"Let's go!"
Change
This is something I tried to focus on last year after reading great articles from other authors that utilized change really well. I think that I succeeded in some articles but failed in others.
Linebound has always been about the change that can be brought by exploration and new ideas but I haven't always represented that well. Something to think about here is how the existing order may resist change. While most people in Linebound are excited about this sky sailing future, not everyone should be and that is room to create conflict around the sweeping changes of the world.
Refuge
Honestly, not something I had really considered for Linebound. Everyone - and my brain apparently - were to busy dreaming of and going on grand adventures to worry about home, hobbies, or habits. But now...
Belief
The faiths of Linebound are not particularly well developed or interactive with the wider setting. They are mostly isolated articles about a few people in one place - and sometimes at one time - that dot the otherwise blank canvas of belief on the skies.
Secular heroes have captured the zeitgeist of the people of Breharan. Darosi, Ryza, the rest of the crew of the Harani, other explorers, great musicians, and more. These are the people who are while perhaps not worshipped, certainly idolized by others. In this, the belief is in those individuals but also in that anyone could become one of those people. With enough hard work, determination , and perhaps a spoonful of luck, any cloud-dreaming farmchild could be the next great explorer.
Even so, the part of belief that I am the most interested in writing about would be superstitions and myths. Stories about the fae, ones that may be true or may have once been true, even ones that are completely made up because storytelling is an important part of Linebound.
Decay
"All good things..."
In Linebound adventure and skysailing are supposed to bring an end to the conflicts back home but that does mean that the way of things must change. Bral has had to become less warlike in order to join the skies. Zinato is wholly devoted to what the skies may bring - a far cry from the quiet people who lived along the river and dreamed of mild winters and food hunts.
What may be on the way out in Linebound already? Any nations? Any ways of life? What is the next to go? What will it look like in its death throes?
Final Thoughts
Everything changes, everything grows, and everything - everything - dies. Except for hope. Linebound is not a dark setting - though it has elements of horror - and even when everything is lost, when the cavalry doesn't arrive, when the sacred relic is gone forever, when cornered and surrounded, that is not when the people of Linebound give up. That is when - despite everything, perhaps even in spite of it - they stand, they fight, they invent, and they do anything and everything they can because if you're falling, you've got nothing better to do than flap your arms and try to fly.
"Having now seen the prompts and written some, I feel that - perhaps for the first time - the world of Linebound is taking on a life of its own. There was no regional focus or specific ideas I had in mind but each prompt took me to a different place which needed to grow."— Paul Norris
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