WorldEmber 2023 Homework

Week 1 - Area of Focus

I will be working on The Veil, a brand new world that I want to expand upon while working very hard to keep it decoupled from any TTRPG systems. When I created my first world it was very heavily made for a TTRPG system, I want The Veil to be completely divorced from one, though drawing inspiration from the lore of these systems is fine.

The Veil is different tonally than Ostyria, it is much darker but still fantasy. The themes of the world are dark fantasy, afro-victorian aesthetic, afro-gothic aesthetic, post world war 1 vibe . There will be Vampires, Humans, a mixes and in-betweens. There are dueling factions, religious orders, organized crime, and threats that challenge everyone.

As I flush out the world I want to leave some questions unanswered, to give readers something to theorize on. I also want to create a magic system, a simple one nothing too complex but I want the magic to feel unique and interesting even if inspirations are plain.

Even though World Ember is about word count, I still want to try to use this time to elevate my articles and utilize the World Anvil suite. I had a custom banner for the world made, I want to have a navigable world map, color schemes, better article formatting and artwork that is true to the world aesthetic. I also will be doing my best to tag all articles meaningfully. Lastly given the dark nature of The Veil, even though there are some lines I will not cross, there may be some articles that are triggering and therefore I want to put trigger warnings above those articles (maybe in a spoiler tag). The Veil is a challenge to myself to stretch the bounds of my imagination and also level up my worldbuilding.

Week 1 - Pledge

Week 2 - Mini-Meta

When it comes to WE2023, the scope of the world will be everything. This goes against the mini-meta purpose a bit but this world needs to be flushed out before I can start pinpointing things. The theme of the world as previously stated is dark fantasy with an afro-victorian vibe and aesthetic. There are 4 major factions in The Veil and one of my goals is to make sure these groups are distinct, unique, and intriguing.

Week 2 - Category Structure

Since this world is brand new with no articles, I plan to simply make a World Ember 2023 folder and place all articles for the event in there. Afterwards I will sort them into logical categories.

Week 2 - Inspirations

There are many inspirations for this world from many different mediums. Some of the primary inspirations are Castlevania, Peeky Blinders, the Grishaverse, and the Mistborn Saga.

I also plan to read plenty of articles that fellow anvilites will create which surely will give me many eureka moments.

Week 3 - Homepage Review

Given that are no articles yet in the world, the homepage is pretty barren. I do however a banner and I think that is evokes the mood and feel of the world well enough that you get the vibe of the world and know some of what is too come. I would love to make the homepage have links to primer articles and a world map, so that first look has something more than just most recent articles.

Week 4 - Last Minute Prep

The biggest prep I have to do is the world map, I used an online map generator to create a good basis but I need to come up with nation borders, points of interest, etc. A long term plan is to create a bunch of locations, mark up the map then commission a cartographer to make an official map for The Veil.

I have been keeping a list of notes of everything I've thought about The Veil thus far. I want to add some more notes on the previously mentioned locations, and social structures within the 3 nations and the factions.

Also as the year comes to an end I find myself with some leave from my day job that I need to use and therefore I am hoping to utilize those days to get some of the articles done. This is my first WE so I don't really know what to expect.