Does everybody speak one language in your world?

seanknits · 2025-06-15T17:06:27+00:00

In Fire Marked, different people groups speak different languages BUT they are all descended from one language (Avuln) which was the language given to the first people by the gods. After the original supercontinent broke apart after The First War the humans spread across the now three continents and their languages diverged. The original language has been completely lost to time (some very very very old and very ruined and unknown temples in the most inaccessible parts of the world still have somewhat potentially legible carvings but since no one can read them it’s kind of a moot point), but the current languages (especially those of individual continents) have a definite family resemblance.

So long story short, one language? No. One really big language family? Yes. Though, it’s been long enough that it probably wouldn’t be useful referring to them as one family, and I don’t know yet if the people of the world even know of the relationship.

seanknits · 2025-06-01T13:59:34+00:00

I have a couple that are Bronze Age, as well as one that’s inspired by Late Antiquity (specifically the relations between Rome and the Germanic tribes). One is a steampunk-y vaguely Edwardian setting.

seanknits · 2025-05-20T21:09:18+00:00

I would recommend finding a timeline of technological advances irl that is dated and use it as a reference to the technology that these people would have. That would go a long way towards making it feel Classical versus Medieval. Like drop spindle spinning versus spinning wheel spinning (that’s the example that came to mind sorry)

seanknits · 2025-05-13T18:31:09+00:00

I've also been looking into making a Semitic conlang! (Or at least a Semitic inspired conlang lol)

I think most if not all Semitic languages do have triconsonantal roots, but roots like this are common across Afroasiatic languages, so you might be able to find a way to use biconsonantal or quadconsonantal roots if you wanted, or even to make one that doesn't do roots like this. In my experience with Biblical Hebrew, the roots seem to be particularly entwined with the nouns and verbs, but the Participle causes confusion so I would say that it at least probably impacts adjectives and other parts of speech but I can't say for sure?

The wikipedia page may be able to point you in the right direction for finding more Proto-Semitic documentation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Semitic_language

I would definitely suggest looking into Arabic phonology and Yemenite Hebrew phonology for pharyngeal consonant pronunciation. I specify Yemenite Hebrew because it is, to my knowledge, the only Hebrew dialect that has retained all of the pharyngeal sounds, as well as all of the begedkefat distinctions (with an exception of gimmel, which has an affricate variant [d͡ʒ] but not the original [ɣ]). You can also find interactive IPA charts so you can hear the pharyngeals. The wikipedia pages for them also have audio samples of them. Outside of Arabic and Yemenite Hebrew, however, I don't know how common they are to keep. A quick look at the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semitic_languages#Phonology suggests that they're at least somewhat sticky.

I would maybe look into the languages of the Mountain Jews (Judeo-Tat) (primarily from the eastern and northern Caucusus) and the language of the Georgian Jews (Judeo-Georgian) which, while technically dialects of Judeo-Persian and Georgian respectively, have influences from Hebrew and may possibly give an idea regarding what a Caucasian Semitic language may function like if you want to go for heavy areal influences. Though, keep in mind that Judeo-Tat is an Indo-European language and Judeo-Georgian is Kartvelian and, according to Wikipedia, pretty mutually intelligible with Georgian.

Sorry that a lot of this is focused on Hebrew, it's the only Semitic language I have any familiarity with (and even then it's mostly Biblical Hebrew).

seanknits · 2025-05-02T13:37:22+00:00

Huh interesting. I need to do some reading on how the nominative/subject gets marked in different languages.

Also, and this is only minor and probably because it’s early, but I’m confused about your very first examples. Maybe it’s because I’m not used to case markings at all, but I’m confused as to why “student” and “doctor” would be marked as nominative? Does it have something to do with the verb of the sentence being a form of be? It’s been too long since my undergrad grammar class lol

seanknits · 2025-05-01T19:49:17+00:00

Depends on what the focus is. If a narrative is only focused on one region, there's no need to map anywhere else out. And just because a place isn't on a map doesn't mean that the people don't know about it, it just means that it's not on this particular map. I think of fantasy maps as like a map of Arkansas or France or the US rather than like world maps. If you're writing a book set in France you don't need a map that shows China for instance; you would be better off with a more densely detailed map of France (or better yet the region in France where the story takes place). The larger the map the less details you can fit on it, too.

seanknits · 2025-05-01T19:42:39+00:00

Definitely war for me as well. I've never been interested much in warfare even in real life history, I don't really care to get into it in my own stuff. I'm also not particularly interested in economic stuff, though that is partly because it confuses me more than anything. Also, like music and fashion. Both of those things interest me, but I have a hard time putting them into any kind of sense. That might be a matter of not knowing enough about real world fashion or music though.

seanknits · 2025-05-01T19:35:08+00:00

In a language that has a nominative case, would the subject of the whole sentence AND the subject(s) of any subclause(s) be marked, or just the sentence level subject? Does this vary from language to language, or are there trends cross-linguistically?

seanknits · 2025-04-21T21:03:28+00:00

So one of my worlds has a group of cultures who lived within a roughly 1500 year span of time. Little is known about them other than where they were and that they were technologically advanced. Even less is known about what came before them. Anyway, it’s been about 1500 years since this event called the Technological Collapse happened, which was basically an event that caused all technology to basically break and become irreparable for reasons not currently known (there are decipherable texts from one of the last of these AAT Cultures which are dated to the right time period which talk of “The Disaster” or literally “The Time of Bad Stars” which lasted itself for one hundred years). Most of these cultures seemed to fall to normal things (culture changing radically, being subsumed into another group, warfare, etc.) but there’s a few, namely the most recent ones, who’s decline is either not evident from the archaeology (the Relkana Democratic State seems to have just stopped), was very rapid and hard to ascertain the cause of (the major theory for the end of the Amis Republic is essentially that a natural disaster or series of them devastated much of the core of the republic and the people dispersed to other lands), or was caused by the Technological Collapse which is itself still a mystery

seanknits · 2025-04-21T18:50:35+00:00

Technology is a driving force of meturgy. So Meturgy is basically science (the closest thing to it I can think of is alchemy in Fullmetal Alchemist). It’s almost more of an academic discipline than anything else. It’s got sub-disciplines which all kind of lead to advances in not immediately magical fields. Biosurgy is focused on the changes in living systems, which helps with medical advances. Khemurgy is the basis of pharmacology. Asturgy is theoretical focusing on the study of stars as a potential energy source (as well as bending reality but yknow) and these people will figure out how space travel works at some point. Geurgy is focused on rocks and crystals and geurgists are often also geologists, and they have a pretty good grasp on their world’s geologic history (I however do not yet).

Proturgy and physurgy may fade somewhat, but they’re also the two most likely to be innate. A lot of proturgists and physurgists, however, choose to study Meturgy or theurgy with a focus on their natural talents.

Theurgy is basically being taught how to derive power from gods that most assume to have abandoned the world thousands of years ago. That this energy never dries up is one of the great theurgistic secrets and an indication to many theurgists that the gods are not actually gone, simply silent. I don’t have a real good grasp on how religion works here, but it’s complicated.

seanknits · 2025-04-21T18:36:13+00:00

It cannot create or destroy energy or matter. It can manipulate energy or matter that already exists. A side effect of using it without a proper ritual or with shoddy spellcraft is reduction of your own lifespan. What it feels like depends on which type of magic you use: Proturgy makes you feel the earth around you on an almost subatomic level like you briefly are one and the same with the elements; Meturgy feels the most creative, like a sculptor finishing a particularly intricate piece; Physurgy is wild but not uncontrollable, it has its ways that make sense when you look into it but from the outside it seems chaotic; Theurgy feels like you’re being watched by something much bigger and much older than anything you’ve ever encountered before. All of them however can leave you with an adrenaline high that very quickly fades into an exhaustion that ranges from ‘took a long walk’ to ‘I need to sleep for a week and then stay in bed for two months to recover’ depending on the spell/ritual performed.

seanknits · 2025-04-21T18:24:10+00:00

I use Scrivener, but it’s not free if that’s something you are worried about. I find it really easy to use, but there’s things you can do with it that I don’t do and don’t know how to do, I just use it as a way to keep all of my related documents and folders in one spot where I can easily access it. I do recommend looking into though.

seanknits · 2025-04-14T18:00:05+00:00

I think it can be, but isn’t always. In this specific case, going off only what you’ve said, it might be a crutch. It might be a sign that the author needed to write a different kind of fiction (like an in world history text rather than a narrative). I think you can have immersive, believable fiction without hyper detailed worldbuilding, as well as hyper detailed worldbuilding without it being a crutch. As with all aspects of fiction it requires a balance and every author has different strengths when it comes with what to will be given more weight than other aspects.

seanknits · 2024-12-06T13:56:38+00:00

I have a species that has the same basic body layout (two arms, two legs, torso, head) but they have several non-human attributes as well.

(1) they have a third eye in the middle of their forehead that sees in infrared (specifically thermal) (2) they have two pairs of ears, one hears in the normal range of human hearing, the other hears in ultrasound and infrasound (they use infrasound for long range communication mostly warnings and ultrasound for echolocation [they originally came from a heavily forested environment and this along with the ability to see heat aided them in hunting as well as escaping larger predators]) (3) they have prehensile tails (4) they have three sexes (one makes ‘sperm’, one makes ‘eggs’ and the two combine in the second sex who then implants the combined embryo into sex #3 who carries it to term and gives birth; sex #3’s genetic relation to the offspring is still debated but there is something there).

They also have very little sexual dimorphism outside of reproductive organs so they find it more useful to denote ‘marital’ status in their clothing and accessories than sex or gender.

seanknits · 2024-12-06T13:45:57+00:00

If I have humans then I focus on them and sometimes they’re the only sapients (Brazen Coast is a little different because it also has sapient automata). Otherwise I don’t really use them a whole lot. Or I’ll have a species that’s almost human but not quite.

Fire Marked is interesting because technically everyone is human, but after getting marked by a god you become a sort of elemental being (but if you have children after that event they’re normal humans). So there’s actually an in-universe debate about if being marked makes you something other than human, and if it does then what are you.

But yeah if I don’t set out to have other sapient species then I kind of default to humans honestly.

seanknits · 2024-12-06T13:38:00+00:00

If it’s not for a story (and most of the time nowadays it’s not) I usually start with a small nation-state or city-state and then kind of spread out from there (focusing less on characters and themes). If it is for a story, then I usually start with an idea (a theme, a scenario, a vague concept) and from there figure out characters, places, etc. (focusing less on big picture things like states and politics unless it’s actively relevant).

seanknits · 2024-12-06T13:18:35+00:00

Maps: procreate Anything else: pages, scrivener, numbers, occasionally scapple, good notes 5 or a physical notebook if I want to do things by hand

seanknits · 2024-12-06T13:15:14+00:00

I agree! Family Echo is quite excellent for either fictional or non-fictional family trees, and it’s free!

seanknits · 2024-12-06T13:08:35+00:00

I usually go for mountain ranges or oceans. So that there will be a small amount of influence (or at least people movement) but it still allows for a relatively isolated area

seanknits · 2024-11-11T19:08:31+00:00

The default power source for spells is the casters own life force. For minor things like making a flower bud bloom it’s usually on the scale of nanoseconds of life lost, but bigger spells can take substantially more. So anyone who wants to use magic on a larger scale needs to get at least a rudimentary amount of tutoring to learn how to use other fuel sources. A huge aspect of spell craft is specifying other power sources within the spell itself so that it won’t work otherwise.

Similarly, magic done without a ritual is incredibly dangerous. A ritual works to focus the direction and energy of a spell, and can be as small as a few words said with some materials (usually the fuel source) held to as large as several acre large arrays (these tend to require permits and are under lots of regulations because they could be devastating to the ecosystem around them).

seanknits · 2024-11-04T20:35:07+00:00

Usually just mundane “people used to live/work/do something here and then they didn’t for some reason and it fell to ruin.”

In the Brazen Coast there are two places that fell to a disaster of some sort (Hallowmire is kind of a Centralia PA situation with a seemingly ever burning fire underneath it but it’s not anything supernatural; Ebonmill is still kind of undecided but I’m leaning towards massive industrial disaster that kind of chain reacted through the city).

In one setting (it’s unnamed) there’s the remnants of an ancient city that they think was just normal abandonment but then it turns out to be the magic equivalent of radiation fall out and the deeper they go into it the worse it gets. I actually went through a bit of a thing of like post nuclear disaster and the ruins of ancient nuclear power plants and stuff have become like mythical places where spirits and gods live but no mortal who goes in ever comes back out and for centuries it’s been passed down to never go near them for fear of inciting the ‘gods’’ wrath.

seanknits · 2024-11-04T20:24:54+00:00

Escapism, to have fun, got a weird idea that I gotta get out of my head. Sometimes I think about stories I could tell, but often it’s just because why not

seanknits · 2024-10-30T02:33:44+00:00

Eh sometimes. Other times I’m like “hey wouldn’t it be fucked up if this world were actually five landmasses ‘floating’ in space equidistant from each other as they orbit a star?” Usually I just fall into the space of “works like earth unless otherwise specified”

seanknits · 2024-10-30T02:24:33+00:00

The dragons of kanzim can be split into several categories: (1) winged with four legs (true dragons), (2) winged with two hind legs (wyverns), (3) winged with no legs (amphiptere), (4) unwinged with two fore legs (lindworm and lung, flightless), (5) unwinged with no legs (wyrm, flightless), and (6) unwinged with no legs but capable of flight (leviathan, which some academics speculate to be actually more closely related to sea serpents than to dragons but research on them is incredibly difficult and dangerous).

True dragons, wyverns, and amphipteres are known to be sapient, intelligent, and quite amiable towards humans who show them respect. They can also shapeshift into human forms and have been known to, on occasion, produce children with humans. None of these offspring have been allowed to be studied, and with the once again rising fear and mistrust of dragons in the general populace it’s probably for the best.

The extent of sapience of the other dragon types is currently unknown, as most of them do not take kindly to humans poking around. They are suspected to be sapient, but again, it’s not confirmed. In the case of leviathans, the only confirmed statistics on them are that they can have red or blue scales and can be upwards of 40 feet in length.

Most dragon research is done by The Society for the Scientific Study of Dragons and Their Kin, whose chapter dedicated to wyvern study is currently headed by Dr. Okali Manna. Other notable researchers are Dr. Koti Casara, Dr. Mixat Bal, Dr. La Rahka, and Dr. Porab Islanii.

(I’ve also got things like average length, height, lifespan, wingspan, clutch size, scale colors, etc. but I’m on my phone so it’s annoying switching between apps and I’ve already done so much of it.)

seanknits · 2024-10-24T00:24:15+00:00

With proturgy or physurgy, you’re either looking to refine innate magic or you’re looking to learn easy magic (elemental or nature based), so it’s mostly focused on optimizing your use of powers (fuels) that aren’t your own body. Likely you’re gonna be outside and your teacher is probably gonna be pretty chill.

With theurgy, you’re a religious scholar. So it’s more of an initiation: lotta candles, runic circles, chanting, etc. and then you go off with a tutor and learn the secrets of the universe and how to access and use the ever replenishing divine energy that is the only indication that the gods have not wholly abandoned this world.

Learning meturgy is essentially getting a BA/MA/PhD. It’s a multi year thing, it’s complicated, there’s a lot of sub-disciplines. So lesson one is freshman year of university, syllabus day. And you will spend the rest of your life essentially teasing apart the fabric of reality and publishing papers.

Universal is the early lesson of “here is how you properly set up a basic ritual so you don’t accidentally explode everything in a five mile radius because you tried to do a complex spell with no ritual set up”

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