Definitely the story is more important overall, but in my opinion the worlds of many stories are flat and uninteresting, and there are many times where an author will contradict things they've said about the world and the illusion just sort of falls apart for me. Add that to the fact that there are books like The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss where the world is this deep, storied, almost living thing, and I figured i'd try my hand at serious worldbuilding. Due to my usual disorganized style, it has thus far ended badly when I attempt it mostly due to writing just walls upon walls of text where anything useful was lost in the deluge. This is my attempt to break the walls of text into usable chunks organized in a way similar to df's raws. Very General information is given in the files which point elsewhere, to where the detailed breakdown is. Obviously, ymmv, but I figured since I was using a df related style I'd post it here.
Separate conversation, here's a story I wrote a year or two ago. I posted it here then, but was urged to take it down and try to get it published in a magazine or something. I tried a few times, failed, and no longer really care if it gets published officially or not, so here it is. I can't seem to find the most updated version, so this one may be a bit unpolished, but I don't think it's too bad.
I began in darkness.
It was so long ago that to measure the time would have no meaning. For aeons, I lay slumbering in that warm, dark place, happy and comfortable; settled into my near non-existence. Perhaps that darkness was not my beginning at all, but the end of another beginning long past from memory. I do not know, and it makes no difference. Darkness there was.
But one day, there was a light. There shouldn’t have been a light. Oh, if only there hadn’t been a light.
It was such an alien thing to me at the time that I could not comprehend its existence. A pinprick at first, a tiny shaft of strangeness slicing through the gloom. But soon, more joined it. Slowly, the darkness was chipped away by fingers of steel swung by beings who seemed monsters to me then. How right I was, even if my thoughts fell short of the truth. The fingers were pickaxes and the beings were men, miners of a now long forgotten people who roamed the land that bore me. Those cold fingers pried me from my home in the rock, slicing my essence from the warm safe place I’d been for an eternity.
Oh how I yearn for those days.
But alas, they are no more; I was taken to another part of the mountain, where the rage of the planet bubbled up in vibrant orange streams. It wailed out in a fury that should have made them tremble. “Fear me!” It cried out, “Flee from my wrath!”. But men are adaptive creatures, and they had long since ceased to tremble at her outbursts.
I was taken to a cradle of fire, where a sturdy man with calloused hands and burnt skin forged me into a blade in the fires of the mountain that birthed me. He had gentle hands, I remember that. They were rough and scarred, but when I lay before him, his work finished, he tenderly caressed my edge. He had lovingly made me into a sword.
And that is what I am; A blade. A sword, a soldier’s scythe for reaping men, formed from the sinewy blue steel of an ancient volcano that in this day lies dormant over the savannah. My edge is hard, sharp, forged with the fire of the angry earth and tempered in the soft cool light of the stars. Quenched in a darkness so deep that all other dark places bow down before it in reverence. All this so that my edge may strike true and cut deeply, running red with the rich blood of my master’s enemies. My middle is soft, however, flexible. It bends and sways with each swing, allowing me to flow like water through and around the hardness of armor to strike the soft middles of my opponents.
But my softness is a flaw, I fear. For it extends to my soul as well, or perhaps my middle is soft because my soul is soft. I was not aware enough then to discern the difference, so I cannot know for certain. Unfortunately, I am a tool of war, but even so my soul aches from my job. I was made for killing, but it does not suit me. I hate it. It rusts away at my heart, degrading me no matter how fine a sword I may be. Each killing stroke sends shivers down my length. Each drop of blood taints my blade and my disposition.
Yes, I said heart. Surely I lack the physical organ, but I do not think I am mistaken in this as I have cut through enough of those in my time to know just how little they do in terms of what men so often attribute to them. I am speaking of emotion, of course, and in terms of emotion perhaps I have more heart than any other. Oh, how it aches! Oh, how it is ripped and torn with each and every kill! How it writhes in disgust from the lifeblood gleaming on my blade! How it burns with rage at those who wield me!
The men who have held me over the years thought I sang out for the joy of slaughter, but those were no cries of mirth, no peals of laughter. Those were my screams, and it is a curse upon me that my voice is so fair those monsters mistook my tears for song. And monsters they were, many and faceless to me. Each found me in the cold hands of the last or stuck in the corpse of another of my poor victims, though beasts they may have been. The wars changed from time to time, and the faceless ones changed cant and color as frequently as the moon waxed and waned if I cared to observe them.
Always, I hoped whatever strange hand that found me would be the last. That, by some stroke of luck, the next kill would leave me abandoned on the battlefield, forever condemned to rust away into nothing, until I am no more, never to be held against a living thing again. And always new hands found me, and carried me into their own fight or sold me to another more willing to spill blood. Sometimes months, or even years passed between owners, but always there is another to carry me further into the piles of corpses that litter my destiny. Without fail.
I have crossed mountains and oceans, and I have lain at the bottom of rivers for untold years. I have been held by peasant and king alike, by bandit, knight, soldier, and fool. Each of their blood stains me in turn, and I am passed onto the next. I have traveled from mighty castles to tiny hovels, from empire to kingdom to town and to village. So long have I traveled that I no longer remember the name my master bestowed upon me, a name that was once etched into my very being. The map of my journey grows so tangled and thick that the whole of the world aught be marked by my passing. I have been everywhere once, and most places twice. And my list of wielders grows longer.
And no matter how poorly they treated me, no matter what conditions I faced, I did not rust and I did not whither; My steel stayed true and strong, even if my blade dulled or chipped, it healed and grew back eventually, by virtue of my creation. Such was my master’s skill, that he placed the fires of the earth inside me that I may be slowly reforged each time its touch lights upon my skin. And the cool light of the stars was wrapped around me so snugly that I am eternally tempered by their embrace. And that darkness, oh, that wretched darkness, it spilled into me so deeply that it hooked its foul claws into my soul. I can’t help but wonder if those unclean shadows are the reason for my disposition, if it is their fault I am so miserable or so cursed; that is not a darkness that will ever leave you, no matter how long you may live and no matter what heavenly light shines within.
It is more than a physical darkness, and more than the darkness of despair. It is a deep and abiding madness, a chaotic insanity that seeps into the world from the darkest part of the demon queen’s soul. It haunts me, even still, even after all these long, uncounted years since I passed from my master’s hands.
If only he were reforged as I am; It has been many years, many generations, many wars since last I graced his fingers, and it has been equally long since he became no more. I failed him, the one who most deserved me. A man who made me for the love of his craft, for the sake of perfecting it, a man who loved me for my beauty and virtue and honor, not for the sharpness of my blade or the strength of my steel.
There have been others who did not use me for war, though none were as great as my master. There was an old man who admired my beauty, such that he carried me around wherever he went, just so he could gaze into my shining blade--which was by then long stained a deep crimson, though originally it had shown with the deepest, clearest azure of the majestic skies. Eventually, the man grew too frail to carry me, but so lost in my beauty was he that he strapped me to his dog’s back, that I may never stray from his side. One day he told the dog to wait at a corner, I still on his back, of course. And so we waited. And waited. But the man never returned even though the poor dog sat there staunchly till death took the poor creature. I weep to think of what befell his master. He was a kind man. Cruelty does not beget such loyalty from one’s pets and underlings, even in the most virtuous of creatures.
But unkind men found me next. They took me from the corpse of the dog before it had even grown cold. I tried to burn hot in their hands with my rage and inner fire, but the leather grip on my hilt stymied my fury. I was to war again, and I came to earn the praises from my new owners for melting through the blades of their foes. Not by want of their admiration, but to relieve my brethren of their cruel duty. They are not the same as me, they do not see, think, or feel. At least not to the same extent as I. But they are sad beings nonetheless, wailing out their misery as they clang off one another, chipping and dulling and breaking into sad heaps under the feet of a mindless human stampede turned in on itself.
That is not to say there are no blades that lust for blood; There are. But that is the exception and not the rule, for true steel is a pure thing that wants little to do with the task all too often set before it. No, it is not steel that wants this bloody history, though I know not what impurities cause those few to yearn for battle so.
But as the day came to an end, a day won by one horde or another, I care not which, I willfully failed the one who held me. I threw myself out of a guard, allowing my brother to pass me by and taste the foul blood of my wielder. And for a while I laid there amidst the corpses, amidst the company of jackals and ravens. They are sad creatures too.
The ravens are a kindness despite their usual occupation. They do not heed the carrion call of the battlefield for the sake of their bellies; they are bringers of mercy for those left alive. Their beaks are long and sharp, and can quickly end the life of a suffering soldier who knows he is going to die. “Here, here,” they whisper softly, as close to tears as any bird may get without crying, “It will be over soon. Let me help.”
The Jackals are not cruel, but nor are they kind. They heed the advice of the ravens when it is given, and lay to rest those poor souls left behind. But they are there because they are hungry, and they feast well even in the face of the guilt they feel. There is no honor in eating something you did not kill. It is not yours to eat. But eat you must, for honor does not fill empty bellies, and often the killer is dead anyway. Even so they offer apologies and thanks before each meal.
They talk to me too, sometimes, the jackals and ravens. They share sympathy for my pitiful existence. A jackal offered to carry me away, to bury me where none would ever find me again and I could return to the soft darkness of my birth, but it was not meant to be. Men walked onto the battlefield, come to carry back the dead they could recognize. The jackals scattered. The ravens lingered, but they could not help me; they hadn’t the strength.
Fortunately, these were men weary of war. They cast aside sword and shield, arm and armor, and carried back the cold, still form beneath. I was left on the field of blood like so many others, left to be covered by the elements. The jackal had forgotten his promise; he did not return. It’s just as well. With time I was buried once again.
Sweet, soft darkness! Pure, and untouched by that mistress of terror, that lady of sorrow and despair. I drank deeply of those cool shadows and tried to sink back into that timeless slumber I’d been so rudely taken from. I found it for a time, long enough for my steel to go without starlight enough to lose its tempered strength. Long enough for me to start trying to forget all that had befallen me.
But it did not last. It never does. Why can I not have peace?
This time, I was found by accident, by a historian visiting the site of an ancient battle. How many years had passed? How many battles had I escaped? I know not, but their number is far too few. But he found me. And he carried me to his city, a place reeking with the freely given blood of gods, that infinite substance which powers the sorceries of men.
Most of these gods are long dead, though their progeny do not realize it. They still seek their guidance, beg them for favors, and leech off their corpses, which neither rot nor are consumed by the greed of power-hungry men. Some live, the crippled survivors of a war that shook the firmament above and below. Only the God-King is fully recovered, and even he, who the humans call Astek, father of the gods, was gravely wounded for a time, his veins bled dry by Traznyr, the demon queen. His mighty breath creates their being, gives life to all that lives, and even he, mighty he, was almost laid low by her treachery.
But that war, like so many others, is over now. The gods will repopulate before they attempt such folly again. If nothing else, I take comfort in the fact that I will never have any part in their mighty conflicts. I am too small, too insignificant for any of them to wield. Demons, all of them, though gods they may be. They quarrel more than their misbegotten children, and though it is rarely as violently, even the tiniest of disagreements among them sends a cascade of death rolling across the land.
The corpses are everywhere, be they of gods or men, but this city, this Deandria, is surrounded by more than most. And, but for the gods, they are not the corpses of war. Plague and poverty and cruelty are the perpetrators this time. It makes no difference. The six god-corpses to the north stand as tribute to the omnipresence of war and death in this land. In all lands. What a miserable place this world is!
The historian would’ve made a better owner than most, too frail and inexperienced to hold me in a fight, but he pawned me off for quick cash. Just as well. At least I did not fight. For a time.
I changed hands for a number of years, some attempting to wield me but I was not carried into war during this time. I was the blade of a street-rat, all that stood between him and the hardness of the streets. I was the prize of a blacksmith, who hid dark secrets in the smouldering coals of his forge. I was the threatening tool of a guard who, though comparatively nobler than my previous wielders, held a darkness of his own. I was a showpiece in a manor by the pier, the object of some imagined story of greatness that never was and never will be. I was the tools of greed and lust and wrath and envy, the poor servant of fate’s cruel whims.
This loathesome city had snared me and will not let me go. I was no longer killing as many or as often, but my position here is more vile than war. Back in the old days it was just violence, bloody and simple. Here I am prey to the darker workings of man, his skeleton-filled closets and corpse-strewn rivers, his horrid fantasies and grandiose self-delusions. How strange, that they so delude themselves into thinking they are just, no matter how far from the truth they are. Truly, they are masters of that art, such that even the most depraved rapists and murderers can believe themselves a messenger of justice and peace, or else despise such figures as more evil than themselves in some other, more sinister fashion. Given what I’ve seen of mankind, perhaps they are not wrong in this.
But no, I speak too much of the evils of man! It is not true evil, not really. It is the wicked corruption of that malignant queen of beasts and demons, her repugnant shadow and her wretched darkness now spilling across the lands like her blood. In her death, she won the war, I fear, for her foul corpse spills fountains of her tainted essence, corrupting all it touches. Truly, with a spectacle such as that lying only a few miles north of the city, it’s a wonder Deandria isn’t far darker still.
And yet, there is still good here. In all places. It is as if the light in some simply refuses to let go. I do not have the luxury of being servant to men and women like those. They have no need of a tool like me. Sure, there are some who imagine themselves heroes, those who would take me up in the name of “good” and of “justice”, but those are thinly veiled desires for power and retribution for past mistreatment real and imagined.
No, the good people are ever so rarely masters. Perhaps it is a good thing; I would likely stain their hands with blood, be it that of new kills or old. But I see this mysterious light in passersby on the road, and I cannot help but wonder; Why does it not go out, even when faced with such a profound darkness as spills down from the mountains? Why does it not waver when it encounters the sins of its brothers and sisters? From whence does it come? For surely it is not their natural state, after all, if such a steady light were the rule and not the exception there would be far fewer taken by the wickedness that so swallows the hearts of men.
Do I have such a light within me? If I do I cannot find it. There is only the rage of the earth, the light of the stars, and the deep shadows, all forged into me so long ago. How my master would weep if he saw me now. When he had created me he had said, “Now this is a true sword. The best sword. A blade too beautiful to be willingly stained with blood. Let the gods look on this work of mine and bless it with a peaceful existence unmarred by senseless violence.”
Perhaps he angered the gods then, with such a bold statement, and earned me their ire and scorn. Yet I cannot hate him for it, even if it is so.
Another kind man finally found me, one who understood me, who felt the sadness etched into my being. He too was a troubled man, touched by a similar darkness. He wept as he carried me into a building filled with the stench of death. A raven sat on a decaying window sill, staring on in mourning at the misery and squalor within.
The man’s tears flowed more freely as he swung out, using me to strike down an innocent that lie asleep in one of the squat building’s many beds. I was too late in realizing his intent to stop myself. I can almost forgive him, though; It was neither greed nor wrath that brought him to this, but compassion. The plague was upon the man, upon all those in the building, and only a painful death awaited him. I brought him swift release.
I did not even think about resisting the next time, or the next, or the next. The mercy killings went on until there were no more left in that dilapidated wreck. No one, neither guards nor orderlies, not even family members of the sick tried to stop him. It was mercy, pure and simple.
For a number of years, the man carried me from city to city, slaying the tormented ill. But the man developed a sickness of his own, and the darkness twisted him from deep inside, until he no longer felt the same sorrow, sympathy or compassion. Lust replaced them. Lust for blood and flesh.
Slowly, his light was swallowed.
It started with disgusting, but ultimately victimless crimes, such as the ravaging of an orphan’s corpse. The murder of a miserable dog that would not survive the day.
But his crimes grew more horrid with each passing day, and with them his lust for blood and flesh grew as well. Each time, he hid his intent from me until it was too late for me to resist. Eventually, he returned to Deandria, this wretched city drowning in its own blood, and when he struck a young maiden with my pommel I was again too late in resisting. She had been waiting for someone. Perhaps her lover. The tainted, hollow man did not care; He took her in all ways a woman can be taken. First he took her with desire, then with hunger, then with bloodlust. I anchored myself to the cobblestones when he cast me aside, refusing to be moved. I would be his tool no longer.
I lay next to the corpse for perhaps an hour, the chunks of flesh missing from where my wielder had bitten her twisting like a knife in my psyche. He was still there, taking her again as she grew cold.
When the man was ready to leave, for once feeling a pallid horror at his own actions, he could not prize me from my resting place, and thus I was left there for a time when he fled. I was found though, and passed from hand to hand for a few nights until I wound up in an antique shop, on a plaque above the door. The owner talked about the girl I had been found with. She was buried beneath a willow, an old and sacred tree. The tree of wisdom and compassion, the tree that weeps for the weight of the world upon everyone’s shoulders. With luck, the holiness of the tree will win out against the evil of her passing.
And as I wept for the girl, I remembered my name, given to me by my master of old;
I am a blade; A soldier’s scythe, a reaper of flesh.
I am a tool of war, with a hard, sharp edge that strikes true.
My blade was forged in the angry earth and tempered in the stars.
Quenched in darkness.
My middle is soft; it bends and sways in the breeze, flowing like water.
I am hardness and softness in perfect harmony.
But I am a sad tool, a sad sword and a sad soul,
I weep for those I slay, man, beast, and child.
And I weep for those slain by other hands.
I cry in a voice so fair it aught to bring a man to tears,
but it is mistaken for joy.
I am a cursed existence who bears witness to the deaths of men and gods alike.
I am Willow Soul.
Perhaps someday I will find rest.
Maybe buried beneath a Willow....? Yes, that would be nice, I think.
Perhaps. Someday.
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Topic: Bay12 Writers Guild (Read 58780 times)