Caverns & Taverns Worldember 2023

Last year, for my first World Ember event, I put a lot of work into the species of the fantasy world, and some of the primary characters. Although it met the letter of the challenge, in hindsight it might not have entirely met the spirit, as a lot of it was fairly generic: stuff one could have easily found in the early chapters of a Dungeons and Dragons book.
I was able to reach over 25,000 words last year. A down side was that I had just discovered WA a few days before WorldEmber began, so I had some growing pains. I also was all over the place, writing whatever was in my mind at the time to get the word count. Upside, I had more time to work things out than I do now. With more time to plan and prep in advance and a more clear vision of what I'm going to work on will overcome having less time to write. As a result, I will set for the ambitious goal of 50K words.

To accomplish this, I intend to work on the following:
1)Establishing the Pantheon of Gods. I had creates a few that showed a glimpse of a larger picture, but would be incomplete for use in a campaign or even in a story based on a person with deep faith.
2) building out the Nations of T'sara. Caverns and Taverns takes place in a wide number and variety of places, and my writing of them in the past has felt a little bland and generic. By spending more time on these places, I can hopefully inject more culture and uniqueness into my project. Hopefully, make the world feel more lived in.
3) develop settlements: like above, putting in more detail in cities, especially the "hub" places will help the quality of my writing, I think.

Week 2: Mini Meta
So, an area that I decided to focus on specifically was the establishing the gods of T'sara, and establishing some of the religious traditions with them. In that point there's some general tenets that I want to establish to help set the mood.

1) Most importantly, that the animosity and wars that have plagued the land are neither designed or even wanted by the Gods. The Six Sisters, the Goddesses who created the sentient species, did so in a way to make them work together in harmony. As the Fey Crisis ruined the utopic world the gods created, so too did it ruin the perfect relationships that had developed as a result.
2) With rare exception, the Gods are not direct participants in the world they created, but rather spectators. Those who have strong favor with the Gods can curry their influence, and those who ignore or defy the Gods and their rules can swiftly suffer their wrath, but the average person does not need to worry about divine interference on the day to day.
3) There are no explicitly "good" or "evil" Gods. Gods rule over dark aspects or ideas, but they are not necessarily defined by them. The God of Death, for example, feels it as a solemn responsibility and necessity to maintain the world his siblings have delicately maintained. This also restricts some of the aspects that can exist: there is not an explicit God of Murder, as exists in many fantasy worlds (particularly D&D).
4) The Gods will tend to reflect personality traits associated with the aspects they represent and rule over. Phoenicia, the Goddess of Children and Mercy, manifests as an emotional and immature child.
5) The Gods do not have a static, uniform appearance, but will have varying forms of a general theme. to the previous example, Phoenicia will always appear as a child, but could appear as any variation of any of the species the other Sisters created.
the inspiration for these gods comes largely from the Greek mythology. none of the gods themselves will have direct allegories to those gods, at least not intentionally. Rather, the inspiration is both in their relationships with one another, their fallibility, and how they are represent multiple divine aspects. lastly, it will help serve as a reminder how polytheism actually works, it is not worship and obedience of one God among many, it is the respect and worship of ALL the Gods.

Lastly, in this spirit, I've reorganized the categories of the world a little bit, seperating out the Gods from the Religious organizations they inspire. I'll also be adding a category for HERESIES: Organizations or people who believe in Gods or Divine properties that do not actually exist, or for whom show some form of divine power, but are not themselves children of Veserae. As an example, there is a strange religious cult among the few werewolves in the world, who try to reform their behavior. They believe Lupus Dei, the God of Wolves, is their guide and mentor and will help them stand against vampires. Such a being does not exist as the werewolves understand it, and yet clerics servicing the cult are still able to harness divine power like that of other religions, suggesting something is out there.

Week 3: Homepage Looking over the homepage, alot of it is standardized format and structure that I haven't messed with or made my own. I had already started making a few categories and adjusting, but there's also some things that probably need to dissapear or be re-organized for the benefit of the viewer.