My WorldEmber Pledge 2022

I, pyrrha, pledge to write 10,000 words of worldbuilding for WorldEmber 2022!

Hey WA friends! Not surprisingly, I'm doing this last minute, but that's because I just finished NaNoWriMo yesterday! (Hence why I skipped Mapvember...after Spooktober, it was too much!) To sort of give myself a break, I've decided that WorldEmber is PERFECT, since I've been working on my other project and want to give this one the umph it needs to get going. So although I didn't do this homework over three weeks, I did give a lot of thought to it, so here they are!
Good luck to fellow participants!

Week One Homework

1. If you have more than one world setting, which one is the most important to you right now? Why?
2. Which area of that world setting will allow you to achieve your goals (Continuing your novel/campaign, or starting a new one?).
3. How will it help you achieve those goals?

-Homework #1 prompt

Setting

This year, I'll be concentrating on Thenia; since I just finished my 50,000 words on United Britannia and Hibernia, it's time to give this one some TLC. I have the basics, but there is a lot of detailed information that I'm lacking that I know will be a problem as I draft the novel out. Hence, it's Thenia's time to shine!

Area of focus

I have a lot of the geography down for Thenia; I have a fairly detailed map, and I did do some work in Mapvember, although I didn't finish it. I really want to concentrate more on the Scholomance, which is the main setting for the story, but I still haven't fleshed out too much yet.
Additionally, unlike my other project, Thenia has several main characters, and I've only really worked on one. Because of that, I need to do some major character building (which is great because despite the fact this set of characters isn't very fleshed out, it's one of my favorite things to do!).

Goals

After completing a full outline and 75,000-some words on my other project, I'm realizing all the pertinent information I'm missing for Thenia that will be important as I draft this book. United Britannia and Hibernia is almost annoyingly fleshed out, but it made drafting the novel so easy, so I would like that same ease with Thenia. The first draft is in limbo until all of this key information can be detailed.

Week Two Homework

1. Create a scope for your mini-meta! What is the area or topic your project will cover. If you did last week’s homework, you’ll already have defined your scope!
2. Which themes do you want to include? How will you express them? This should be based on the main worldbuilding meta you’ve created for your world, but you might have specific themes you want to explore in this area.
3. Finally, create the moooooood! If you have access to Whiteboards, use them to create mood boards with quotes, images, articles, and other inspirational stuff to help you out during WorldEmber. Otherwise, you can do the same thing in a worldbuilding article.

-Homework #2 prompt

Meta

My (mostly) fully fleshed out meta can be found here!

Scope

I really want this Worldember to feature the characters and the Scholomance heavily. Some of my supposed main characters hardly have a backstory fleshed out, and those that do are coming off flat to me. I really want a cast of ten fully devloped Solomonari by the end of WorldEmber.

Themes

For a more manageable theme, I intend to focus on magic's place in Thenia; so few have it, and they're able to control the entire country. I also want to explore how various governments and religions interact with magicians and witches, as well as the supposed difference between witches and magicians. It's all about the magic, baby!

Mood

I'll add more later, but I'm going for a dark academia-vibe. Think of A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik or Atlas Six by Olivie Blake. I'm also trying for a very His Dark Materials mood as well: I love the idea of a similar Earth setting, but just slightly different.

Week Three Homework

Create or review your category tree. Check that all articles are in a category.
Create a tag system to better organize your articles.

-Homework #3 prompt

Categories

I'm actually fairly happy with my categories so far: Introduction, Place, Beings, Organizations, Flora/Fauna, Society, History, and Meta. For the foreseeable future, I'll use those, although I'm always open to adding another category!

Tags

Tags are a big problem for me, since I think I've used them inconsistently. To remedy this, over the month of December, I'll start new tags and edit the articles that already have them. For now, the tags will be: #places, #people, #beings, #organizations, #flora, #fauna, #society, #history, and #meta. I also tag each individual character as well as the state, if it's a location.
I'm also going to tag everything I do this month as #WE2022; I'm going to start tagging my challenges as well.

Week Four Homework

Look at your world’s style and layout and tweak it (or decide that it already looks amazing!).

-Homework #4 prompt

Style and layout

I'm not a CSS expert, but I'm pretty happy with the CSS and layout. I'd love to try containers sometime, but I'm not sure I'll tackle that this month. I always love to learn some new skills, though.