Inspo-August 2024

What is the main thing or one of the main things that inspired your world(s)?

What a marvelous convoluted question for me somewhat specifically. Well it is a very broad stroke, religion is a main thing that inspires my world The Great Tree in a much wider way than many people seem to have picked up on. Though I don't want to sound so self praising, but I don't think a lot of people seem to realize what religion actually is. However you look at it, what you were raised to believe sticks with you, some forsake it, some change it, some stick with it. There is no right or wrong answer, it's up to you.

What I do want to get here is this. I adore symbolism that can reach a massive amount of people without conscious effort. It's just everywhere if you look for it. Take a lot of the Character artwork for the world. Pay more attention to the effects in the back ground.

Rise and shine by Thereasonwhy

I take heavily from Catholic artwork from the late 1800's for the "Light behind the lord" Idea. I played with the idea from Roman and Greek ideologies about the faith being centered around the individual. Not in the aspect that the individual is important to the faith, but that the gods they followed were people. In my humble opinion the closest renditions of Humanity in gods, they were not infallible. In fact, had many flaws, some very numerous. But!, the point I'm trying to make here is this: when I want to draw inspiration from something, I'm taking from specific themes, not ideas. Like much of the artwork, I wanted to focus on the "divine" nature of the individual.

Though I have rambled on for a while. Much of the world revolves around this idea of faith, though I'll freely admit this may or may not be an effect of my own fascination with it. The peace and calm of the various eastern beliefs, the fractal nature of Hinduism, or the steadfast loyalty of the abrahamic religions. Or even the new wave of nature worship that has spawned out of the resurgence in wiccan and pagan faiths, built out of the hippie and neo-acceptance movements in the last 50 years. I find it interesting, I find it amusing. What the human mind can just conjure up when it sees fit to do so.

Well, I also should note that this idea came from a rather common place. A single character I had whipped up for a max level one-shot for Dnd 5e session about three years or so ago. A Goblin Storm Tempest Cleric named, shockingly!, Ilgor of the Skullbrood Clan. I loved that character so much that I built a world for her. I had wanted to know more and more about this character that I had made. So now here we are, 400k words into a world, three books on the horizon, and a respectable stack of artwork.

What is your favorite aspect of your story/world and what inspired that aspect?

To be frankly honest, my favorite thing about my world is the MC. Ilgor, my darling girl. There is so much to this one character that I haven't published, so many ideas half made that have yet to be realized. But, I could literally go on for days about this ONE character. Inspiration wise for her and her story it revolves around a few different things.

1) I wanted to play with this concept of a religious figure having a crisis of faith, one who ultimately decides to go another route. To me this actually follows the path of a few different things, like someone who has believed something all their life to find it's not true. Or someone on a path of self discovery, maybe somewhere in the back of my mind, its about me. Though not a self insert at all, she is not a stand, or even a self reflection. But her story does force me to think about things in such a way that makes me question the things around me. After all, how does one feel about having a core belief challenged?
2) Goblins. What comes to mind? Some cannon fodder? Easy prey at the beginning of a game? Some stupid, immoral, savage fond of pillaging and deflowering the local women? I always hated this, goblins throughout folklore all the way back to the dark ages of Europe, goblins were something else. Fey creatures, beings of spirit and knowledge. You'd have to make a deal with anything fey, you'd have to be careful for you never knew their reasoning. Perception and perspective is something I wanted to challenge.

My goblins are fey adjacent, but not really. They come from something else entirely. I have always maintained this point of fact in fantasy, the more you interact with something human or no, the more familiar and human it becomes. My point of inspiration is this: I wanted to show people that Goblins, fey, monsters are just that. I have in my mind somewhere, that the only real monsters in the world of The Great Tree are the gods themselves. The things that live in the Tree are a product of the world they live in. So what would an ostracized, forsaken, and misunderstood group of sentient creatures become but the only thing they hear from all angles? The goblins are a people, with their own history, their own culture, their own way of thinking. But, not so alien as to be unrelatable to humanity.

What are some writers/worldbuilders that inspire you to write/worldbuild?

Kings of the Wyld Now, I love Nicholas Eames Writing style. I loved how it was such a massive play off a "battle of the Bands" story. It was wonderfully well written is a way I've been trying to emulate to a degree. His world building is stellar, his world feels seamless despite having just been dropped into the thick of it. Not a single bit of it felt contrived or forced, with every addition to the world it made sense, it worked. I cannot sing this story's praises enough, it was one of the books that got me interested in building my own world.
The Cycle of Arawn. Ok okay. Listen closely. I mean it. I LOVE THIS SERIES AND I CAN'T GET ENOUGH OF IT. Dante being a user of dark power but it being a religious practice. A power of his god, Necromancy that isn't considered evil. Huh, that sounds familiar. No, I totally didn't model my magic system off his. His is a mix of hard and soft magic, static rules but able to be extremely versatile. Like Nicholas, Edward's style of storytelling is stellar. He's quite a bit more long winded than other authors I read, I blame him for my need to explain everything.
I'm kidding, but in all seriousness. His world building is so large scope when you look at all his books that it is terrifying. Start small, start relatable, grow. It's what I aim to do. Much like Brandon Sanderson, his stories are human, then the plot. Edward Robertson could be the new Sanderson if you ask me. Though it's not an apples to apples thing, I wouldn't compare them in the aspect of asking who is better. It's not really possible with these two.
Music, oh my lord. Music plays such a massive point of inspiration for me. But, because I hyper focus on certain things, the story shifts mood from time to time and that is a switch in music genre for me. Some things are grabbed and referenced everywhere. So please if you can find the band I quoted in the footer of Goblins of the Skullbrood Clan article, I applaud you <3
Music is everywhere in The Great Tree once you notice it. Particularly with how I deal with magic. Some people do, some people don't, I try not to be blatantly obvious with it. Music is a vector to the soul, like the eyes are a window to the mind. Your voice is mind to the world.