Camp Nano – Nexus world-building excerpt 1

It was a placid day when Tcholk learned he was a wavespeaker. He was crawling along the shallows of the ocean floor, tending to the coral that bloomed with bright colors beneath the sunlight. Suddenly a rogue current ripped Telch away from the group. Without thinking, Tcholk called for his floundering classmate to come back. The water answered, and the current reversed course and gently deposited Telch back at the base of the shade rainbow coral they were all under. Sharp mouthed Telch, who had a put down ready for any moment, embraced Tcholk and thanked him, bowed his eye stalks in appreciation. Tcholk was the hero of the community that day. He could not sleep that night, eagerly thinking of when a representative from the wavespeakers would come to carry him away.

Only, the next morning, no one came.

The local Farmer leader, a fellow crab, came with his pincers lowered, and quietly told the expectant household that no representative was sent for Tcholk. So his father, never one to tackle a problem from the side, dragged his stunned boy across the sandy floor to the deeper water where the towering crag that held the local wavespeakers sat. There, they were taken before an apologetic looking dolphin, who bluntly stated that Tcholk would not be allowed to join their numbers because of his father’s trouble-making.

Tcholk had never really resented his father for all his pot stirring until that moment, but now a hatred grew in his heart. He looked at his father and saw only the selfish crab who had pulled his son down with him. Father was for once at a loss for words.

Between bouts of foaming tears Tcholk fell asleep. When he woke again, his mother was standing over him.

“You are going to the Nexus,” she said. Her voice was clear but there was a tremor in her claws as she tapped Tcholk’s shell.

“Why are you sending me away?” Tcholk said, unable to believe it. He had never wanted to travel, never thought seriously about leaving.

“Don’t resent your father. He looks half ready to toss himself on the rocks and wait for the hated Fliers to take him away. But this is not his fault, it is…everything. It’s society, it’s this caste system. We’re swimming in it like water, it’s all around and yet we can’t see it.” His mother sighed, blowing a long stream of bubbles. “You have a great power. If our people are too stubborn to train you, then we must find another. You have tasted the strength of the sea, Tcholk. You don’t want to look back on your life when you’re my age, and think about how you wasted it.”

“Is there something you regret, mother?” he asked.

She turned her shell to the side, her eyes looking at something beyond the room. “I have raised an incredible family. I have married a passionate man. But I have regrets, yes. We will not speak of this now.”

Tcholk tried to argue but could not find any words. His mother scuttled out.

The arrangements were brief. His family gathered and presented him with the seaweed bag, which the whole tribe had spent the day gathering and his mother and father had spent the night weaving for him. His father presented it, and gruffly said his goodbyes. Partway through he broke down crying and became inconsolable.

“What he means to say is, he’s proud of you, and farewell,” his mother said.

Now Tcholk waited at the stony crags at the mouth of the vast bay where he’d spent his whole life. Like most shore crabs he was no stranger to land, but the less time spent above ground the better. There was a peace with the Fliers, and besides the portal ground was carpeted with so many protective spells that the air bent and shimmered slightly as if through the haze of heat. Idly Tcholk picked up a rock and tossed it into the ocean, where it disappeared seemingly without a splash.

Nexus – notable people

I’ve been doing some more worldbuilding for the Nexus! Below are some notable people with some quick facts about them:

Tcholk

Birthworld: Ocean of Serene Waiting

Tcholk was born to the seaweed farming caste on the Ocean, one of the lowest rungs in the hierarchy. At a young age Tcholk manifested the ability to “talk” with the ocean currents, which is a form of magic. In the regular march of events he would have been sent to the tidespeakers to learn more about how to harness his ability. However Tcholk’s father was headman of his group but was ousted for holding politically unsafe views about the caste system. His mother realized Tcholk would be constrained by the Ocean’s society and sent him to live in the Nexus and learn about his magic there.

Tcholk was a quick study and a brilliant magician, but was slow to find his place in the school community. Also he suffered from severe homesickness and tried to run away on more than one occassion. Even after overcoming his fears and learning to love the Nexus, he still faced discrimination. The best water magic professor was another crab person from the Ocean, who refused to teach Tcholk on religious grounds. This almost lead to the teacher’s expulsion, but Tcholk pretended he did not want to join the teacher’s class, helping his fellow crab person save face. Afterwards, the teacher and he became good friends.

Today Tcholk is the Ocean’s representative on the Council.

Gwendolyn Posey

Birthworld: Hault

Gwendolyn was born to middling nobility of the Hault aristocracy, a notoriously stuffy and ruthless bunch. To escape the constricting norms of her homelife, Gwendolyn set out to the Nexus to write a travelog: guidebooks and stories of travel to exotic places were in vogue at the time in Hault court. She was famous for her descriptions of restaurants and cuisine, especially Hassa foods. She was also well known for having “familiar” relations with just about anyone who cared to share her bed. Gwendolyn created the first iteration of art galleries in the Nexus, and is famous for having “discovered” the Cragfen sculptor Brococho.

Just as famous as her books was her firey temper and rivalry with Christina ter Vanthis, another travel writer of the time.

“Scandolous” Rogtur

Birthworld: Cragfen

Despite being Stellae-reknowned artists in the fields of earthware, sculpting, and music, the Cragfen are notorious for their inability to dance. Rogtur was a great dancer, for a Cragfen, which meant they were terrible compared to say the fel or the elves of Hault.

However, Rogtur turned their reputation around and invented a dance style for the Cragfen. Performances of their plays and musicals became an overnight sensation. Rogtur combined movement and song by making body percussion as well as highly stylized and slow movements. Critics will still point out that Rogtur is only good for a Cragfen, while supporters will never stop raving about the time they say the master himself performed a new percussive dance.

World building meta for the Nexus

I’m using World Anvil’s meta guide to outline the overall feel and important points of the world. It’s been an eye-opening experience and really useful to write about it in this way, if you have your own world you’re trying to build definitely give them a shot.

Below is what I have written about the meta at this point in time. If you want to keep up with the latest updates take a look at the site below:

https://www.worldanvil.com/w/the-nexus-gdbessemer/meta

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Scope

The motivation behind building The Nexus

I want to build a world where interconnection is the key to everything, hope and wonder hide behind every bush just waiting to be found, and change for the better is possible. I’m writing this world to set a series of novels in.

The goal of the project

I want to experience a world with the reason and nobility of Star Trek but with fantasy conventions and swashbuckling and fun.

The Nexus’s Unique Selling point

Travel anywhere, see anything–the portals of the Nexus connect hundreds of worlds together, bringing fresh discoveries to the city every day and opening the doors for endless exploration.

Theme

Genre

Fantasy world with a late Age of Exploration vibe due to magic portals to travel anywhere, and the slow proliferation of magitech.

Reader Experience

The Nexus is the light of reason and hope shining in the murk of misunderstanding and mistrust in the greater Stellae. There is mysticism, secrets and legends beyond the ken of mere mortals, but they can approach understanding.

Reader Tone

Bright-ish world, where things can go right and there’s a sense of enlightenment but it’s not without dangers, setbacks, and typical mortal frailties

Character Agency

Characters should be able to change the world, and for the better. However change isn’t always welcome, and it can be hard to fight against the neutral posture that the institutions of the Nexus strikes.

Focus

Arts And Culture Influence: Closely tied to the technological changes, the main problems the Nexus has is how its culture clashes with the culture of members. The ideals of the Nexus were born out of an unfair universe, but those ideals aren’t widely accepted.

Technology Influence: Nexus technology is disruptive to most cultures–the portal network allows for a (mostly) free exchange of ideas, many of which the Nexus has already adopted. While the Nexus shares learning on alchemy, healing magic and magitech, their portal magic is a closely guarded secret, as has incredible potential for warfare. Many Nexus clients are secretly trying to reverse engineer the portal magic and build their own rival network.

Race Relations: As the Nexus itself is a huge melting pot of races and ideas from hundreds of worlds, there is both conflict and unexpected harmony between the meeting of various races. The Nexus considers minority / majority race makeups and historical information as only one factor in its decision on where to build a portal; depending on who gets a portal in their cities, a minority group might suddenly become one of the most powerful groups in the world, or it might help a majority group cement its power over the others.

Rule Of Law: One of the constant pulls on the Nexus is how involved to be in client worlds. They have a stance of neutrality and non-interference but clients can hold beliefs that the average Nexus citizen might find abhorrent, and the necessity of protecting the portal magic secrets as well as Nexus citizens abroad forces the hand of the marshal and diplomatic groups.   Some in the Nexus say, why don’t we just take over everything, since we’re so much more advanced than others?   Some outside the Nexus say, why do those blowhards keep forcing their views on us?

Drama

The Nexus has a monopoly on portal technology. This doesn’t prevent others from trying to copy that tecnology or bribe existing Nexus mages to discover the underpinnings. There is a steady underground movement to try and figure out how portals work so that the client states can make their own portal network, or use the technology for wars.

A faction of fel from Abessa have started pushing to remove themselves from the Chain, which is the name of a given strand of the portal network. If they leave, all the other connections behind them will dissappear. Abessa trade guilds are attempting to use this as leverage to get more power in the Nexus.

There’s mounting pressure within the Nexus to start making their own military force out of the marshals and pursue threats against the Nexus within client states. This is a microcosm of the larger conflict within Nexusian thinking: continue being neutral, or begin overtly influencing clients to adopt Nexus values and culture?

Every city needs agriculture to feed it, and the Nexus is no exception. Fortunately most visitors can eat certain standard vegetables such as potatoes, carrots, and cabbage. However there’s been a rot going around, ruining potatoes. Last month the Nexus had to import vegetables to feed its people, which is putting strain on the city’s budget.

Scene

The Laws of The Nexus

1. There is magic.

2. Magic is generated by connection between living beings and their thoughts, hopes and dreams.

3. Magic can be observed and influenced like any natural force.

Cosmology

Life was a happy accident, like our own universe. If there is an overriding force that moves and creates everything, ie. God, nobody has observed Him working yet.   The Nexus itself is rumored to be a pocket dimenson or grown from a single seed by the founder. In truth it was simply the first place that the Founder was able to portal to, because it was previously believed to be the seat of the gods from the Founder’s homeworld and thus filled with thought-mana.

Principal Geography & Features

The Nexus itself is a small moon, roughly the size of Australia made into a ball. The Surface is 75% water and there is only one large landmass, which is the one the Nexus rests on. The city is located near to but not on the coast, and few go to visit it outside of the regular farmers who sustain the great city.

Initial Active Setting

I’ll start with describing the Nexus itself and setting the first story there to get to know the culture better. The five major client states of the Nexus have an outsize influence on the thought and rituals of the Nexus so they will have to have some details, if not completely filled in yet.

People

The History of The Nexus so far

The Nexus world is pristine outside of the city and farmland, no other intelligent life on the world. There are glowing manta rays that leap out of the water, along with mana-nibbling fish. The land is fertile, however light is weak–fungus is a staple of the Nexusian diet.   Out in the Stellae, there is evidence of an earlier portal network, though only the highest trained Nexus mages understand the signs. What happened to this civilization and their portal magic is totally unknown.

Current Species & Cultures

Fel: cat-lizards from the tree-filled world of Abessa  

Cragfen: stone people from the world of Dirt. Rumors of silicon/glass people also exist.  

Haultfolk: humans, dwarves and elves from a standard  

Hassa: living flame from the world of the Burning Lip.  

Ocean: coalition of living water peoples from the Ocean of Serene Waiting.

Needs & Relations

Fel: They are torn between wanting to remain in the Nexus but also answer the growing local unease with how deeply the Nexus culture is changing their own–as a result, cults have sprung up looking to go back to the old religions and old ways.  

Hassa: As beings of living flame, their needs and abilities are wildly different from the rest of the nations. What they really want is to find a way to belong. They do get on well with the Cragfen, as many of their race can withstand the natural heat of a Hassa.  

Cragfen: Slow and deliberate, as benefiting their bodily makeup, the Cragfen have the same worries as the fel, but have been much more successful in keeing themselves separate from the Nexus.  

Haultfolk: Natural diplomats and city builders, the elves, dwarves and humans of Hault are like the grease that turns the gears of Nexus politics. The people of Hault are invested in maintaining the Nexus and exploring the Stellae.  

Ocean: the coalition of living water peoples are by and large very insular. Their main desire is for trade, especially metal and stone work that can resist the pull of the tides of their homeworld. They are aloof as a rule.

World building for the Nexus

For March my main focus is to flesh out the setting for the Nexus and really breathe some life into it. One of my goals this year is to write three fantasy novels, and to do that I need a strong base to build them on. January was about doing as many short stories as possible just to stretch my wings and get back into the habit of writing. February was about reflecting on what I’ve written in the past 10 years and find the best world to work with, as well as clean up the blog a little bit. March now is going to be about world building for the Nexus of the Stellae.

To that end I’ve put together a World Anvil site (no need to click just yet, there’s nothing there)! I’ve been watching their walkthroughs on creating a new world and have been thinking about the themes and stories I want to tell to make a starting point.

I’ve got 8-10 installments planned for the Counterfeit Key series to make a good entry point to the Nexus world and also drive where I need to focus my world building energies on first. I still plan on updating three days a week – one day for Counterfeit Key, one day of the SEUS because I really enjoy writing it and working within the ever-changing constraints, and one day for bigger world building updates on World Anvil.

I hope you stick with me on this journey! About halfway done with Chapter 4 here. Can’t wait to share it!