Worldbuilding Wednesday & Behind the Story
In the next
part of The Price of Freedom (to be posted next Monday), I return to one of the
parts of Airthai I have only written one short piece about (that has seen the
light of the blog). One of the flash pieces I wrote for NaShoStoMo earlier in
the year, entitled “The City of Promise”,
was set on route to one of the larger and richer cities of the Southern Lands –
Marglóthborg.
City of Promise
While this
piece started out with the quite cliché ‘young-man-with-father’s-sword-setting-out-to-big-city’,
I wanted it specifically not to be epic or have the young man’s life influence
a whole kingdom. He wasn’t going to overthrow an evil empire, dark lord or even
gather great riches. He was simply a young man with an heirloom setting out to
find work in a large city so that he could send money home to his family. I
doubt there are many families on the whole of the earth that doesn’t have this
story in some form or another in their family. His choice to become a guard for
one of the rich families did mean, however, that he was able to send more money
home than he would have if he had gone to work in the mines. I specifically
wanted to write a fantasy piece where the hero of the story is simply a hero to
his family because he could help care for them. Yet, he also makes a choice to
go against his father’s wishes and becomes someone who earns his living with a
sword.
Worldbuilding the Dry Bay – Marglóthborg and
Black Harbour
Northwest
of the lands of the Seafolk, after the Dragon Cliffs and Dhôr Mountains, lies a
large, semi-desert bay area called Dry Bay. The land here is rich in minerals
and metals and are known for its various kinds of mines as well as the extravagant
lifestyle of the cities’ rich.
There are
different kinds of mines in the parts situated around the Dry Bay. There are
salt mines – some of the richest in Airthai and the salt of which is said to
have health properties as well and are very costly and traded throughout the
Continent. The most important mines, however, are those where dragon tears are
mined – one of only two places in the whole of Airthai where this is done. The
second is in Naeddre, where the tears of Skáhag is mined on a much smaller
scale[1]
and traded with the Northern Lands (the only time dragon tears have been mined
where the name of the dragon is known). The dragon tears of Marglóthborg,
however, have been laid down by generations of dragons before and right after
the Great Sundering.
Black
Harbour is named after the black rocks and sand found in the area – a reference
of which is also made in “The City of Promise”. This is the most southerly part
of the western coast of Airthai where this black ground and rocks are found and
the harbour here is also the most southerly one from where ships can sail in
relative safety around the Dragon Cliffs (accompanied by one of the southern
dragons) to the harbour at Diuzisborg.
To read “The City of Promise”, click here.
 |
| A Map of Part of the Southern Lands |
 |
| The Lands of Airthai after the Great Sundering |
No comments:
Post a Comment