Worldbuilding Rants

On Tropical Fantasy:

I’m tired of temperate forests, alpine mountains and stone castles, and every fantasy setting looking like Average European Woodland With Magic. There is so much beyond that:

Ancient jungles and forests, blooming with life and color, an organized chaos where you can’t distinguish where the canopy and the floor begin and end. The forest is alive with the sound of a thousand living songs. Each tree, each animal, each plant and fungi is a different spirit.

From neon-colored yet deadly poison frogs, iridescent hummingbirds, uncanny bats, insects and spiders that look like jewels, mysterious lizards that mimic nature, deadly insect swarms, and cats black as night, it’s hard to distinguish were nature ends and the supernatural begins. Maybe there is no difference.

The desert is also alive. The winds sing through the dunes and cliffs, bringing echoes from times long past, sometimes uncovering the ruins of the first civilizations. Rivers and oases are not lonely places; they are the centers of civilization and trade, full of thriving markets and cities. Salt flats, burning hot mountains, harsh shrubland, strange rocks that seem almost sculpted, dry rivers, ancient fossils and uncanny plants make deserts like no other place in the world.

In the savanna and shrubland, great herds of untamed animals are the lifeblood of people both nomadic and settled. The dry forests with their spiky trees and occasional wildfires are a harsh land, with harsh animals, but even there people make their tribes and cities. Great rivers flow to the sea, under golden sunsets, springing from marshlands and swamps full of ancient animals and spirits that dance under the moonlight.

Atolls with white sand and deep green jungles are surrounded by multicolor coral reefs, home to a diversity of creatures (and monsters, and spirits…) not found anywhere in land. The masters of these seas look to the stars and the waves to find their way between island and island. Every island is a world on itself, with its own history, flora and fauna.

Snow and ice are rare beyond the highest peaks. But hurricanes, monsoons, sandstorms, tropical showers, the hot baking sun of the desert and the calm summer sunsets provide a variety of weather.

Heavy metal armor is not very useful in those climates. Leather, padded armor, and scale and chain mail are the most used; some warriors go almost naked. Light dress is common, but it doesn’t mean it’s drab. Colorful silk and cotton, painted with fine dyes and cleaned with aromatic perfumes, decorate nobles, princesses, and sages.

An immense variety of fruit, crops, produce, meat and spices feed the people of the warm regions. Workers rest from the afternoon sun under shades, while they look at the valleys completely transformed into terraces for rice and tea. In the dry mountain valleys, other peoples plant potatoe, maize, quinoa and yucca, among so many other crops. Portions of shadowed jungles are actually carefully constructed gardens, that grow fruit, wood and medicinal plants. The rivers and swamps teem with fish and stranger animals. The sun-baked savannas and pampas have immense herds of millions of animals which provide plentiful hunting for people… and other predators.

Great port cities made of intricately decorated wood grow in the mouths of rivers, some even extend further into the water, into floating houses. The great deserts have cities of brick and mud, decorated with precious stones and geometrical mosaics. Swamps have artificial islands of rich soil where crops, and then cities and pyramids grow. Great temples rise in the jungles, carved into the trees themselves. In the highest valleys and mountaintops, stone cities are the capitals of great empires, their temples covered in gold and silver.

Mysterious sacred groves abound inside the jungle, around gigantic trees, beautiful waterfalls, and otherworldly metal rocks. Giant mounts and mesas that look like ancient warriors or animals are found in the deserts and savannas of the world. Beast long extinct elsewhere lurk in remote places. The nights are full of whispers from the inexplicable. Floating mountains, plains of living fire, lakes that are portals to other worlds, salt flats that are mirrors to the heavens, giant trees that have their own ecosystems and civilizations. Temples from the earliest civilizations are buried in the desert sands and the mountain valleys. And who knows what’s below the sea?

And this is just barely getting into the cultures and religions of each region. From Latin America to Africa to Asia to Australia, you can find so many cultures and civilizations, each one with their own unique environment and history. Go beyond what has been done in every other setting. Leave the old temperate forests behind. Embrace tropical fantasy.

Potatoes and "medieval fantasy":

One thing about the European Middle Ages (that were a thousand years long period with many changes and transformation bla bla bla) is that they were very isolated and honestly, poor. Yes, the Silk Road existed and there were even European communities in Persia and China (but they also decayed), yes there was lots of art and culture and such. But Europe was still a rather isolated and poor part of the world, no matter if we now understand the Middle Ages were more complex.

(and in the early dark ages, yes, it WAS that bad, with cities shrinking to the size of old Roman amphitheaters and the overall quality of life for everyone diminishing with trade routes severed everywhere and literacy and infrastructure dropping. Don’t think that just because it wasn’t a completely dark time and things still went on, it wasn’t bad)

ANYWAYS, my point is that most of the things we associate with “medieval” fantasy and worlds are actually from the Renaissance and Early Modern Age. Those worldbuilding pedants (and my friends) focused on military matters point out the plate armor and weapons, others point out the availability of books and literacy and architecture, I point out the food and luxury items that you just couldn’t find otherwise…

And that does imply something. It implies a connected world, one that is very much more modern. It implies trade networks to bring a whole host of exotic and luxury goods (transoceanic networks, if we are talking about things only found in the tropics, since virtually all modern fantasy is set in temperate areas but I ranted about that elsewhere), it implies printing press and increased literacy, it implies an increase on wealth to afford all those things, and places where those goods and wealth came from… specifically colonialism (but we don’t wanna talk about that, right? you don’t want me to go quoting Eduardo Galeano right?).

And those things also imply MORE; social and religious conflict, the dawn of modern science, trade networks, intercultural contact, and again, colonialism and imperialism.

And that clashes with the general fantasy plot of good and evil kingdoms in a mostly static world (still from the classic view of the European Dark Ages), where technology, society and even individual dynasties don’t change for centuries or millennia. All with the trappings of a society in full change. People love their princesses with silk dresses eating chocolate, their knights with plate armor eating potato stew, and wizards with huge libraries in cities that can allow enough wealth to employ them, but don’t want to think that this might not be signs of a static theme park world, but a world that was increasingly interconnected and changing, like our early modern age. (and thus, an interesting story)

And why don’t you want to learn about those changes that built our modern world? The cultures where most of the things you take from granted came from? (some, in my opinion, could be more well known in the west…) Why the boring coup-out of “it’s just magic XD” when you could think a little more and create something interesting?

So no, it’s not just about potatoes, but it’s a good question to ask first.

The Magnificent Art of Worldbuilding.

On Tropical Fantasy:

Potatoes and "medieval fantasy":