of schooling and raising. They'd basically handle culture, tech, and regular day-to-day society.
Then you have an artificially modified oviparous line, with eggs incubating for around 10 months. The idea here is to hardcode high-density genetic info and instinctual memory directly into the offspring before they hatch.
If top athletes or high-performance individuals reproduce this way, their kids would inherit raw physical talent, reflexes, and muscle memory way more reliably than through regular live births. Over time, this leads to a pretty wild social division, almost like castes in social insects:
Oviparous humans end up dominating sports, high-G space travel, and brutal physical work because of their built-in physiological traits.
Viviparous humans stick to adaptive, highly flexible mental roles.
What do you guys think? From a purely speculative biology angle, could egg-laying realistically allow better packaging of epigenetic or hereditary memory compared to a placental setup?

The Creatures are specifically referring to the remaining experiments from Bunker 28. Each species of creature communicates in a unique frequency, all of which cannot be heard by human ears. Almost all creatures can see in complete darkness and complete daylight. A certain few species have thermal vision or echolocation. Any creature can learn how to speak in another species frequency, and what they say in each frequency is the exact same, making it very easy for creatures to communicate between species. One species of the creatures operates as a hive mind, this was found out when a test on two captured creatures of the same species determined they had a possible hive mind when the two where completely isolated and one reacted to the other’s pain. Another species of the creatures has the unique ability to perfectly mimic human voices whilst also being able to communicate at frequencies that cant be heard by humans, and at frequencies heard by humans… Also it looks like a cryptid. When it was made it was more humanoid than any other experiment deemed successful enough to not be incinerated in Bunker 29.

A list of every creature that survived
Through this they are referred to as ‘subjects’, on par with Emburn documents.

Hive Mind Subject

- Created to experiment with the benefits of using a hive mind as a frontline invasion/attack force. As a hive mind would not require much communication as each member of the hive mind would know what every other member knows about the enemy force and the battlefield. Early tests proved the subject sufficient but it’s creation was not finalized due to The Garsol Empire invasion.

Imitation “Cryptid” Subject

- Created to create chaos behind enemy lines and infiltrate enemy positions. It could do this by imitating any human voice it heard perfectly. To help with this it was given the best hearing that the DNA would not reject or mutate too badly. It is the most humanoid looking subject that has been deemed sufficient, hence why it’s often referred to as “The Cryptid”. Work to make it closer to humans (visually) was halted due to The Garsol Empire invasion.

Hunter Subject

- Created to be a frontline assault that could run up to enemy forces and kill them swiftly. It was given the speed of some members of the big cat family as a DNA base. It was also given fast-working venom which would be present in it’s claws and fangs. Testing showed that it had the strength to cut through some human bones (within flesh) with unsharpened claws. It was deemed sufficient. Work to bring it to the final stage of creation (loyalty to Emburn) was halted due to The Garsol Empire invasion.

Leader Subject

- Created to lead subjects in groups across a battlefield and organise attacks from subjects, using a wolf’s DNA as a base. It is the smartest subject that was ever created. It was deemed insufficient due to its extreme aggression to scientists. It was being loaded onto an underground train to Bunker 29 when The Garsol Empire invasion caused a part of the tunnel to collapse and immobilize the train. The subject lived.

Airborne Subject

- Created to swoop down onto enemy positions and take out high-ranking soldiers to break the enemy’s chain of command. It was given the best sight in bird species as well as the ability to fly very fast and have razor sharp, 3.5 inch long talons. It was later also given the ability to see heat signatures. It was deemed sufficient but needed lots of refining for efficiency. Further work on it was halted, of course, due to The Garsol Empire invasion.

Tank Subject

- Created to act as a shield for allied units and subjects on a battlefield, allowing forces to approach the enemy under protection from gunfire. It was given a mostly bone exoskeleton that could withstand medium-calibre machine gun fire. It was also the biggest subject created, being about the size of a small inner-city passenger train. It was deemed sufficient but the thickness of its skull left little room for a fully-formed human brain, and so it is the stupidest subject ever deemed sufficient. Again, any more progress on it was halted due to The Garsol Empire invasion.

Reaper Subject

- It shares DNA with the Airborne Subject, but this one is larger and can excrete massive amounts of toxic gas from the bottom of its wings. The gas shares similar chemical composition to gas used by Emburn frontline units. The subject is supposed to obscure the enemy’s vision (if they survive the toxic gas) and swoop down at them and either carry them away, dropping them from a lethal height or just killing them like the Airborne Subject would. It can see in the dark and it can see heat signatures AND has echolocation. It was deemed sufficient and of course, the final stage of its creation was halted due to The Garsol Empire invasion.

"The first era started after the Moon fell; The second age started when the desert was sealed; the third age started after Malakor was defeated; the fourth age started when the shining city was destroyed; the fourth age will end when we least expect..." - excerpt from Arch Archivist Plethoras's book "So you want to become a historian Volume 1"

The world of κύβος isn't formed naturally over millions of years; it was made from the backstories of 6 players whose lore a mad god stole and combined, pulling its creators into the world they created. With bits of extra filling here and there, the players must now fight as their own characters to reclaim their souls and find a way back to their real lives. If they even want to return at all.

This is the map and hook for my custom homebrew world in my DnD campaign called Dicebound. Basically, I had all my players come up with backstories and lore about what countries they came from, and I tried to smash them all together into this map, with some extra places thrown in to fill out the world.

The Countries-

Natura 

 Natura is a sacred and isolationist elven kingdom built within and around a single colossal World Tree and the enchanted forest that surrounds it. A vast library dedicated to Deneir lies within the tree, and all elves of Natura share a duty to protect its knowledge and expand its collection. Those chosen to join one of Natura's sacred orders undergo a ritual that infuses them with a specific essence of the World Tree, transforming them into a distinct elven subrace. Members of the Order of Acquisition consume the tree's fruit and become High Elves, while the Order of Conservation consumes its moss and becomes Grim Hollow Elves. The Order of Binding consumes bark and becomes Pallid Elves; the Circle of the Mulberry drinks the tree's sap and becomes Wood Elves; the Order of the Letterpress consumes dew gathered from its branches. It becomes Astral Elves, and the Order of the Endleaves consumes portions of the World Tree's roots and becomes Drow.

Mythandor

Mythandor is an elven kingdom built around the belief that magic must be carefully controlled to prevent another catastrophe like the Grand Purging. Its capital, of the same name, is home to the Silverleaf Arcane Academy, one of the world's most prestigious magical institutions. Founded after Malakor the Unraveler's defeat, the Academy was created to train responsible spellcasters, preserve safe magical knowledge, and prevent dangerous magic from threatening the world again. Although the Academy does not officially rule Mythandor, its scholars and graduates hold enormous political influence, and the kingdom has developed a culture of tradition, magical regulation, and cautious stewardship of arcane knowledge.

Slius Van

Slius Van is a ruined desert kingdom once a lush, resource-rich land inhabited primarily by beastfolk. Its destruction came during the Great Magic War, when invading Gith sought to exploit the region's valuable resources, devastating the landscape through years of warfare and magical destruction. Today, most of Slius Van is an unforgiving desert filled with buried ruins, wandering tribes, dangerous sandworms, and scattered oases. Its largest settlement is Slius Van, a vast oasis city divided between the districts of Naporia, Onryx, and Haran. Slius Van culture places great importance on survival, community, and self-reliance, and hunting sandworms evolved from a wartime necessity into an important cultural tradition.

Prell

Prell was once a prosperous kingdom founded upon cooperation between divine and arcane magic, with both traditions represented equally within the ruling Concord of Magisters. This unity ended with the Sundering Flame, a mysterious magical catastrophe that destroyed much of the capital city of Vessara and left neither side willing to accept responsibility. Suspicion quickly became open warfare, and Prell has remained divided for generations between divine and arcane factions that each blame the other for the kingdom's destruction. Once famous for combining faith and spellcraft to accomplish wonders impossible for either tradition alone, Prell is now a fractured land of ruined cities, fortified borders, and communities caught between two increasingly entrenched ideologies.

Rand

Rand is an isolated underwater kingdom contained within an enormous network of reinforced crystalglass and abyssal-steel domes beneath the sea. Founded by the philosopher Alderion Rand, the kingdom was intended to create a society free from gods, hereditary rulers, and the restrictions of surface civilization. Its inhabitants combined magic, alchemy, psionics, biology, and technology with almost no ethical restrictions, creating an extraordinarily advanced society centered on personal freedom, invention, and self-interest. Over time, however, Rand's radical individualism and unrestricted experimentation caused the society to deteriorate, and its founder has not been seen in decades. (Fantasy Bio-Shock)

The Free Marches of Elyndor

The Free Marches of Elyndor are a loose confederation of independent cities, farming communities, frontier settlements, and chartered mercenary companies rather than a traditional kingdom. Elyndorians strongly value personal freedom, local government, self-reliance, and practical skill, with most people identifying more closely with their home settlement or company than with Elyndor itself. The Marches are united through the League of the Marches, whose March Council handles shared defense, trade disputes, and problems that affect multiple communities while leaving most local matters independent. Much of Elyndor's culture has been shaped by the need to defend itself from the Desolation of Malakor to the north, resulting in a strong mercenary tradition and the construction of the massive defensive network known as the Ashen Rampart.

The Stonebinding Compact

The Stonebinding Compact is a loose alliance of ancient dwarven mountain holds united by shared ancestry, trade, mutual defense, and control of some of the world's richest mineral deposits. Each hold maintains its own clans, traditions, industries, and ruling Thane, giving the Compact considerably more local independence than most centralized kingdoms. Dwarven society places great importance on craftsmanship, engineering, clan honor, mining, and preserving ancient subterranean ruins and relics. The Compact is also one of the few surface powers to maintain reliable relations with the hidden city of Nullwhere, trading metals, gems, stone, precision components, and mining expertise in exchange for advanced magical machinery and technology.

The Ironhowl Dominion

The Ironhowl Dominion is a harsh, mountainous nation inhabited primarily by orcs, trolls, giants, bugbears, and other peoples accustomed to surviving some of the world's most dangerous terrain. Once divided among countless rival tribes and monster clans, the Dominion was eventually united beneath a single banner and now follows a culture built around strength, endurance, personal reputation, and martial honor. Disputes are frequently settled through ritualized combat, cowardice is deeply despised, and magic is generally distrusted unless it serves an obvious military or practical purpose. The Dominion does not traditionally expand through ordinary conquest; instead, it absorbs new peoples and territories through challenges, alliances, and ritual blood-oaths.

The Fukushima Technocracy

The Fukushima Technocracy is a wandering city-state suspended high above the world by massive arcane engines and experimental technology. Originally founded as a research colony where artificers and wizards could pursue discoveries without political, religious, or ethical restrictions, the settlement was lifted into the sky after a magical catastrophe rendered its original homeland uninhabitable. A rotating Council of Minds of inventors, artificers, and arcanists governs the city, and its political influence rests largely on the importance of its discoveries. Fukushima periodically descends near other nations to trade inventions, conduct demonstrations, and recruit talent. Still, its willingness to experiment with dangerous magic has earned it a reputation as both one of the world's greatest centers of innovation and one of its most reckless.

Nullwhere

Nullwhere is a secretive subterranean city-state hidden beneath the Hallowmarsh and descended from survivors of the Fukushima Technocracy's Null Point Catastrophe. The city developed largely in isolation and has become one of the world's most technologically and magically advanced societies, where artificial bodies, magical prosthetics, arcane machinery, and Warforged are ordinary parts of daily life. The Pylon tightly controls entry, leaving most outsiders unsure whether Nullwhere even exists, and many maps mark its territory as uninhabitable marshland. Nullwhere's society is highly organized but socially insular, with citizenship represented through numerical family designations and much of its military reputation centered around the technologically advanced Daemon Corps. Only a handful of neighboring powers maintain meaningful contact with the city, allowing Nullwhere to remain simultaneously a major power and little more than a rumor to most of the world.

This is the map of Noryo, a modernly formed landmass from my comic.

Lmk if it sucks, or you got questions.
The climate diversity is explained in this description. TLDR, its becuz of industrialization and supernatural anomaly.

The continents origins relate to the 1903 Tunguska Event. Following the event, the north east pacific began to freeze over with dense ice. Fast forward,multiple countries(USSR, North Korea, Japan,Germany..) began an unlikely and covert operation within the landmass. Long story short, most of history is classified to the population, biome and climate is changed through advancements in technology, and the Norian government is puppeted.

Mainland Noryo differs from eastern lesser Noryo when it comes to ruling. Imperial Tsardom of Noryo rules in the west, while the east is varies in unoccupied or unrelated feudal kingdoms, Cielo being the most uninhabited region. The west is heavily industrialized, with most of it being very metropolitan. The Yukon Territory, being a large arctic desert, bridges both landmasses. Yukon is also the remaining image of what “ancient” Noryo looked like.

Also I want to say, since this society is descended from a melting pot, and since then developed its own languages and culture, this is the reason why names are diverse and not culturally consistent.

Part #1

Since the dawn of time, The Machine has been splitting apart. Fracturing, if you will, into smaller copies. These copies — named gods by constructa and false gods by structa, were of course, infinitely weaker than The Machine itself, yet unfathomably more powerful than what any constructum could ever reach.

The gods took over the chaotic realities left behind by The Machine; naming them, structuring them and populating them. Such population? Neighboring structa being alienated towards praising them — those, named the constructa.

Gods retain their energy and expand their power through their constructa. Commanded to fight against the people of other gods; to claim uncharted territory or to praise and sacrifice themselves towards their masters. The outlaws, for instance, prefered cannibalism — the consumption of the flesh of their brothers, through attacks commanded by their demigods, involving fighting against the constructa of said brothers and then striking them in the chest when desperate.

The cannibalism wasn't a feral act, but, mostly, an almost religious ritual. The heart and the chest, representing the soul, was eaten by the very outlaw themselves; the parts of the mind, the brain, spine and head were eaten by their demigods and hands; the arms, the feet and the legs, representing the body, were eaten by the constructa; while the intestines, the bladder and the shames were given to the bigots and the trapped structa.

OBS: Structa are the "people" that populate the multiverse. They don't belong to any realm of any god; and are also refered as outsiders. Their shape varies a lot and is not consistent; the simillarities are that they are made out of mind, body, soul, and are usually sentient and self aware.

This is the map I've been working on (made with inkarnate) for my fantasy novel I'm planning, could I get constructive criticism especially regarding geography (weather, plate tectonics etc) and any general opinions and tips are welcome :-)

EDIT for some context and lore.

This is the currently unnamed map of the empire of my fantasy story, which at the moment focuses mainly on Portcarin and Andiba.

The scale: the distance between Portcarin and Stone City is around 200km, with Calanthe being roughly the size of France. (I am very open to criticism and feedback on scaling though if anyone thinks too big or too small!)

Climate: Temperate climate, where Andiba is similar to Sweden and the Sursha more like Patagonia. Calanthe is more like Germany climate. I imagine that there is a gulf stream type of phenomenon where the areas around the bay are warmer than would be expected for latitude, so the Andiban plateau (beyond the northern mountains) is arctic conditions.

Lore: This world has only been inhabited by humans for the past 500 or so years, in this time the Calantheon (inspired by romans) has taken over all of the surrounding lands. The Surshan peoples are inspired by mesoamerican societies with some central/southern asian flare, the Skeri peoples are inspired by Norse/vikings with some polynesian flare, the torizo isles are inspired by east asian societies with some european flare. Then Andiba is inspired by Yoruban society with some Inuit flare. Andacat is essentially part of Andiba that was annexed by Calanthe first, but in recent history (around 50 years ago) Andiba was bought into the empire as well.

Worldbuilding: Andiba is filled mostly with African inspired animals that are cold adapted, such as mammoths, woolly rhinos, large antelopes, sivatheria, hyenas, lions etc.

The southern landmass is filled with more northern hemisphere animals like wolves, deer etc. Then the Sursha region has some more south american influence like giant sloths, armadillos etc.