up:: 20220424144923-wb.World-Building-for-Mondalna
20220424150007 | April 24, 2022
#form/5☀︎sublimation
History of Mondalna
I have some ideas of the broad strokes; general things that I want to have happened in the past that radically inform the current and future.
Cycles
A major theme of the world is the idea of cycles; the things that have happened are happening again, slightly different most of the time. Things live and die, cultures rise and fall, and places are built and destroyed.
The world as it is known today is new, and it is known to be new. There are records of older cultures that existed before, but no records of ones even older than those. That will be part of the fun.
Deep Past
The idea as of now is to have it based on a version of Earth. Some incident occurred (perhaps the Earth was transported to a different dimension, or magic was accidentally introduced to the world, or maybe even creatures evolved it over millions of years) and radically changed, well, everything about it. This event is known as 20230204103111-wb.mon.The-Blue-Ruin. The timeline for this is around 10,000 years ago; even the oldest 20230204102808 20230204102751-wb.mon.Elves would have no idea about any of these details.
All that remains are scattered ruins of ancient civilizations, and only the ones that were lucky enough (either through location, circumstance, or active protection) to still be around.
Examples include:
1. A Series of "Rails" That Runs Through a Desert.
They are all parallel, and iridescent. They seem to be immune to most damage. Their function is unknown, and they are of irregular lengths at seemingly irregular intervals; some are as short as 100 feet, others stretch for 20 miles.
- If you were to see them from space you would see that they roughly correspond to some physical characteristic of the planet and may have been used for:
- Focusing energy?
- Transportation?
2. Strange Tablets Made of Some Unknown Substance.
They are small, portable, and fragile. They can vary in shape and size, but their configuration is roughly the same: rectangular, with at least one smooth flat surface. They are commonly believed to have been some sort of spell focus
- In actuality they were akin to modern-day phones, but not used to communicate; instead they are storage devices, capable of creating pocket dimensions at will to hold any number of objects. The enchantments are quite stable, but their containers are not.
3. Enormous Structures Made Out of Stone, but Not Slabs; They Instead Seem to Flow Like Water, Twisting in Odd Shapes.
They are incredibly resilient to wear and tear; even spells like Disintegrate have a chance to reflect away. Their insides vary in layout, but they are capable of holding large amounts of people or objects
- These were ancient meeting places: sporting events, malls, museums, and concert venues would be rolled into one huge superstructure to house everything inside of it. They were repurposed as bomb shelters for civilians, and have since been continuously inhabited by many great kingdoms
There are scant biological examples, too; creatures that originated long ago, and don't seem to conform to typical rules of nature. Most of these creatures were created to serve a task, and the field of robotics advanced enough to the point where the inhabitants of this time learned how to genetically engineer biological machines. After all this time, though, they have been undergoing their own form of evolution.
See: 20220504084201-wb.mon.Biology-of-Ancient-Mondalna for specifics
Recent Past
There are plenty of things that have occurred more recently, however; the current year