World Building Tips

Volume 2

by

Deborah Teramis Christian

http://world-building.com

© 2015 by Deborah Teramis Christian

Series Title: World Building Tips

Published by Storybones Publishing for

the World Building Academy

Cover © 2015 by Storybones Publishing

http://www.storybones.net

P.O. Box 290452, Nashville, TN 37229

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

STRUCTURE TIPS

3 Travel

4 Core Cultural Values

5 Who Writes the History?

GEO TIPS

11 The Construction and Geography of Roads

12 Mountains as Boundaries

13 Resource Mapping

14 What Scarce Minerals Mean For Your World

SOCIO TIPS

13 Pilgrims and Pilgrimages

14 Dialects

15 Messenger Birds

16 Signal Fires

17 High-Speed Telecommunications

18 Sources of Government Power

19 Measurements: Length and Distance

20 Signs and Omens

How to Get Free World Building Tips

INTRODUCTION

Hello, fellow world building fan!

You may have noticed this book is brought to you by the World Building Academy. The WBA is dedicated to teaching writers and game designers the skills of world building. We offer basic and advanced programs and free content on the art and science of creating fictional worlds.

This book is a collection of a half-year's worth of weekly worldbuilding tips distributed to our mailing list subscribers. This info is now available only in this book form, and a new, fresh crop of tips are going out to list subscribers as we speak. By delving into this content, you will be getting a (mostly) thematically related assortment of great food for thought and pointed tips about various world building topics that are not available anywhere else.

Content-wise, this book covers subjects involving travel, transportation, long-distance communications, and a grab-bag of interesting miscellanea. The section numbering you see here carries on the numbering scheme begun in Volume 1; if you want to read structure tips preceding #3, for instance, you will find them in Volume 1.

If you find this material helpful and would like more of the same for free, you can get world building tips in your inbox by signing up for our mailing list. Visit this url to do so: http://world-building.com. Signup form's in the sidebar.

I hope you enjoy this book, and that it helps you bring your invented world to life.

-Teramis

Create worlds, change lives.

Deborah Teramis Christian

Science Fiction and Fantasy Novelist

Role-Playing Game Designer

Founder, World Building Academy

PRAISE FOR WORLD BUILDING TIPS VOLUME 1

“Amazing job. . . There is so much win here I can barely contain how happy I am to have read this.  Deborah Teramis Christian knocked this out of the park. . . Get it NOW!” – game designer Stacey Chancellor.

“This book takes you from the very beginning to the very specific without bogging you down with non-essential parts.  I’d recommend reading it before starting to design your own setting or book of RPG campaign. Very helpful!!!” – Dragondna, Amazon.com review.

“[Christian] is a brilliant teacher, so the book is laid out in an easy to understand format, with logical, well written segments. . . I consider this book an invaluable tool in my arsenal and strongly recommend it to anyone who is designing a fictional setting for any reason.” – author Talitha Kalago, Goodreads review.

“An excellent primer in worldbuilding. It shows you all the disciplines to read up on or take courses about and what precisely to watch for as you study.” – Jacqueline Lichtenberg.

STRUCTURE TIPS

3 TRAVEL

Travel is the invisible backbone of countless critical structures in a fictional world.[1] The ability to travel, and the manner, ease, distance, and speed of it, subtly shape so many elements of a world that the nature of travel practically dictates (in broad strokes) what kind of a world your characters live in.

The range of travel typically starts small and local. People's activities focus on what is outside their front door, or over the next hill when they go hunting, or within a day's foot travel for trade and socializing. But as transportation improves, people are no longer limited to distances their muscles can carry them in a day. It becomes easier to go farther, faster. As roads expand and new means of transportation are introduced, (from horses to ships or trains, to planes to starships), the speed and range of travel expand as well.

When this happens, a locale is transformed. People's experiences and outlooks change when they encounter people from afar. Trade expands; news travels farther and faster; tourism becomes possible as people realize there are destinations worth visiting, and means to get there and back again. Ease of travel affects trade, military movement, and social interactions between settlements. The governance of large geographical areas is highly influenced by the ease or difficulty of travel in the region-the more difficult it is to travel, the more difficult it is to govern an area that is hard to reach.

Prosperous and well governed societies tend to have expansive road networks and reliable, relatively easy means of getting from one place to another. To the extent these things are lacking, the area becomes more difficult to travel through, and therefore presents a hindrance to trade, governance, military movement, and casual travel.

TIP 1: Decide on the "flavor" of the place you are creating in terms of ease of travel.

Do you intend your setting to be a rugged frontier, difficult to enter or move through? Is it meant to be the orderly heart of a thriving realm, with lots of trade and busy roads networking the entire land? Do you want to keep the focus small and local? (think villagers in the Middle Ages, where it was common to live one's entire life never traveling more than a day's foot travel from one's village). Or do you have a star-spanning galactic setting, and need fast, easy travel between stars and across planetary surfaces?

The tone you need to set (to serve your narrative or gaming purposes) will influence all other decisions in these areas that follow:

TIP 2: Determine the commonplace travel technologies involved in getting from point A to point B in your setting.

I use "technology" here in the broadest possible sense, to mean anything more sophisticated than "shank's mare" (traveling by foot). Are your people walking? Paddling canoes? Driving cars? Catching trains? Etc. What does the overall transportation network look like? If your society is above "foot-travel only" in development, there will be a blend of travel methods and transportation technologies in different places under different circumstances. Give particular thought to what dominates in the location where your narrative takes place.

TIP 3: Decide on the ease of travel and what distances are commonly within the circuit of folks' ordinary movements.

These strategic decisions reflect the tech level you've set for your world or locale, and the demands of work, commerce, and leisure activities.[2] Think first about what is in the ordinary circuit of travel for the average individual. Is it a question of walking out to the field to plough? Of riding a horse some miles into town? Of traveling from outlying towns on a commuter train to the city center for work? Of riding an interplanetary shuttle to take care of business between worlds? Set the tone for the routine travel, and then whatever amounts to extraordinary travel will be much easier to define.

BONUS TIP: Travel infrastructure is critical to trade networks. If you want a more prosperous economy, make sure you have a robust travel capacity in place.

If you are concerned to develop a realistic economy and vibrant trade system, you will first need to define the travel (and transportation) capacity of your world as part of the critical infrastructure that is in place.

I'll get more into economies and trade in a later installment, but for now, as a rule of thumb the more prosperous an economy is, the more complex its trade network will be. A trade network's complexity is determined in part by the travel and transportation network that makes it possible. Generally speaking, these networks span geographical distances in proportion to the travel technology, ease of travel, and capacity for long-distance haulage of goods.

If there are concentrations of wealth in your setting or areas with notably good standards of living, these places probably have (relatively) complex economies in play. "Complex" means a greater variety of goods traded, in greater volume, moved along a more complex network of roads or other travel routes, to a larger variety of destinations, with more hub cities in the network. The trade network relies on moving goods over long distances, from resource or production areas to (relatively) distant markets.

All of these economic elements depend on travel and transportation in some measure or other:  for instance, roads or river travel must allow a variety of goods to come from many producers to gather at a central shipping point for long-distance transportation to other markets and trade partners. For any economy to function beyond a local barter level, an appropriate means of travel must be in place to support it.

So there you have it, some strategic considerations about the role that travel plays in your world. In subsequent tips I'll be talking about various travel-related aspects of a setting, and wanted to lay this foundation first before getting into those details.

_____

1. Travel is of course closely linked with communications: the former allows people and goods to move over distance, the latter allows the transfer of information over distance. The two processes are very intertwined and each affects the other. To keep this tip very focused, I'm concentrating for now only on physical travel. I'll discuss communications in a future tip.

2. Tech level is discussed in Structure Tip 1 in World Building Tips Volume 1.

Pictured: Pilgrims on the road to Canterbury.

4 CORE CULTURAL VALUES

Of all the social and cultural attributes we determine for fictional worlds, one set may be more important than all others: the core values that a culture holds as foundational to their beliefs and behaviors.

TIP: Establish a few enduring values that are "baked into" the culture you are constructing.

These values become part of the hidden "skeleton" of a society, culture, or civilization. They become guidelines and the foundation for many other social behavior patterns that are based on them. They may be articulated and talked about as specific values, or they may exist as an ethos that people don't even give a name to, since they've grown up with it and do not consciously think about it. (Note that an ethos of this sort may be more readily noted and discussed by outsiders who do not take it for granted.) But whether the "locals" are aware of it or not, these core values leave a lasting imprint on the civilization or culture these people live in.

Examples of Core Cultural Values

Here are some examples of values that are foundational to how a culture works.

CULTURE 1: What the individual wants to do is important and has value. That individual should behave responsibly, take care of self and immediate family, be self-sufficient and not a burden on others. Being innovative is also important, because individuals will be faced by challenges and have only themselves and their native ingenuity to rely upon.

Summary: rugged individualism, self-sufficiency, ingenuity/inventiveness/problem-solving mentality.

Setting where these values evolved: a land that started out as a sparsely settled frontier, where colonists had no one to rely on but themselves as they faced the challenges of life in the wilderness and expansion across broad unknown territories.

Contemporary culture that follows this pattern both historically and presently: America.

CULTURE 2: What the group wants is most important. Cooperation and obedience to the group will (or the dictates of group leaders) is essential for everyone to get along and for the group's priorities to be enacted. How one appears to others is important; individuals gain honor by fulfilling their duty and obligations to others.

Summary: conformity, duty and obligation, face, honor

Setting where these values evolved: A land with often harsh living conditions where family and clan relations were most important to ensure group survival. Someone who is too individualistic threatens the group. People are expected to know their place in the group (or "the world," as they know it) and fulfill the obligations of their role for the well-being of all.

Contemporary culture that follows this pattern both historically and presently: Japan

TIP 2: These core values should be summarized as such for your, the world builder's, ease of reference, and kept as a master list to use when determining other cultural traits.

The people living in a culture may never even articulate their values in this way (that depends on their level of education, and degree of philosophizing and analysis about their society). The ideals and values that people actively talk and think about may look different but will have their roots in these underlying principles.

For example, America's cowboy sense of "rugged individualism" was not even framed as a concept until the 20th century, but once it was articulated its roots were traced back to colonial days. Even today, with that value as an expressed concept, Americans do not wake up and think, "How can I be ruggedly individualistic today?" Instead, this value shows up in things like the popularity of the Marlborough Man (iconic for that particular value, and an effective sales tool: "buy our cigarette and you'll be like That Man, with the qualities he stands for.") Our cultural assumption that individuals should be able to do things for themselves shows up in our political debates about how much government should (or even IF it should) help individuals (with health care, welfare issues, etc) and our ongoing gun-friendliness. Our propensity to throw technology at problems in order to solve them also stems from these deeper "inventiveness + problem-solving" roots.[1]

TIP 3: When societal values change over time, some of the greatest points of social and political stress arise where new evolving values clash with the deeper structural ones a society is founded on.

One example of this is Individualism in contemporary Japan, lamented by older Japanese as the degradation of today's youth and the collapse of cultural values. In the USA the growing sense that the nation should provide health care for all sparks huge debate not least of all because of how it clashes with older, unquestioned assumptions about individual self-reliance.

Things to think about when designing the underpinning values of a civilization:

1. What are the things that are most essential for the ongoing survival of a group? These are the kinds of things that will tend to become encoded as innate cultural values.

2. What else hits people where they live? Survival is not the only overriding imperative. A society that is deeply religious or surrounded by magic, for instance, may have core values about pleasing the gods or the ethics of magic use.

3. Even if determining values for an advanced society, it is easiest to do this by thinking back to the earliest days of a particular civilization. That is when core values develop and become rooted in a fledgling society. They shape how things evolve over time, even if the civilization lasts centuries.

4. Frame core values as a broad principle that may manifest in many different ways. For instance to say "we are self-sufficient" is broad and allows for a lot of creativity in how it shows up in your world. But to say "we always pay our bills on time and don't take hand-outs" is a narrow definition of that value, and really only applies to a specific time/place. In contrast, in the 1700s self-sufficiency might have been defined as "we don't borrow or lend money, and we grow or make everything we need on our own land." How the general principle is expressed will vary across time and circumstances, but the underlying sensibility will generally remain the same-at least until society as a whole evolves away from that particular mindset (a process than can take generations, if it happens at all).

TIP 4: When developing other cultural traits and behaviors ask yourself, does this reinforce or express a core value? Is it neutral, or does it run counter to a core value?

Most enduring social traits and noteworthy behaviors usually bear some relation to the underlying core values. For instance, the willingness of Japanese soldiers (and civilians) in World War II to fight to the death, and the samurai code of bushido, can both be traced to the core values of fulfilling one's duty and putting survival of the group first.

Cultures also evolve a variety of neutral traits and values; they are 'neutral' because they do not overtly counter the underlying core values.  For instance, the Free Love movement of the late 19th century and the hippies' Free Love values of the 1960s were both "neutral" in charge: they were tangential to core American values, neither supporting nor flying in the face of them, although they certainly had a societal impact and influenced sensibilities over time.

In contrast, social behaviors that run counter to core values are likely to be viewed in a negative light and probably practiced only by a minority. If/when more people adopt these minority behaviors, social upheaval follows because of underlying value conflicts in the social system.

If you've already developed a variety of cultural traits or socially acceptable behaviors, this is a good time to look them over and ask yourself, what underlying principle has caused these behaviors and tacit values to come about? If you can't define the foundational core values clearly, here is a good time to pause and make this structural adjustment. Then you can bring miscellaneous social traits in line with what is truly important in that culture. For instance, if your elves have "live in harmony with nature" as an innate core value, then those who do not do so, or who choose to exploit nature in some way, suddenly take on a dark importance because they are defying a core value. They may have to deal with backlash from the rest of their society because they are violating a basic principle of what it means to be an elf from such-and-such a place.

One change in a core value can create a thousand changes in the society based upon that value. This is a powerful tool and an important structural piece to have in place before social and cultural world building progresses too far.

_____

1. Of course there are many other factors involved in these issues of national debate as well. My point here is to illustrate how underlying cultural values inform and shape contemporary issues, often in ways that folks don't even think about or recognize. The same principle holds true for applying core values to a fictional culture.

5 WHO WRITES THE HISTORY?

When we write fictional worlds, there are two mental perspectives that come into play at different times. One is the omniscient view of designer-as-god: you see all that there is in your setting, understanding facts, connections, and motivations. In short, the omniscient creator knows how everything "really is," to whatever depth you wish to invent it.

The other perspective is that of the "point of view" lens. We use this every time we pick and choose a subset of our information to present to our audience, and frame that information in anything other than the all-seeing omniscience of the designer.

Here is an example: if you write a comprehensive "bible" or reference book for your world, this is probably in an omniscient manner. But if you present only selected aspects of your setting in story or game, and especially if you let characters tell what they know of a world, then this is through the selective "point of view" lens.

Framing the Point of View

When it comes to the selective information, what angle should we take when presenting that "biased" viewpoint about our settings? While many things can influence these choices, such as writing craft requirements and rpg game design necessities, in this tip I want to focus on who writes the history. That is to say, who is it that is presenting the information or viewpoint as it appears to the audience? I don't mean this at the character level, but as a question of large-scale social and historical forces. This will be critical to what comes across to your audience, or for that matter, what types of things individual characters in that setting will have as their frame of reference.

TIP: Determine who writes the history of your world (within the setting itself). Who has the dominant political, military, or social power? Whose narrative is the most widely believed interpretation of "how things are, and why they are that way"? Use this as the central filter for how characters see the world, or how local-scale information is presented to your readers.

Important note to remember, though: histories that run counter to this dominant narrative are often a little (or a lot) suspect by folks in-world. They may be ignored, dismissed, or maybe even regarded as subversive.

I mean “history” here in its broadest sense: not just the official study of the subject or official records of significant events, but also the daily narratives people create about what happens in their lives. While "official history" might be about wars and the crowning of kings, the "daily narrative" might be about why the crops failed, who was behind the raising of taxes, and what it "really" means when young people dress "that way" and do that wild new dance. This is history at its most essential. These collective narratives shape how people see their world, and thus what you will choose to put on the page about the setting as it is locally perceived.

It takes a certain degree of societal sophistication to accept conflicting narratives about the world and take them in stride. Contemporary historians try to do this and make a more unified sense of the whole. This quote reflects an interesting modern attitude on the subject:

"History is not a single, linear truth, but rather a collage of memories, experiences and interpretations. It is the job of the historian to explore the past from many perspectives and to consider the complexities that have not only triggered an historical episode but have also shaped its memory."[1]

But when you look back across time, this is a radical departure from how people used to handle history. For that matter, popular opinion and belief is still largely shaped by dominant narratives.

What Does This Translate to in World Building?

When a certain group (usually a powerful one) writes or influences how history is told, their view of events colors how society regards those events both at the time and later on. This becomes the dominant narrative for why things are as they are. This influences virtually all aspects of a culture in terms of how things are framed and understood. Some examples are:

Proof of legitimacy and rightness. "Our recent victory proves that God is on our side." Quite aside from religious beliefs involved, the narrative that a people are divinely favored becomes part of the history about events. Victories are enshrined as proof of that favor and thus the culture's righteousness and justification in their undertakings. Romans v Gauls; North v South in US Civil War; Israel v Egypt (1967), and so on.

Standard-setting for social mores and practices. In Margaret Atwood's book The Handmaid's Tale, we "all know" it is a rare privilege to become a Handmaid (selected for breeding purposes in a largely infertile population). There is an entire social system based on Handmaid service and the surrogate births they provide. This is the status quo, and the ruling class has written the history and the rationale for why things are this way. Some people don't buy into this story and tell a different one, but they are clearly subversive (and therein lies a major plot point in the book).

Enforcing ideologies to unify a people. U.S. Government on Vietnam during the 1960s: "We are saving the Vietnamese from Communism." The narrative was one of international threat, the dangers of communism, the need to help others fight it and keep it off our own doorstep. For much of the population (even today), this remains the defining narrative of that war.

TIP 2: While histories, narratives, and rationales can become quite complex, maybe the simplest way to approach this is simply to ask: who is in power, how do they want things to be, and how do they justify it? This becomes the history and narrative that is propagated throughout the culture.

Here are some things to keep in mind about how people see their world, based on who is writing the history.

1. History is conveyed in many ways: news, rumor, folklore, epic tales, official reports, or any other way that people record "what happened" and "what it meant" and pass this on to others.

2. History is (mostly) written by the victors. The side that triumphs in a power struggle usually establishes what is called "the dominant narrative." Power struggle here does not only refer to something obvious like warfare. It also applies to things like "culture wars," different groups struggling over social change, economic displacement, generational rifts, and so on. Whatever side comes out on top, their version of what/why/how tends to prevail. In turn, this shapes the understandings and beliefs of future generations about the events they recount.

3. Claims about what/why/how do not need to be based on fact. An emotional appeal made frequently enough, avidly enough, tends to make people believe the claims are true, even if they are not. In this way, one can create "fact free" history that reframes events and meanings in whichever way serves the powers that be. This is not only a modern disinformation and propaganda device, but has been in practice as long as there have been humans attempting to sway how others think about something.

4. Histories that run counter to the dominant narrative may be a) disbelieved, b) dismissed as subversive lies, c) come to challenge established authority if enough people come to believe the "subversive" narrative, or d) become "secret" or underground knowledge entrusted only to those who will believe it and share it only with other trusted parties.

5. The history of people who are not dominant players on the stage of events is often ignored or never recorded at all. This has been the case with entire lower-class or status populations, with women, with minorities of all sorts. It is not necessarily that their histories challenge the dominant narrative, but that they are simply not seen as relevant by those who have the ability to record and disseminate such things. Thus their experiences go unrecorded. Made invisible in this way, their influence on events is also diminished or even erased completely.

TIP 3: Dominant groups and forces in your setting will have a disproportionate impact on how that setting's events and histories are remembered and recorded. This will percolate through your world from "history as everyone knows it" to what books are in print, and what attitudes are cultivated about life and the world at large.

An example of this from our own timeline: the history books that English schoolchildren grew up with in the 19th century framed the world as one enlightened by British Empire, full of ignorant people in far-flung places badly in need of western (or more specifically, British) management of their lands and affairs. This justified colonization, made it seem like a glorious good thing, and kept enthusiasm for empire-building alive on the home front. That local peoples had their own ideas about how they should live their lives was not brought into the British public consciousness until those subversive narratives got more attention during the decline of that empire.

TIP 4: If you want to present a setting from a minority, underdog, or subversive point of view, it is important to show both how the minority sees the world, and how the dominant narrative stands in contrast to this. What is it that is different about these two ways of understanding or being? This may also become a core conflict, at least thematically, in the resulting story or adventure setting.

So, time to put on your history glasses and look over your setting through this new lens. Who wrote the history in your world? How does it color what people say about their world? And who says that story is wrong?

_____

1. This quote is from an interesting discussion about telling the stories of those excluded from power ("subaltern history"), from an Ohio State University site about the tens of thousands of people who were disappeared by the government during Argentina's "Dirty War" in the late 70s/early '80s: http://digitalunion.osu.edu/r2/summer06/herbert/testimoniosubaltern/index.html

GEO TIPS

11 THE CONSTRUCTION AND GEOGRAPHY OF ROADS

In Structure Tip 3, I talked about the strategic impacts of travel - its ease or difficulty - in a fictional world. Now I'd like to look at something central to the issue of travel, and that is the nature of roads that connect places to each other. In a later tip I'll talk about the effect roads have on human populations and cultures, but to start with, I want to consider the mere physical fact of their existence. I'll start with the attributes of roads as a physical object.

TIP 1: Consider the general tech level of your setting. This will suggest how your roads are built and how sophisticated they are (or aren't) as a physical construct.

Roads Defined

We have different names for the routes that people travel when they move about the land. A trail or track suggests something not well marked out, and possibly used by animals; it is probably very narrow and close-grown with vegetation. A path is a route pretty well trodden by people on foot, or maybe riding on animals or in wagons. It is usually traveled enough to stamp out some or all of the plant life on the ground, and may be marked by the ruts of vehicles with wheels or runners, although it is more likely to see foot traffic. It may be broad enough for multiple people to pass by each other comfortably.

And then there is the road. A road, though it often follows what was once a path, is more than the path itself. At first it may be called a road simply because it bears much more traffic than the other paths. Roads of this sort are simply grand paths, but the name changes when some mysterious shift in the frequency of travel or traffic density occurs. You may take the path through the woods to a neighbor's house, but will take the road to town. Roads suggest a longer distance traveled, and, past a certain tech level of development the concept suggests some degree of improvement to the roadbed.

Typical low-tech improvements that result in a road are:

·         the surface has been leveled or smoothed

·         drainage ditches have been dug to the sides to carry off rainwater

·         the road surface is built a little higher in the middle (the "crown" of the road surface) to aid water drainage

·         it has been surfaced with gravel, split logs, or stone to improve the footing

At more advanced levels of road development, roads become multi-layered things, with a roadbed cut into the landscape and built up in layers to the final load-bearing surface. Both Roman roads and modern highways are examples of this kind of construction.

From there, roads can become ever more sophisticated. At higher tech levels there may be special surfaces that provide improved traction in bad weather, markings to increase visibility at night, guard rails, embankments and berms built to keep people on the road and protect them from falling debris. Futuristic roads may include sensors to track traffic and keep self-driving vehicles on track. There may be types of road surfaces that do not need to be built up to provide a resilient bed, but rather can be sprayed or laid quickly in place, and which will provide all the other functionality needed in the roadway.

Pictured: Roman Road at Efesus, Efes, Turkey.

TIP 2: Build your roads based on logical requirements for road improvements.

If you're writing in alternate worlds, "road improvements" are for you to invent. They may or may not parallel our historical examples, but when thinking about what develops, here are some good rules of thumb:

1. Roadways must be durable and safe. Safety improvements generally focus on creating better traction and keeping people and vehicles on the road.

2. Roadways evolve slowly. They are not (usually) a hotbed of high-tech development.

3. When a new technology is introduced there will be an ongoing process of upgrading to accommodate that tech.

Example: getting dirt roads paved so cars can travel more easily

4. Changes in the design of roads are driven by a) changing means of transportation, b), the needs of technology, or c) military, commercial, or political requirements.

Examples:

a) Introducing heavy freight wagons for haulage means the best roads will be surfaced (maybe with gravel or stone) to reduce rutting and so the heavy wagons won't bog down when the road turns to mud in the rain.

b) If the technology for self-driving smart cars is in place (in the cars themselves and the communications infrastructure), the roadways must be 'wired' in some manner to facilitate traffic control.

c) Roman roads, drawn as arbitrary straight lines on a map and built accordingly, to facilitate the movement of legions through the countryside, as well as to aid the movement of commerce.

TIP 3: Consider the locations of your settlements, the terrain that lies between them, and how sophisticated the development of your roads are. The "tech level" of the road will be reflected in the route it takes and how it is built across that terrain.

The Route Roads Take

If a road is simply an improved footpath, it will generally follow the path of least resistance from point to point, i.e., the easiest, or quickest, route of travel. When there is a river to cross, the path will wind up- or downstream to cross at a ford before returning to the main route. A path going up a steep hill will ascend in a series of switchbacks, and so on.

But the best route for someone on foot or horseback may not be the most direct. As roads become more developed and represent an investment of resources (in labor and material), then in contrast to paths they will tend to follow more direct routes from important point to important point.

Thus we will see bridges over rivers, instead of a lengthy detour to and from a ford. Or we will see a road go up a steep hill on a broad sweeping and ascending path cut into the hillside, instead of a narrow series of switchbacks. Or we will bypass the troublesome hill entirely by bridging a nearby ravine and simply passing over to the next stretch of level terrain. There is a tradeoff between the amount of construction required to create a more direct route, and the time and materials that would be lost by strictly following an old outmoded path of travel.

In short, once you get to the point where you are actively building roads instead of simply improving paths, the rule of thumb is:

Roads connect settlements while crossing terrain in a way that makes most economic sense for the road-building effort.

Pictured: Snow Fence along road in blizzard country.

BONUS TIP: Extreme geographies require unusual and innovative road-building techniques. Consider the challenges your local geography presents to road building, and reflect this in the roads that result. The end result is that your travelers, characters and readers can have a unique experience while "on the road" in your setting.

Roads through arctic areas, deserts, mountains, swamps, and jungle (to name just a few) all require different construction and safeguards against natural hazards. Travelers through your equivalent of the Swiss Alps will encounter many narrow roads, many arched stone bridges over tiny rushing streams, and numerous switchbacks. Travelers through swamps may notice their road is built atop pilings that lift the road above flood zones, while the highway through a blustery northland may be flanked by snow fences to catch blizzard-born snow and build a natural wind-break along the roadside.

This is not an essential part of world building unless events in your setting are road-centric, but it can certainly add a unique flavor to the experiences of your wayfarers.

Who knew road-building could be such fun?

Pictured: Army Corps of Engineers lay down a corduroy (log) road circa 1942 while building the Alcan Highway (connecting the U.S. to Alaska).

12 MOUNTAINS AS BOUNDARIES

Since mountains are part of basic geological earth-forming processes, we tend to think of them simply as the physical objects that they are. They affect climate and waterways, act as weather breaks, help create lush biomes or deserts, and so on. But beyond their physical nature, mountains are also boundaries and marker objects in human psychology. What lies beyond that distant line of snow-capped peaks? Can we even get across that line to see what's on the other side? The role that mountains play as borderlands affects human (or humanoid) societies, cultures, and indeed, entire civilizations.

TIP: Look at where mountain chains lie on your world or regional map. If your area is not yet widely settled, mountains may be a barrier to movement in a certain direction. Or they may divide populations from one another, creating distinct cultural differences over time. Do mountains divide politically different groups? If so they probably mark part or all of the boundary between different tribes, realms or governments, whether that is a formally recognized border or not.

Pictured: Carpathian Mountains

Mountain Ranges: Both Goal and Obstacle

Mountains can be spectacular to look at, but they can also be difficult to cross, forming natural barriers and choke points in a region's geography. They are also alluring, for they offer things that cannot be found elsewhere, from timber to furs, mineral resources, and unusual animals. Cliffs may offer caves as dwelling places, and difficult terrain may offer safety from invaders or marauders.

As populations spread out across the land, people often gravitate to live in the foothills and higher elevations of mountains.[1] If they need to move on—either in search of a better living location, because of pressure from other people also on the move, or simply for trade or exploration purposes—they will sooner or later seek a way across a mountain range to the other side.

Depending on the terrain, a crossover point may be easy to find, like in the low coastal mountains in Wales or California. In other cases crossing mountains can be a major and even fatal undertaking, such as in efforts to transit the Rockies, the Andes, the Alps, or the world's most famous difficult passage, the frozen heights of the Himalayas. People who are the first to path-find across mountains, or who blaze trails followed by others, are often remembered by history as being notable explorers. In our own timeline we remember explorers such as Lewis and Clarke for finding a way across the Rockies, but local folk indigenous to an area also typically have their own people who are only known locally for similar explorations.

Mountains as Part of a Quest

In adventure stories and games, mountains are popular destinations for quests and challenges. Tolkien's Misty Mountains are a classic example of this usage: that range is an imposing barrier running mostly north/south for a great stretch of the continent. Its peaks are one of the terrain features separating the homelands of elves (Rivendell and Mirkwood, formerly called the Greenwood) from the lands of men. To the north another branch of the Misty Mountains becomes the Mountains of Angmar, demarcating the realm of the Witch-King of Angmar, and trail off eastward into lands once held by dwarves (where the dragon Smaug has overrun the Lonely Mountain). The passes over this range are few and difficult to travel, and the journey across (or under-mountain, to avoid the hazards of weather and foes in the exposed passes) becomes a major narrative thread in The Hobbit.

Trade Routes

Mountain passes facilitate travel, and therefore the paths that reach them often become trade routes. The resulting trade might service only a local area or limited region. An example of this is found in the Sierra Nevada Mountains dividing Nevada and California. There, early settlers and then silver miners found mountain passes and then developed roads connecting the rich silver strikes of the Comstock with Sacramento and San Francisco. Where commerce thrives, multiple passes and associated trade routes may be part of an extensive network of trade that stretches across a broad region. The famous Silk Road of the Far East is an example of the latter.

Bear in mind, though, that mountain ranges tend to funnel traffic parallel to their length, not across it, simply because the travel in that direction is easier. A good example of this is found in the Andes, where most of the Chilean population is on the west flank of the Andes, and trade and travel runs north and south along its length. In the few places where passes permit travel to the east and west, those routes are heavily traveled and have become major trade routes between Chile and Argentina.

TIP 2: Look at your hubs of commercial activity. If important ones are separated by a mountain range, it's a good idea to consider if there is a pass over the mountains, and if so, where it is located. This is likely to become a trade route connecting the trade centers with each other. Note that there may NOT be a mountain pass available, in which case commerce might move via water, or take a long way around to bypass the mountains, or there may simply be no trade in that particular direction because it is limited by the terrain.

Military and State Uses

In our own historical timeline, mountains have kept realms safe, such as the Alps being a natural barrier against invasion into Italy from the north. They have also become the locale of heroic events: consider Hannibal's improbable crossing of those same Alps with a force of war elephants when Carthage made war on the Romans. French soldiers of Charles the Great in the 8th century are memorialized in the Song of Roland for dying in a rear-guard action in a narrow Pyrenees mountain pass, keeping attacking Basques away from their retreating fellows.[2] And the brave last stand of the Spartan 300 at the mountain pass of Thermopylae is an event we remember and are still impressed by over 2500 years after its occurrence.[3]

The force that controls a mountain pass can block the progress of an opposing force attempting to enter the country beyond the pass. This accounts for fortifications and storied military history surrounding mountain passes, from Roman campaigns to castles in the Rhine River valley, to the battles to control passes in the Hindu Kush which still transpire in Afghanistan in recent times.

From being part of a line of military force, it is a short step for mountains to become a political boundary. Elevated heights often demarcate different cultural groups, tribes, and/or governments and political systems. Mountains become the border marker between these groups and when they are used for military purposes as well, their role as a boundary marker becomes explicit. In later negotiations about political boundaries, they are often used as anchor points for state borders. Because of their geographical prominence they are easy to refer to on a map, and thus mountain ranges have often been used as arbitrary boundaries by diplomats. In notorious historical examples, boundaries were set at negotiating tables by European colonial powers for parts of Africa and the Middle East, drawing borders based on geography with complete disregard to the actual distribution of cultural groups in the areas being divided. This is not commendable as a governance practice, but can make for some interesting complexities in a constructed world.

TIP 3: For world building purposes, it is important to first look at a region in its "natural" state, determining how mountains (and other natural barriers) cause cultural groups to concentrate in certain areas. If they remain in control of their own fortunes, their future tribal or state boundaries are likely to adhere to the natural borders that shaped their cultural domain. If, however, the area becomes a political football or conquest trophy, then at some point in the future, although mountains may still be used as a border, the borders that are formally set may no long conform to any local cultural logic.

CONSIDERATIONS WHEN THINKING OF MOUNTAINS AS BOUNDARIES

Cultural Issues

Ethnic Relations. Which cultural or ethnic groups are separated by natural mountain barriers? What is their relation to each other? Where do they come into each other's sphere of influence? Is there friendly trading between them? Hostility, raids, or war? If two groups are friendly, protected trade networks are likely to grow. If unfriendly, military strongholds are likely to evolve to protect the borderlands from the hostile Other.

Favored Dwelling Places. Some cultures prefer to build in lowlands; others may use mountains only if and when they must, while still others might gravitate to the slopes as a matter of course. Where do the people of the local culture prefer to live? Are those in the mountains there because they are the poor cast-offs of society eking out a living where no one else wants to live? Or does society itself concentrate in the mountains? Whether or not a culture is mountain-centric or not affects everything from daily life to traditions to housing styles and the prominence that the mountains themselves hold in the society and culture in that region.

Languages. Where are language groups the same, and where are they different? Mountains (or rivers, or rough terrain) are likely to separate different language groups.

Religion. Which beliefs coincide with which cultural regions, and where is there transmission (if any) to a newly encountered culture? This process will be eased or complicated by the presence of mountains (and other rough terrain). As with language, religious and spiritual beliefs require humans to transmit them. Where travel is limited, beliefs do not cross much between different groups, and so mountains may also delineate different areas of religious beliefs. This also raises the question of whether or not there has been a practice of proselytization at all, or maybe just a single believer going from one place to another, sharing new spiritual teachings and altering beliefs wherever he goes.

Mountains themselves may be designated as sacred space or believed to have special relationship to deities, magic or other supernatural forces. If this is the case, how does this affect how people regard or use the mountain terrain?

Bandits and Other Lurkers. Mountains have long been refuge to people who have fled lowland settlements to avoid the law or escape unrest. Aside from the people who normally live there, mountains may also be host to bands of outlaws, groups of war refugees, unemployed war veterans, isolated smugglers, transient nomads and others who may have strange encounters with more settled folk, or actively prey on travelers. Are your mountains host to any groups of this sort? If so, where do they operate, who do they encounter, and how?

Folk Tales and Stereotypes. Different cultural groups that don't have much contact with each other often develop folklore and tales about those strange people who live on the other side of the range. What lore and preconceptions or stereotypes do your various ethnic groups have about their mountain-separated neighbors? These tales will be colored by past contact with the distant group, including a history of peaceful contact, violence, or religious differences. The more difficult it is to cross the mountains, and the less contact the different people have, the more fantastic the handed-down lore will be. Similarly, shorthand, often warped descriptions of the neighbors may arise and become racial or ethnic stereotypes for the other group.

Traffic Flow Across Mountains

Mountain Passes and Ease of Travel. Where are the easiest mountain passes to cross (usually lowest elevation, most easily reached)? If there is enough population nearby, or people traveling to this region, then such passes may well evolve into a major trade route. The more trade moves over-mountain, the more likely that a network of feeder roads and traffic will grow as the region funnels traffic and commerce into this route. The speed of this development will depend upon tech level (which affects speed and efficiency of travel), the population density, the volume of traffic, and the difficulty of making the mountain passage.

Depending on the population density and volume of traffic over a pass, the pass itself may become a developed area. It may feature inns, waystations or a fortress. The paths may become paved roads to support heavy traffic, while the route itself may be patrolled by peace-keepers or watchmen to keep travelers safe from bandits, or by rescue teams who help travelers facing road hazards.

Virtually all ground travel will be affected by the presence of a pass-using it, because it makes travel easier, or avoiding it in order to avoid traffic, military fortresses, border checkpoints, and so on.

Weather and Elevation. What is the prevailing climate in your mountains, and how bad is "bad weather" when it occurs? Mountains can present harsh micro-climates, even potentially fatal weather like blizzards and freezing cold. The higher the elevation, the harsher the climate can be. Also, at high altitudes the air is thin and lack of oxygen can cause altitude sickness to those unaccustomed to great elevations.[4]

Roads. What caliber of roads cross the mountains? The route across the mountain may be undeveloped raw land, an animal trail, a foot path, a path wide enough for a mount to travel, or one widened to accommodate vehicles. Where the mountainside is steep, simple trails will likely ascend or descend in a series of switchbacks that can be quite steep and even treacherous in their own right, especially in heavy rain or when whipped by harsh wind. If higher slopes nearby are snow-covered, there may be risk of avalanche in certain conditions, which in turn may endanger or even obliterate entire roadways.[5] Rock falls, mud slides, downed trees, and roads washing away can further slow travel or make roads completely impassable.

How well are roads maintained? Maintenance affects speed of travel and hazards faced by travelers. In more developed regions there are likely to be some measures taken to keep mountain passes open and maintained, whether that is a manual labor crew provided by a nearby military outpost or border lord, or routine snowplow and road repair work provided by a high-tech civilization. However, just because road maintenance is likely does not mean it will exist in every circumstance. Consider the technology level and the political situation and decide who is responsible for maintaining the routes over and through the mountains. Below a certain level of development, no one is directly responsible for roads or trails, and in fact the very concept may not exist (as, for instance, in tribal settings, where people live simply off the land and do not even build roads).

Trade

Who Is Invested. What kind of trade crosses the mountains? What volume and value? Who benefits from it? Are certain entities invested in keeping passes and travel routes open? If so they will have a presence in the area and might be responsible for some of the upkeep of roads and traveler aid in the area. For instance, the East India Company built trade strongholds in remote locations that served as military strongpoints as well as commercial centers. Those trade stations were used as a base from which travel routes were scouted, and in the most remote areas were home base to road construction and repair, supplies of remounts, and similar services to facilitate travel and trade.

Trade and Travel Networks. What road networks have developed in the mountains? Don't forget to consider the role water traffic may play in the region's commerce, for this often connects with important intra-mountain ground routes. At higher technology levels, tunnels are built through mountains to support rail or road traffic, vastly reducing the time needed to cross the mountain range. Air traffic may also cross the peaks, although if they are tall enough it may be necessary to fly around them. If the tech level allows, high-speed communications infrastructure (from telegraph lines on up) often parallel the routes established for ground travel.

What knock-on effects occur in your setting due to the existence of these transportation networks, or faster travel through them?

Mountain as Wilderness

What role does straight-up wilderness play in your setting? Which mountain ranges (or portions of them) are in places where few if any people live? If population density is low, or the region has been claimed but not developed, mountain borderlands can simply be wilderness areas and may not have any human habitations or additional development at all.

An interesting example of this is the Jungar Alatau, the deserted mountain borderland of Kazakhstan. The area was once the scene of armed clashes between the Soviet Union and China in the '60s; when people fled the area, the governments prevented them from returning or rebuilding in the disputed region, which was allowed to fall into complete disuse. Today it is a resource-rich yet undeveloped area kept as buffer zone between two geopolitical forces. http://www.discovery-kazakhstan.com/archive/2008/10_11.php

It is useful to know where such deep wilderness areas lie because the lack of population and development can itself be an interesting or useful feature, depending on the type of story or adventure setting you are developing.

Military Features

Consider the civilizations located in various places flanking mountain ranges and decide who has a need and desire to expand beyond their geological borders. These locations may well become the backdrop for military-related development. Border clashes might first inspire diplomatic exchanges, but if and when that fails, these borderlands become a battlefield (metaphorically or literally) in a struggle for territory.

Passes may be occupied defensively, to keep foes out of a region, or seized offensively, to permit the passage of armed forces into enemy territory. If there is active warfare going on in your setting and troops need to travel any significant distance, any mountain passes with strategic or tactical value will be identified.

If things come to that, then what is the character of the border clashes over-mountain? Is everyone on an equal footing militarily and resource-wise, or does one side have a technological or cultural advantage over the other? The way in which mountainous terrain is used militarily reflects a society's attitude towards warfare and their state of military and tech development. For instance:

·         If one side consists of swift-moving skirmishers or scouts (as with many indigenous tribes) they may not build fortifications but rely instead on their ability to strike hard and unexpectedly to keep a foe at bay.

·         Are forts, fortresses, or castles built to guard mountain passes and roads?

·         Are patrols dispatched on a regular schedule?

·         Are there guarded border checkpoints that control who may pass into a foreign realm?

·         Are there objects or structures in the area, such as ancient cities or religious temples, that more than one realm wishes to control? (For a modern example of this situation, see this article on the Preah Vihear Temple (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian%E2%80%93Thai_border_stand-off ), the object of conflict between Thailand and Cambodia on their mountainous border.)

·         Is the mountainous borderland under surveillance? If technology is used, there might be anything ranging from a hot-air balloon bobbing in the sky, to real-time spy satellites. If low tech or no special surveillance, there might only be guard towers and scouts to help keep a border safe.

·         If there are military forces in the mountains, are they only around passes and strongholds, or are they dispersed or patrolling through remote reaches of the mountains? If so, are there other, scattered strongholds as well, in more remote mountain areas? How is this military network kept supplied?

·         What are the plans for military response in case of an incursion?

·         Are there special elites within society who are tasked with protecting the border? There might be "Marcher Lords," i.e., feudal lords who patrol and guard the borderlands (the "marches") of their realm. There might be a civil service cadre of border patrol agents, or simply lone settlements prepared to fight and defend their land if necessary. Who is it that is actively guarding the border areas of your fictional realm? Or are they instead moving as conquerors into neighboring territories? In which case mountain fortresses will be supply bases and staging areas, and not the front line against invaders.

These thoughts on mountains as borders just scratch the surface, but I hope they provide you with a new filter with which to think about the geography of your world, and the role these massive geological features may play in human affairs.

_____

1. Regarding where people live, as a rule of thumb more people live along coastlines than inland, and more live in valleys and relatively flat terrain than do in mountainous heights. This can vary widely, of course, depending on the dominant terrain in a region, the relative desirability of a location, its livability, and external factors like politics, war, the need for defense, and so on.

2. See The Song of Roland and historical discussion of same at this Fordham University medieval history page: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/roland-ohag.asp

3. The death of the Spartans at Thermopylae (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Thermopylae) comes to us in early written form in the reports of Herodotus, the historian of the ancient world, and most recently inspired the movie "300," a spectacular re-telling of the tale by Zack Snyder (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0416449/).

4. For more on altitude sickness, see http://www.altitude.org/altitude_sickness.php

5. For more on avalanche conditions, dangers and warning signs, see http://www.avalanche.ca/cac/training/online-course/avalanche-formation/clear-signs

Pictured: Gorge of the Kora River in the abandoned wilderness of Jungar Alatau, Kazahkstan

13 RESOURCE MAPPING

Natural resources are materials that occur in nature—animal, vegetable, or mineral—that can be used by man. At its most basic, this is the stuff of subsistence living: food gathered or hunted in the wild, timber to build with, coal burned for a fire, and so on. In more developed economies, natural resources become things of value in themselves, for they can be harvested and sold for economic gain.

TIP: The kind of natural resources found in an area, and where you place them, will have a big impact on trade, the exploitation of those goods, and development of the region over time. It is useful, therefore, to define the location of significant resources right after you have created the world or regional map for your setting.

For example, where the climate and terrain is right, some lowlands and hill country will have stands of oak trees suitable for use in ship building. Coal deposits will be in certain kinds of geological areas (where ancient forests once grew), and gold or silver will be found in the right rock formations mainly in mountainous or rugged terrain. While clay is a common type of soil, clay that is excellent for pot-making is found only in limited areas, and at some point these places may become known for their ceramics work. Major fishing areas will be located in large lakes or off of particular areas of the coastline, usually where underwater mountains or reefs have created a fertile habitat for massive schools of fish (as in the Great Bank in the Atlantic Ocean, or the Great Barrier Reef in Australia)

You can also approach this from the opposite direction, by knowing what people use and then asking where it comes from. Let's say a town is famed for its goldsmiths. Where are they getting their gold from? Is it produced by local mines? If so, where are they located, exactly? Or is the gold imported instead? If so, where does it come from? And so on.

Any significant resource base creates a long-term ripple effect in subsequent world development, so it is best to be mindful of natural resources at an early point in world design.

Natural Resources as Trade Goods

The lack or abundance of resources is a relative thing. A land that has no timber may be timber-poor, but not lack resources for building, because they make bricks of clay or quarry stone. Where X is not available, Y will be used instead, or X will be traded for if the need for it is great enough. This simple formula lies behind the movement of natural resources as trade goods.

TIP 2: Consider the natural resource map you have developed. The location of resources influences the crafts and skill sets that evolve in the area, as well as suggesting future import/export and trade patterns.

Where there are marble deposits there may be stone quarries; coal suggests coal mines; oyster beds mean pearl divers, and so on. Many resources may go undeveloped or ignored because societies do not value or cannot use the good (coal is irrelevant in a Stone Age civilization; beavers and their furs are merely pretty beasts, not an exploitable resource, to cotton-wearing desert-dwellers).

Where are natural resources abundant, and where are they lacking? Trade will likely develop between these regions, which also suggests what routes major roadways will grow up along.

"Buy low, sell high," is the time-tested advice for making a profit with trade goods. Look at the resources that abound in one area: these are the goods that are likely to first be sold or traded elsewhere, where they are scarce.

The English coal trade is a good example of this process: rich coal deposits around Newcastle upon Tyne were located even in Roman times, but only saw extensive development in the 16th century, when people began to use coal for domestic heating. Later, the market boomed with the fuel demands of the industrial revolution, and coal barges were a common sight in English harbors. Colliers shipped so much coal from the region that "carrying coals to Newcastle" became a synonym for doing something that seemed completely pointless. The demand kept Newcastle coal miners employed, and made a fortune for the merchants and industrialists who controlled the trade and export of coal.

TIP 3: Consider your setting through the lens of resource availability. Who needs something they don't have? Do dyers need special dyes? Do armorers need steel? Do shipbuilders need oak for masts? Who is resource rich (for one or more kinds of resources), and who is resource poor? At some point this will impact the economic development of the region: resource-poor areas will import what they need, and resource-rich ones will export their abundance to others.

As to placing natural resources in areas that make logical sense, this too is an essential part of the process. If you randomly place a gold mine in a flat, muddy alluvial plain, for instance (like a river delta), everyone who knows anything at all about geography and minerals won't find that mine or its placement believable, and this damages the plausibility of your world. A detailed treatment of this is beyond the scope of today's tip, but basically, resource placement depends upon a knowledge of geology, geography, natural history, and economic development. Luckily, if you have gaps in knowledge in these areas, you can at least do the next best thing: hit the interwebz and look for some answers there. Some useful search phrases to begin with are:

·         natural resources in mountains

·         natural resources in seas

·         where is gold found

·         where does cotton grow

...and so on.

Be discerning in the search results that you use for information: data about the modern world and current distribution patterns of something are not usually too helpful. It is better to reference historical information and articles about the origin and early uses of a natural resource. This is generally a good starting point for a fictional world. Once you have the starting point, you can develop it as you need in your own setting. Wikipedia is also a good "quick reference" resource to use, although if you want more in-depth information on a natural resource, you'll find better information doing more searching elsewhere on the web.

Although it requires a little homework, natural resource mapping can be a fun project and adds a critical layer of depth to your fictional world. As your world evolves and things like industrial manufacturing alter the resources that are valued, you may want to update your resource map from time to time. Note what has fallen out of use and what has become newly valuable. What you establish here becomes the foundation of future trade patterns, local crafts and industries, and will even influence what is valued culturally in a given setting.

Pictured: A natural resource map for Echisano Province on the planet Casca, from my Sa'adani Empire rpg. Resources are indicated with image icons (sheaf of wheat for grain-growing region, stump and ax for timber area, etc). Click the image to download or view at larger size

14 WHAT SCARCE MINERALS MEAN FOR YOUR WORLD

Every now and then, fiction or adventure settings refer to a world being scarce in minerals. Where this is the case, it has big implications for a world constructed on this premise.

All too often, though, this scarcity is treated as the merest bit of background color. But what does it really mean for a world in this situation? The effect is not only geological but social, with a potentially huge impact on the kind of civilizations and technologies that can evolve in such a setting.

TIP: Mineral-scarce worlds may contain the building blocks of basic civilization, but many elements we have historically depended upon will be in short supply. Copper, zinc, lead, and other common elements, including versatile iron, may be as rare as diamonds or even non-existent. You may not wish to develop a setting with such constraints, but if you do, consider carefully what is absent from the geological environment, and what this means for the development of civilization on this world.

How Galactic Location Affects Your Resources

Even if you don't write science fiction, it's a good idea to spend a moment and think about where your world is located in the galactic landscape. From a science perspective, its situation relative to the center of the galaxy has a lot to do with how habitable it is, as well as its mineral composition.

Planets most like our Earth will probably be found in the Goldilocks zone.

The "Goldilocks zone" is that part of the galaxy where habitable, earth-like planets are likely to form.[1] It is not too close to the galactic core (too much radiation) and not too distant (where there are scarce basic elements, thus fewer rocky planets with the building blocks we expect to support abundant life). The Goldilocks zone is where things are "just right" for the greatest likelihood of supporting life and being habitable by humans.[2]

Towards the galactic rim, gas and space dust are less dense and stars tend to be smaller than those closer to the core. The elements that smaller stars generate are fewer in number than what larger stars produce, running up through iron on the periodic table but not often far beyond that.

In addition, when small stars develop in regions of sparse gas, they have less fuel for their element-generating processes. The rocky type planets that form around such stars will tend to be element and mineral-poor.

What does "poor in minerals" really mean?

When basic elements are sparse in quantity, there are fewer building blocks for minerals on a world. Minerals that humans (or presumably other sentients) exploit might be either a straight element found on the Periodic Table (like lead or iron), or will contain a combination of elements. Examples are galena (a lead sulphide mineral which is the most common form of lead), cassiterite, which contains tin in the form of tin dioxide, or rubies, a variety of the mineral corundum which is formed from aluminum and oxygen (aluminum dioxide).

Pictured: Cassiterite with muscovite from Sichuan, China. Click picture for Wikipedia link.

On Earth, we have relied upon minerals (both in elemental and compound forms) for the basic material goods and industries that have fueled the growth of civilizations. Beyond the building blocks of physical objects on this planet (such as carbon and oxygen), we have exploited elements like copper, zinc, lead and iron to rise above the Stone Age level of development we once were at.

Yet if an element-sparse planet is formed in space, the result is a mineral-poor globe. It is not likely to have great deposits of basic minerals, and may completely lack things like gold or platinum that we consider rare on Earth. On a mineral-poor world, copper may be as difficult to find as diamonds are here, and even lead could be worth its weight in gold, so to speak.

TIP2: If you decide to create a mineral-poor world, take some time to define what minerals exist in abundance, which are rare, and how far up the periodic chart things will be found. What you set as a baseline here will greatly influence how your civilization's progress will unfold.

TIP 3: Such a world is unlikely to have any element present of greater atomic weight than iron.[3] This is not to say that elements weightier than iron absolutely won't exist in such a setting, but it is to say that they are unlikely to, may be very difficult to find (hence rare and extraordinarily valuable) or may be so difficult to locate that they might as well not be there at all.

And the Cultural Consequences Are . . . ?

While this tip is in the Geo category to help get you thinking about minerals, there are huge socio-implications about whatever level of resources you settle on. Here is a sampling of issues that might fall out of your mineral-poor design decision. This is not an exhaustive list but is offered as an example of the sort of things you may want to consider about  mineral scarcity. Future tips will get into some of these in more detail.

~~~

Evolution of Civilizations. In our timeline, a key thing that moved humans from low-technology Stone Age to higher technology Bronze Age was the fact that there were deposits of copper and tin to be found and made into bronze in the first place. What happens on a world where there is little copper and/or tin? It is unlikely that they will develop a Bronze Age on sufficient scale to spur the revolution in tools, weapons and armor that transformed our ancient world on Earth.

Metallurgy.  Without the knowledge of metallurgy gained from working with bronze, will a culture ever develop techniques to refine other metals that might be present (even if very rare), but are much harder to extract from native rock?

If the answer to that is no, this also suggests there will be no Iron Age, both because of lack of iron ore deposits, and lack of the metallurgical skill needed to dissolve ferrite from the rock that contains and conceals it.

Industrial Development. If a mineral-poor world lacks basic metallurgy (for lack of the metals), will they ever achieve an industrial level of technological development? Is it possible that magic, psionics, or some technology equivalent (but not Earth-style industrial technology) will bridge the gap and allow advanced development of manufacturing, materials, and goods?

Health and Well-Being. Human life depends on certain trace minerals to exist, but an element- and mineral-poor world might have none at all of what is "trace" to us, and only trace amounts of what we consider common. How will living beings adapt to these constraints? A human living without trace amounts of selenium, for instance, will lack the element necessary for essential anti-oxidation processes in the body's cells.[4] Presumably humans who evolve on such a planet won't need the element they've never had, but if those humans are colonists from elsewhere, suddenly the natural setting is a challenge on the biological level.  In what other ways might a population be affected by what is present or absent in their mineral-dependent biological environment?

~~~

So there are some thoughts about having a mineral-poor world as a setting, and some of the places it may lead you to. This kind of setting is not for everyone, but if you want to get away from "Earth as we know it" and take things in a new direction, mineral scarcity will compel innovation in the environment and cultures you develop.

_____

1. For readers whose native language is not English, "Goldilocks" is a reference to the fairy tale of The Three Bears, in which Goldilocks goes into the home of the bears and samples their food, chairs, and bed. She does not like those that are too hot or too cold, too big or too small, too hard or too soft, but makes great use of those that are "just right." You can read a nicely illustrated rendering of this tale here: bit.ly/1b4VuC3

2. This is not to say life-supporting and habitable planets won't be found elsewhere. We're talking a numbers game here, with the largest clump of the bell curve being the Goldilocks zone.

3. The reason for this lies in star and planet formation processes that are beyond the scope of this discussion for now, but we may get into them in future science-fiction-related Geo tips.

4. See this link for more on the role selenium plays in biology on Earth: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selenium#Evolution_in_biology

Pictured: Here is a Periodic Chart, the table of elements found on our world. On a mineral-poor world, you would probably truncate this chart at the 4th row, knowing that things listed after Iron (Fe) will be rare, and elements in higher rows may not exist at all. Click through to go to the Wikipedia page with this chart, including full names of the listed elements.

SOCIO TIPS

13 PILGRIMS AND PILGRIMAGES

Lately I've been writing tips about travel and roads. One of the things that comes to mind in this regard are pilgrims and the role they may play in a fictional world. They use roads to get around and indeed, roads were often developed or maintained explicitly because of the pilgrim traffic they bore. Which leads me to the concept of pilgrims and their journeys in general.

TIP 1: If your civilization has religious beliefs, it is likely that there is also a basis for pilgrims to exist. If so, there will be cultural and economic effects that follow on from their presence in your world.

Pilgrimages: Definition

A pilgrim is one who makes a pilgrimage, "a journey, especially a long one, made to some sacred place as an act of religious devotion."[1]

A pilgrimage has spiritual significance to the traveler. A trip to a nearby, routine place is not normally a pilgrimage, nor is attendance at a special annual ceremony. Rather, a pilgrimage generally covers a distance that takes some effort to travel, to a place that attracts a transient body of worshipers and pilgrims from a larger "catch net" region that the holy site is known to.

A site can be designated as a holy site for any of a number of reasons. Maybe it was the abode of a dead holy person, or their tomb; maybe it is the location of holy relics, or a miracle or divine visitation took place there, or it is the home of nature spirits, and so on. The "holy" designation is in keeping with the religious beliefs of the people, and does not have to be officially recognized for people to deem it holy.

People in almost all cultures and eras have had pilgrims and pilgrimages, whether or not those terms have been applied to them. In English, the word "pilgrim" comes from a root meaning "stranger", suggesting that the pilgrim has come from afar to a place he is not known, in order to have a spiritual experience.

Pilgrimage Traditions

Here is a brief sampling of what some pilgrimages look like in different historical traditions.

1. Western Europe. In the western world we have a tradition of people traveling to visit shrines, cathedrals, and holy places. A holy place might be a site where a miracle is thought to have occurred, or where there is a sign of divine presence obvious to onlookers (like statues which weep blood[2] or places holy to Christian teachings, like Jerusalem, the site of the Last Supper and Jesus' entombment). In the Middle Ages in particular, a pilgrimage often related to the veneration of relics, which was much easier to do than a full-blown pilgrimage to the Holy Land. While lesser shrines and churches sometimes harbored a relic, cathedrals almost without exception featured one or more, which helped make them such a draw for visitors and donations.

2. The Classical World. Pilgrimages did not begin with Christianity. In the classical world, although it was not called "pilgrimage" with our modern term[3], the people of antiquity often made journeys to shrines and holy places. The trip to the Oracle of Delphi is one famous example of a first-class pilgrim destination. Once there, the supplicant would be advised by a priestess of Apollo, allowing the god to speak through her.

3. Middle East. Perhaps the most famous pilgrimage tradition in the Middle East is that called the Hajj, the journey to the Holy City of Mecca where a series of rituals are reenacted honoring the divine experiences had by Abraham (Ibrahim) and his wife Hagar. This pilgrimage is required once in the lifetime of every able-bodied Muslim who can afford to do it, after which the pilgrim may add the honorific "Hajji" to his name.

4. The Far East. In China, Japan, and elsewhere in Asia, people have long journeyed to temples, shrines, and locations in nature. These places are holy often because of their association with a nature god. Mount Fuji in Japan, for instance, is sacred to the Shinto religion for being the home of mountain spirits (kami), and to Buddhists for being the abode of a dragon who was transformed into a Buddha, called Dainichi Nyoria, who embodies spiritual wisdom. In Japanese tradition it is said that once in a person's life time, he or she should journey to the top of Mount Fuji.

There are almost as many pilgrimage traditions are there are religions and cultures. For more info on this see the bonus links below, especially the pilgrimage encyclopedia that gives a great sampling of many different traditions.

TIP 2: Consider the religion(s) you have active in your fictional setting. What kinds of places will be considered sacred or holy in that religion, and why? Make a list of these things and assign one or more of them to different geographical locations in your setting. For instance, a major temple might also be an especially holy site because it holds the tombs of three martyrs, and prayers made there are sometimes answered. A roadside shrine near a fabled healing spring might become a holy site visited by the sick and ailing. An earth chasm in the shape of a god's footprint might be sacred to the god who presumably stepped there, or to the earth spirits that gave it that form. And so on.

Keep track of the places you've determined are pilgrimage destinations. Ideally, mark them on a map, so it is easy to see their larger geographical context and relationship to population centers. The fact that these locations draw spiritual visitors will have social, economic, and other effects as discussed below.

Motivations of Pilgrims

When it comes to understanding pilgrimages and how they might work in a fictional world, it's important to give a little closer thought to why people go on such a trek. We've already talked about seeking a spiritual experience, which is inherent in the concept of being a pilgrim. But often there is something more - or something different - to it than that. Two other factors were especially influential in getting people to leave their homes and go on often arduous and lengthy trips.

1. Curiosity. First there is simple curiosity and wanderlust. What is that distant holy person, place or thing like? What experiences might one have traveling there, and what tales to tell upon return home? Curiosity alone is probably not enough to nudge one on a long and expensive journey, but it was often enough to get one down the road to a relatively nearby holy site. And it would often be that people undertook this journey for the sake of the journey itself, not because they were especially religious or seeking spiritual insights.

In the Middle Ages, for instance, when women generally stayed close to home and did not have the freedom of men to roam the countryside, quite a large number of pilgrims were well-to-do women making relatively short trips away, staying in the lodgings offered by monasteries or convents, and taking in local sights and market visits while they were there. Likewise, while one person might be moved by sincere piety to make a pilgrimage to a shrine and pray, that pilgrim might also be accompanied by persons from his or her household who went along just for the fun of the trip. Or, if days spent in uncomfortable travel and prayer were not exactly "fun," they could at least be a welcome change of pace from the routine and responsibilities of home.

2. Penance, Punishment, and Oaths. The other reason that many people went on pilgrimage was because they felt compelled to do so. They may have made a vow to go ("God, if you save my family from the Black Death, I swear I will go on pilgrimage to Rome and make a gift to the Church in person!"). Pilgrimage was sometimes ordered as a penance to make amends for a transgression that ordinary penance was inadequate for.

Finally, a "perpetual pilgrimage" could be undertaken, endlessly traveling from place to place. This was once a voluntary if fanatic practice, and led to the persons being called "palmers" for their practice of bringing palm branches back to their homeland as evidence of their journeys. During the 10th century the endless pilgrimage came to be imposed as a penance. Under a law of Henry I of England, priests who revealed the confessional were condemned to be palmers. In some cases they were made to wander about almost naked, carrying rings and chains of iron; others were made to kneel down at frequent intervals throughout their journey and beat the ground with their hands.

TIP 3: Consider the population of pilgrims in your setting. What proportion of them are on the road because they are spiritual seekers, which for personal reasons, and which because they are compelled to do so? It may be that various deities or their religious orders also require or impose pilgrimages for various reasons. These factors can give you good story ideas about why a certain pilgrim is on the road, and what motivates them along the way.

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Whether or not religion plays a big role in your fictional world, if there are holy sites then somewhere there are probably pilgrims. With a little thought on this topic, you'll have a much better background for them and an understanding of how they fit into your world.

BONUS LINKS

The Hajj. Good overview of the extensive rituals that are part of the Muslim Hajj. See also the interesting endnotes about the social impact of the Hajj. At Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hajj

Palmers. For more on the medieval tradition of palmers and their differences from pilgrims, see page 738 in this book (downloadable also as pdf at this Google Books bit.ly link):

Blackie & Sons (1841). The Popular Encyclopedia: Being a General Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, Literature, Biography, History, and Political Economy, Vol 7. (http://bit.ly/13gBajW )

Pilgrimages generally . Here's a great grab-bag sampling of a lot of different pilgrimages in all kinds of times and places. The introduction is especially worth reading for a framing of the nature of pilgrimages. The book has been criticized for some errors of fact regarding relatively recent events (see reader reviews) but generally has a good representation of historical information in this field:

Davidson et al, 2002. Pilgrimage: From the Ganges to Graceland: An Encyclopedia. http://bit.ly/ZPzhVk

Relics. Interesting discussion of the history of relics and their role in making churches great, from the Metropolitan Museum of Art:

Relics and Reliquaries in Medieval Christianity. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/relc/hd_relc.htm

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1. Random House Dictionary (2013) at Dictionary.com.

2. Statues such as this one, weeping B-positive blood in a church in Uttar Pradesh, India. News article here: bit.ly/161DdGb ; video here http://youtu.be/Z3LsOwBtjqw (the vid linked in the article is no longer accessible; the above is an alternate link showing the same statue.)

3. The term "pilgrim" came into use in the Middle Ages, while Classical Antiquity is dated from about 800 BC. I call it a "modern" word in contrast to the ages before.

Pictured: A map of the network of pilgrim roads called the Way of St James, a leading Catholic pilgrim route since the 9th century that terminates at Santiago de Compostela in Spain

14 DIALECTS

People who live in a particular area grow up speaking the same language and sharing the same culture and customs. But as roads expand and they begin to travel farther and farther from home, one interesting thing happens right away:  they notice that they speak differently from other people they encounter. And of course, eventually they run into people who don't speak the same language at all.

Most stories and games that deal with language at all highlight the difficulty of people understanding each other across the divide of a foreign language. Less often do they deal with dialect and regional variations, but depending on the era and sophistication of travel that exists, dialects and small language differences (like accents) are actually much more likely to be encountered by the average person.  Before the day of fast, far travel, and long before the homogenization effect that rapid communications had on languages, people dealt with dialects and accents quite frequently if they traveled or met strangers. I say "dealt with," because the existence of these things could complicate life in a way that had to be worked around for anyone encountering this form of language barrier.

TIP:  Consider what regional language differences are in effect in your setting, and how this impacts the interaction of people in that setting.  Minor differences can be simply entertaining accents, while major differences in dialect can create obstacles to conversation, trade, and diplomacy. Without moving into the realm of  foreign language, native speakers of the same language can have a tough time of it if they have to talk across the divide of dialects. This gives rise to anything ranging from a minor inconvenience and irritation at not catching what someone said, to major misunderstandings based on different word use and language structure.

Dialects also become associated with the character or the class of the people speaking it. For instance, East Frisians in Germany are the butt of what we in America call "Pollack jokes," in part because their dialect was considered the hallmark of a country bumpkin. Similarly, people attempting to move up the social ladder are well known for learning to speak differently so they can pass as a member of an elite that is associated with a different accent or dialect.  A good example of this is Eliza Doolittle losing her Cockney dialect in George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion (made into the movie My Fair Lady) so she can pass as (and become) a lady.

TIP 2: Dialects can be used in your world to distinguish different classes of people, from elites to the bumpkins. They can be a hindrance to trade, an aide to alliance between those who share a dialect ("We think alike and understand each other,") and can play a role in provoking prejudice and civil unrest.  Dialects (and their lesser cousin, accents) are much more than mere set dressing if used properly in the fabric of social interaction.

Dialect Versus Accent

There is a big difference between dialects and accents. An accent is a characteristic manner of pronunciation, generally linked to someone's social or regional origins.  In contrast, a dialect is an actual different version of a standard language:  it has different phonology, grammar and vocabulary, although like an accent, it is linked to people who are set off from others either geographically or socially.  What we hear as an "accent" in a standard language is often an echo of the dialect pronunciation, even if the dialect-speaker has altered his language to the standard.

While we have many different accents in America, we actually have very few dialects (the story is very different in Europe and in most foreign countries). I think this is one reason that the language and social implications of dialects go ignored by most American authors. These factors do not generally play a role in our own culture, but that's not to say they won't— or shouldn't—in a fictional world you create.

Getting an Ear-Full: From the Midlands to Beyond

To relate this to an historical example:  in the 16th century, a wool merchant did not need to travel from the Midlands in England all the way to Europe or even Wales or Scotland to hear a different language and cadence of speech. All the fellow needed to do was to travel to the shire (county) next door, and he heard people talking differently than what he was accustomed to. Depending where he lived and where he traveled within a hundred miles of home (or even as little as ten), he might encounter dialects that ranged from "you have a funny accent," to, "I can't understand a word you're saying."  In fact, this difference in English dialects continues right up into and through the 21st century, although differences are much less marked today than in earlier centuries. In the 19th century, regional dialects were a particular object of fascination for many scholars at the same time there was a push in many western schools to standardize national pronunciation and thus get away from the creeping evil of dialect variance in speech. If you want to learn more about the kinds of differences found between regional dialects in Britain, including historical context for the development of these divergent language forms, check out this book. The brief introduction is especially interesting to read:   English Dialects: From the Eighth Century to the Present Day, by Walter W. Skeat, University Press, 1912 (browseable and downloadable at Google Books).

The experience of traveling from home and meeting people who talk the same basic language very differently is repeated in many cultures even today.  If the differences are relatively minor, person A regards person B as having an accent, which is a function of pronunciation.  This is the case in America, where almost all regional "dialects" are just differently accented versions of essentially the same language.

If the difference in language is greater than mere pronunciation, they may each be speaking a linguistically different dialect:  a version that differs significantly in vocabulary and usage, possibly to the point of having different grammatical structures. The underlying structure of the dialect is the result of a living language drifting so far from its original norm that it is becoming something else entirely.

A lot of worldbuilders don't want to bother going into the nuances (and work) that languages can bring to a setting. That's fine if you want to skip it. But being aware of dialect can give you a powerful and culture-steeped way to  differentiate class, status, education, geographic origins, and more. It is probably easier to represent this in fiction based on a multi-lingual world, than in an rpg (unless that is a computer-based rpg and voice acting can convey the differences). Nevertheless, if you want to use it, dialects are another tool in your kit for building out a nuanced world.

If you choose to go this route you don't need an overwhelming amount of variety: using just a few key differences that distinguish social groups in meaningful ways can be very effective.

15 MESSENGER BIRDS

When people are able to travel considerable distances from home, or when they have pushed the boundaries of their political and military control over a large geographic region, their communications needs change.  Communications must travel farther, and ideally faster, simply to overcome the delays caused by distance. This is especially true of messages for official purposes, such as for the government or military, and the needs of commerce are often just as pressing.

To the extent that faster communications are achieved, it becomes easier for authority to exert control over a broad region, for trade and commerce to operate effectively, and for people to be informed of what is transpiring in distant places.

Not Ravens, Really

In an upcoming Structure tip I'll talk about the more strategic implications of communications, but for today I want to concentrate on a single example of how people have hurried important messages across great distances. And that is, through the use of messenger birds.

Pictured: carrier pigeon on a Heidelberg rooftop

I am put in mind of this by the recent popularity of George R.R. Martin's Game of Thrones, in which message-carrying ravens play a prominent role in moving official communications about the countryside. In our timeline, though, ravens have not historically been used for this purpose. One assumes Martin chose them because their use makes the setting more unique in a world-building sense, and because, as a very intelligent bird, an argument can be made for their being trainable to this role and purpose. Presumably his very-smart ravens have far better homing instincts than the breed of raven we are familiar with.  In reality, the long-distance orientation abilities that allow homing pigeons to do their homing do not seem to be present in ravens, and so bring into question whether or not those birds, be they ever so intelligent, could indeed be trained to this task.

But regardless of the newly popular fantasy role of ravens as message carriers, in today's tip I'll look at the historical use of pigeons as messenger birds and the implications of this for a fictional setting.

My Fine Feathered Friend

No one knows exactly when or how humans started to use birds to carry messages, but there are reports of homing pigeons used in late dynastic Egypt, ancient Greek and Roman times. Carrier pigeons were used to announce winners of the Olympic games in 700 BC, and Caesar used pigeons to carry messages from the field back to command posts during his conquest of Gaul.[1]  It has been posited they may have been used for this purpose as long as man has domesticated doves (doves being one of the breeds of pigeons, and a popular domesticated bird) and become aware of their homing ability. This means their service as messenger birds could date to even thousands of years before the period we have records for.  Positing the use of carrier pigeons in ancient Sumeria, for instance, may not be a very wild leap of the imagination.

Pigeons develop their sense of "home" after about 6 weeks of age or whenever they begin to explore their home environment in their early life. They form a bond with the home site, and it is a bond man has spent centuries scratching his head over to figure out.  If the birds are moved elsewhere, they know home is "over there."  Pigeons become uncomfortable at not being "at home" and will navigate across country to find it.  This behavior is seen in wild pigeons, and selective breeding in domesticated ones has produced birds with even stronger homing instincts and in some instances faster flying traits.  Pigeons have been known to fly over 1,000 miles back to a home location. Their average flying speed is around 50 mph (80 km/h) over moderate distances (about 500 miles range), but speeds close to 60 mph have been clocked in top racers over short (100 mile) distances.[2]

How Do They Do That?

Even today we still do not thoroughly understand the biomechanisms of bird navigation and homing instincts (although more insights have been achieved in this area in the last 40 years than in times past).  Some birds, especially migratory breeds, can see well at night and orient at least in part by the position of stars in the sky. Pigeons--probably the most widely used message carrier, historically—do not fit this pattern. They are not by nature migratory. The visibility of stars seems irrelevant to their homing ability. They do not see well at night, preferring to sleep during that time, and exhibit distress if released to fly when it is dark.

Most scientific research suggests that pigeons seem to use a "compass and map" system to find their way. They orient in direction geomagnetically - it has been found that they have a concentration of iron in the tops of their beaks, and it is assumed this helps them identify true north regardless of their location. Then they fly about, orientating to subsonics, olfactory input (some research indicated they use an "olfactory map," although this is less efficacious the farther they are from home), and some as yet undetermined (possibly geomagnetic) orientation to determine where they are on a "map" in relation to their home.[2, 3] Then off they go. Especially closer to home, they commonly orient according to physical landmarks, like humans who will follow a road and turn right at the stream, and so on.

How Bird Mail Works

Although their homing abilities are not 100% understood scientifically, they are understood and applied practically and have been taken advantage of by humans over the centuries. Any time someone needed to get a message quickly from one point to another—providing they could plan ahead and bring pigeons with them from the recipient's location—it was (and is) possible to speed messages across country in this manner.

Pigeons are gentle and easy to domesticate.  In Europe they have traditionally been raised in dovecotes, a specialized structure that houses multiple nests and gives the birds free egress to fly about as they will. There is no concern that they'll fly off and get lost, or just up and leave home, since that is not in their nature.

Birds raised in this home location are then crated up and shipped out to wherever people have a need for them.  When their services are needed a message is written, rolled up into a small cylinder of paper, and attached to the bird's leg. Then it is set loose to find its way home, carrying the message with it.

Pictured: Dovecote, Senneville manor, Eure, Normandy, France.

The Many Purposes Served by Carrier Pigeons

This is not an exhaustive list, but a representative sampling to help you get started thinking about ways messenger birds might be of use in your setting.  These are perhaps the most common purposes, historically speaking, in our own timeline:

Mercantile Needs. Pigeons were used by merchants houses in distant cities that needed to communicate speedily about market issues.  It is believed that the great moneylending and banking house of Rothschild in Europe (to name just one) relied upon carrier pigeons to convey time-sensitive financial information throughout their finance network. In this manner, Nathan Rothschild made a killing on the London markets following the Battle of Waterloo, and vastly improved his house's fortunes in the process. [4]

Military Outposts and Reports. When the birds are released from forward military positions, they head back "home" to a main military headquarters in a static location.  This was done not only by Caesar in Gaul, but by military leaders throughout the Middle Ages, and by military forces during World War I, when—in the days before radio communications—carrier pigeons were the essential means of rapid communications between the front lines and command posts. The use of carrier pigeons by the military continued through WWII, when the UK used over 250,000 pigeons and even established the Dickin Medal, a decoration of valor to recognize heroic performance by these extraordinary birds.[5]  China still trains thousands of carrier pigeons today, for use in the eventuality that electronic communications should break down.[6]

Private Personal Communications. Any nobleman or prosperous burger with the ability to support a birdkeeper and dovecote could take advantage of pigeons' homing ability. Messenger birds were carried along on long trips, pilgrimages, on military expeditions, or even just to country houses, and used to pass important messages or information back to the home base as needed. Akbar the Great, a 16th century Mughal emperor, traveled everywhere with his colony of 10,000 pigeons, some bred for message carrying, others for their beauty and ability to tumble through the air.

Government Communications. Pigeons have long been used to relay reports and vital news from distant locations to the seat of governmental power. Regional governors in China commonly used pigeons to report back to bureaucratic or autocratic authorities about events in their jurisdictions, as did the Mughal empire in India. The same has been done in various places in Europe, although not generally on the scale seen in the East.

News. At various times news agencies and interested individuals have sped reports via carrier pigeon. The reporting of Olympic games results is an early example of this in 700 BC. In other cases, news of invasions and natural disasters have been conveyed via bird. When organized news reporting took place before the invention of the telegraph, carrier pigeons were often the only recourse to quickly transmit important news from afar.

Uses in the Modern Era. Even in modern technology eras, carrier pigeons can serve a purpose. Messenger birds have utility anywhere that electronic or other high-tech communications cannot reach or are temporarily ineffective. In the Syrian civil war presently underway, for instance, insurgents use carrier pigeons because their walkie talkies do not have great enough range. A French lawmaker, Jean-Pierre Decool, recently advocated for France to reinstitute carrier pigeon forces. Pointing to the Syrian example and possible catastrophic scenarios for the west (such as nuclear disaster, a hurricane, and so on), he notes, "Where modernity stops, pigeons can still go through."[7]

Anti-Pigeon Measures

Of course, once it is known that these birds may carry important messages, they can become the targets for enemies wishing to stop those messages from getting through. The Chinese routinely equipped their birds with bells and whistles to scare away birds of prey. When Paris was besieged by Germans during the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-1871, the Germans deployed hawks to hunt down the pigeons that were carrying news and intelligence out of the city.  Oftentimes pigeon keepers would send the same message via multiple birds, so that if some should fall, the message would still get through. Enough redundancy in the messaging system often assured effective communications. Some groups like the British Navy had an exemplary record for effective message transmission, regardless of the conditions of war or adversity they found themselves in. In the end, it has been difficult for enemies to completely halt carrier pigeons or the communications they transmit.

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Here's a Laugh:

Carrier Pigeon Faster Than ADSL Internet Service...in 2009!

In September 2009, a South African IT company, based in Durban, pitted an 11-month-old bird armed with a data-packed 4GB memory stick against the ADSL service from the country's biggest internet service provider, Telkom. The pigeon named Winston took an hour and eight minutes to carry the data 80 km (50 mi). Including downloading, it took two hours, six minutes, and 57 seconds for the data to arrive, the same amount of time it took to transfer 4% of the data over the ADSL (Wikipedia)

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Essential Elements

So now you have some good ideas about how homing birds can be used to facilitate communications. If your fictional world lacks high-speed telecommunications (or if they exist with limitations), people there are very likely looking for ways to communicate important messages more rapidly. If you want to use birds for this purpose, here are some elements that must be in place to support their use:

1. Birds with homing ability. In our timeline of course, this is the pigeon, and its various subspecies that have been bred for the purpose.  You may have an Earth-analog pigeon in your setting, or some other species entirely. But a flying creature with this innate ability is the first essential ingredient for a messenger bird network.

2. Domesticated birds.  It's not enough to have a species floating around with a homing instinct; it must also be one that has been domesticated. Domesticated means people have adopted the creatures, given them places to live, see to their care, feeding, and housing, and (in the case of the messenger function, perhaps) train them.  This leads to specialized occupations (birdkeeper or pigeon trainer, for example), to specialized structures (like dovecotes) to house them, and a body of expertise and lore about the caretaking and breeding of these birds.

3. Writing.   Messenger birds carry messages, and by the nature of their small stature, they seem constrained to carry concise messages written on paper that can be rolled small and affixed to a leg.  (In the East, rice paper was traditionally used for carrier pigeon messages because it is so thin and rolls small and compact.)  A culture must therefore have the craft and skill of writing, the ability to do so on paper (as opposed to, say, clay tablets imprinted with cuneiform), and ideally some good ways to compress messages small and affix them in a secure and weather-proof manner to the bird's leg.

4. Systems and networks of use. Carrier pigeons will have the most utility where there is an infrastructure to support their use: they are raised in many different "home bases," transportation services are accustomed to moving caged birds to new locations and know how to care for them underway;  government, business, and private entities understand and appreciate how to use the birds.  This represents the bird-intensive end of the scale. On the other hand we might have:

5.  Messenger birds as specialized surprises. In cultures unaccustomed to these birds, their use can be quite a surprise and provide a tactical if not strategic advantage to the party that employs  them to speed communications.

6. Fantastic, magical, and technical exceptions to the above. If your culture has magic or technology you may be able to rationally bend some or all of these rules.  Magic might allow birds to speak messages, thus eliminating the need to attach anything written to their bodies.  Technology might create automaton or robotic birds that can follow complex, pre-programmed sets of orders and are not easy prey for ordinary predators. And so on.  Just remember that if you are introducing magic or tech into the scenario, opposing forces will also be using these means to counter than a messenger bird can do.

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So there you have it: some ideas on ways to implement messenger birds in a setting, and things to put in place in order to facilitate the process.  If your culture needs to move messages rapidly across great distances, this is an effective approach to consider. And if your birds serve heroically, maybe your world will also need the equivalent of Great Britain's Dickin Medal to honor heroics in battle.

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1. On pigeon use in the ancient world: Feral Pigeons, by Richard F. Johnston and Marián Janiga, Oxford University Press, 1995, p 208. Google Books link .

2. Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homing_pigeon

3. Feral Pigeons,  p 208-211. The theories about pigeon navigation are many and there is some evidence for all of these claims. It is thought they orient geomagnetically, but also obtain directional information on their outward journey to release sites. This might be geomagnetic orientation, olfactory sensing, sonic orientation and in some cases possibly visual perceptions in the UV range. There is strongest evidence for geomagnetic orientation playing the strongest role: all pigeons are able to orient to relative compass directions and strike out towards what they consider home, but the basis for this ability remains unknown.

4. Carrier Pigeons Helped Create the World's Most Famous Banking Fortune. Geoff Ficke,  http://ezinearticles.com/?Carrier-Pigeons-Helped-Create-the-Worlds-Most-Famous-Banking-Fortune&id=1711198

5. Pigeons at War display at Bletchley Park, the codebreaker museum in the U.K. http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/content/visit/whattosee/pigions.rhtm

6. China Trains Army of Messenger Pigeons. Malcolm Moore, Telegraph, Mar 2, 2011. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/8356921/China-trains-army-of-messenger-pigeons.html

7. In France, a Mission to Return the French Miliary's Carrier Pigeons to Active Duty. Gabrielle Parussini, Wall Street Journal, Nov 11, 2012. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324439804578104933926157320.html

Bonus Link, just kinda interesting:

Pigeons Get a New Look. Carl Zimmer, New York Times, Feb 4, 2013 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/05/science/pigeons-a-darwin-favorite-carry-new-clues-to-evolution.html?pagewanted=all

Pictured: Carrier pigeon released from British tank, 1918.

16 SIGNAL FIRES

Wherever people communicate, they have tried to speed their communications over long distances. In this tip we'll look at the use of signal fires and the surprisingly efficient service they can provide in low-tech environments.

Where There's Smoke, There's Fire

Fire, and the smoke that it produces, can be seen by eye for many miles. For this reason, signal fires were typically ignited at an elevation, to maximize visibility. Watchtowers, lookout points, purpose-built signal towers, even ordinary hilltops and slopes, have been used as staging points for signal fires.

At night, it is the light from the fire that is seen. During daytime, it is the smoke. If there is fog, haze, or light cloud, it is possible for smoke to be indistinguishable from these atmospheric effects, so other materials were sometimes added to change the smoke color and make it more visible. This was the case along the Great Wall of China, where wolf dung was added to blacken the smoke.

At its simplest, signaling with fire or smoke is very straightforward. The meaning of the signal is agreed upon and understood beforehand. For instance, it might be that the lighting of a bonfire on a hilltop means raiders have been sighted, and now local troops will go to that position to help. Aborigines in Australia would light fires at the border of another tribe’s territory simply to announce they were in the area.

Beacons (from same root as "beck" or "beckon, to give a signal), are any signal set upon a height. Most often these have been signal fires that give an alarm of danger, or pass news of other great events (the death of a monarch, arrival of a fleet, and so on.) The sighting of the Spanish Armada in England sparked a readiness alert, using signal fires to pass the message from Devon in the south of England to Carlisle in the north of Scotland, a distance of over 300 miles, in only a few hours.[1] Another example of rapid transmission of momentous news is the death of Alexander the Great: within a week, all of the civilized world was talking about his demise, and what would happen next. Even news of the fall of Troy was passed in this manner, from Agamemnon to his queen Clytemnestra back home in Greece.[2]

More Complex Messages

Fire and smoke signals have been used for military and informational purposes throughout history, with records of the Persians, Palestinians, and Greeks relying upon signal systems of this sort. Beyond the simple "alert" level, the next layer of complexity was to encode actual messages in the signal. Both Native American tribes as well as the Chinese manning the Great Wall created multiple puffs of smoke, using the number and spacing of the puffs to convey more sophisticated messages. This process often required two or more men to manipulate a hide[3] to briefly smother the fire, then lift it again to release a puff of smoke. At night, the light of the signal fire would be occluded and then revealed again, to emulate the signal pattern.

Messages passed in this way along the Great Wall could cover up to 500 miles in a day. Native Americans could vary the meaning of their signals not only by puffs of smoke, but by where they chose to set their fire. Transmitting from the peak or the side slope of a hill affected the meaning of the message.

Coded Messages

The most sophisticated form of signal fire messaging seems to be that developed by Polybius the Greek historian (200-118 BC). He developed a matrix that broke down the alphabet into a series of number codes ranging from 11 to 55. To signal with this system, which actually spelled out text messages word for word, the signaler would stand with one to five torches in each hand. The number and combination corresponded to the indicated letter in Polybius' matrix, which came to be called the Polybius Square. Thus messages could be encoded and transmitted over distance. It is also a simple matter to substitute one letter for another and thus encrypt messages with this substitution code. In fact, Polybius' work has lived on for centuries as a foundational element of cryptography, where alphabet symbols are manipulated in code.

TIP: In a way, it could be said that signal beacons are the earliest form of "telegraph" that societies develop. It is a method that works without needing industrial systems to support it. To add a signal fire network to your setting, consider these points:

- Who fears invasion and has a need to be alerted to border transgressions?

- Who has momentous news that must be passed quickly over long distances? Remember that beacons convey information much faster than a man on horseback can travel.

- Where there is need only for a quick alarm, the signaling system will be simpler than when complex messages must be passed.

- What is the practical line of sight distance from signal tower to tower (or hilltop, or whatever)? This determines how many outposts must be manned in order to maintain the network, and requires a manpower commitment to keep in working order.

- How sophisticated is the messaging system? If smoke puffs, only pre-set messages can be conveyed. If language or code based, complex messages can be sent.

- Who is trained in this kind of messaging? What support systems exist for the network? (Refueling, training, etc.)

- Who is responsible for the signal system's operations?

- Are signaling systems an occasionally used thing, reserved mostly for emergencies, or are they a commonplace tool relied upon by the elite, the military, border lords, or whoever else has the use of them?

- What are the consequences of important messages passed quickly? If your setting uses this system of communication, there are probably few things which are faster. The speedy delivery of news and alarms can have social and economic impact, as well as military. Think through the ripple effects.

It is worth noting that even in higher-tech environments (such as the modern world, or a science fictional setting), signals based on light (if not smoke) might still be the most practical or undetectable method of passing urgent messages across distances. Whether you want people to use portable laser-light devices, or simply flash Morse Code with a hand-held mirror, variations on the "signal fire" (or light) theme can be worked into other settings as well. A society does not have to be (relatively) primitive in order to find utility in this approach to communications.

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1. Dahl, Roald. Over To You: 10 Stories of Flyers and Flying. Taylor & Francis, 1946. At Google Books. http://bit.ly/12Wvd9s

2. Nautical Magazine: A Magazine for Those Interested in Ships and the Sea. Brown, Son & Ferguson, 1871. At Google Books. http://bit.ly/172oAme

3. Blankets were almost never used for this purpose, for they catch fire too easily. A hide, often dampened if sufficient water was at hand, was the best thing to withstand the heat and capture the smoke for this style of messaging.

Pictured: the Polybius Square

Pictured: The Smoke Signal by Frederic Remington (1905)

17 HIGH-SPEED TELECOMMUNICATIONS

As communications become faster over time, the first thing they do is the obvious: they pass message traffic over distances very rapidly, perhaps even instantaneously, depending on the technology that underlies this function.

What does this mean for a fictional world?

TIP: Telecommunications (meaning simply, communications over a distance) have a profound effect on governance, trade, politics, law enforcement and military actions, the spread of knowledge, news, rumor, and popular opinion. No longer are people tied to face-to-face talk or written communications that move no faster than horse or carrier pigeon. The more extensive the telecommunications systems in a world, the easier it is for large territories to be controlled or influenced, and the easier it is for all of the above-named functions (government, military actions, etc) to be enacted effectively on a large scale.

How Evolved are the Telecoms on Your World?

There are two directions this question can be approached from.

1. The Organic Development method. In this approach, you let your world evolve in whatever manner is making logical sense up to the point where you stop world development and start storytelling. Telecommunications will be however sophisticated (or simple) they have "naturally" grown to be, given the tech development curve and social forces up to that point.

There is unfortunately no simple formula for arriving at this spot: there are too many variables in play for any given world. You as world builder will need to logic your way through cause-and-effect of social and scientific and/or magical development, in order to map the progress of communications in your world.

2. The Plot-Centric Method. The second approach is to build backwards, based on the plot-related needs of your story or game. This sets a static point of "max telecommunications development" first. In other words, you first decide how swift and effective you want (or need) communications to be to serve the needs of your plot, and then reason back from there to determine what systems are in place to support that level of functionality.

You might pick a level of telecoms development that is simply in synch with the general tech level of your world: a medieval setting may rely on couriers and beacon fires, while a near-modern setting has telegraphs, telephones, and air-mail. On the other hand, you might have a particular plot constraint to think about: if you have human colonies in space, and you want them to have independence movements away from Earth authority, then this will be more likely if there are no speedy communications (or travel) between the colonies and Earth.

Perhaps you have something very specific in mind. If you want a month to pass before a traveler on horseback brings word that a rich uncle has died, or if you want the Galactic Empire to move against rebels the day after they rebel, consider your specific plot requirements before framing telecoms in the setting.

Note: The plot-centric method might seem easier to begin with, since there is a particular point you can focus on. But as with all things world-building, "every thing implies something else." There is ultimately no less work involved in the plot-based approach than in the organic one, if you want to give a proper treatment to what you are developing.

TIP 2: Use the speed of telecommunications to make your setting more interconnected and interactive across great distances. When things follow this pattern, it is easier for powerful entities to project their presence around the world, or across space. Conversely, you will hinder connections and info flow if the telecoms are slower or non-existent.

Historical Earth examples can give some good guiding principles for when and how you might want to introduce high speed communications to your setting. For example, England's early communications with the colonies in the New World moved only at the speed a written message could be carried by ship on a voyage that could take months to complete. But by time telegraphy became developed, England and other European powers used it to aid in their governance of colonies around the world.

For instance, telegraph was first used extensively in India by the British East India Company in 1851, facilitating trade. By 1853, 4000 miles of telegraph line were being constructed for the use of the colonial government, followed by telephone development in the 1890s. Swift telecommunications transformed the speed at which information traveled: authorities could be informed right away of problems, advice and instruction could be sent out to local areas nearly immediately, and response times vastly improved for everything from making commercial trade decisions to the ability to muster armed forces to respond to a crisis.

Some Not-So-Historical Examples

One of the more obvious applications of high-speed telecoms is in science fiction settings. Traditionally, when we want, say, colonies to have independence movements, we make sure that they are not only distant from Earth (in other solar systems) but also that communications is not instant or speedy. This creates slow response of central government to events on the periphery, and it is a logical framework for creating pools of independence that don't feel very in-touch with the Folks Who Sent 'Em Out There.

In the alternative, where we want to foster a more closely networked society, one where governance and trade operate relatively easily, we do this by (among other things) ensuring there are swift communications easily available. In Star Trek, subspace radio frequencies allow messaging over vast light year distances, swift enough that it is no different than making a phone or radio call today. Combine this with the warp-speed capability of Trek starships, and settled space becomes a place where we can talk and travel as readily between areas as we do right now (relatively speaking) between different regions on Earth.

TIP 3: Think about the tech that supports your telecoms networks and the consequences of using it.

If you use Earth-analog technologies, we already know how that stuff works out (at least up to present time): from dashing couriers, to postal coaches, to telegraph, telephone, and internet. But what if your tech is different? How might things evolve differently in a steampunk world? Or one where magic is used to send messages long distances?

If wizards with enchanted magic globes or scrying mirrors can see and speak to others instantly, does this replace the need for telephones? Does it mean telephony will never be developed because "long-distance communications is something only wizards can do"? Consider the mind-sets that lead to the development of tech in your world (or the lack of it), and extrapolate how this will influence the development of communications.

Looking at the impact of telecommunications may not be an essential exercise if you're doing a very finite setting and communications don't play a large role (although you should have an inkling of what's going on in the background, anyway). But once you start widening your scope, you'll need to deal with this aspect of mass communications. After all, this is about a lot more than just message sending-it's about information and the exercise of authority on a world-wide (or even larger) scale.

Pictured: Morse telegraphy featured in "The Century of Progress" print from Currier & Ives featuring the "Lightning Steam Press", the telegraph, locomotive, and steam boat (1876).

18 SOURCES OF GOVERNMENT POWER

The Will of the People

Growing up in western democracies, as most of us have, we often hear the phrase, "the will of the people." This reflects political thought that gained currency in the 18th century with various democratic political movements. The notion behind it is simply this: a government cannot exist without the will (consent) of the people who are governed by it.

In the political history of our timeline, this concept explained why bad kings should be deposed, and why democratic government had "more" validity than those established by the other common principle of the time: Divine Right.

Divine Right

Divine Right is the concept that a ruler rules because he is the Chosen of God—perhaps even officially anointed and blessed by the Church that is part of his realm. Kings ruled by Divine Right throughout much of European history. Their coronation and anointing by a leader of the Church signified that they were specially chosen for their task of governance.

The same principle has applied throughout much of history, from the god-descended emperor of Japan, to the Chinese emperor ruling with the mandate of heaven (that is to say, ruling as long as he was virtuous in the eyes of the gods), to the god-on-earth Pharaohs of Egypt. In tribal cultures from Africa to North America, many leaders rose to prominence not only because their peers accepted them as leaders, but because a spiritual or supernatural experience (such as a vision quest) had marked them out in some exceptional manner and helped to legitimate their authority.

This quirky idea that leaders ruled only because the people willed it, was quite radical at the time. In highly religious cultures this could even be considered blasphemous, for it clearly defied the will of the gods. Yet we have seen over time that even in religious cultures the will of the people—or at least, the will of powerful elites—seems to be the ultimate deciding factor in whether or not a leader will stay in power.

I am using "the will of the people" here not so much in its democratic tradition as in its very literal sense. What is it that a population desires for itself? What is it that they consent to? The government they will into existence, or that they permit to gain sway over them, reflects in its most primal sense "the will of the people." This might amount to our modern saying, "People get the government they deserve," meaning, "the government they allow to exist"—for should people truly rebel against a given leadership, the governing group is likely to topple from power.

So what does all this mean for world building?

Ruling the Masses

These historical bits from our own past point to a central concern of world building. What legitimates the authority of a government?

TIP: When looking at how a civilization is governed, start by asking: where do rulers or governments get their authority from? We're not talking simply about documents (like the Constitution) or rituals (like the coronation of a king) here, but rather, what underlying principle or belief forms the basis of authority to govern.

This may not be articulated in any given society: whether or not it is depends on a culture's tendency to analyze or philosophize about such things. But from the meta-viewpoint, you as world creator should know what the (perhaps unspoken) cultural assumptions are that empower governing authorities in your world.

This basis, whatever it is, colors the government and social interactions which grow from it.

Underlying Principle and How It Might Manifest

Here are some starter ideas and examples of the types of legitimation that can occur in various cultures.

Divine Right

1. Bloodline. Only someone who is a god incarnate, or descended from the gods, has the right to rule.

2. Divine blessing, and hence authority to rule. Someone must be selected by the gods or marked by them in a particular manner to legitimate their governance. There might be a ceremony of initiation to symbolize this blessing (like the traditional European anointing of kings), or a spiritual distinction bestowed (as shown by a supernatural event or encounter with the divine).

The ruler might be assumed to have divine blessing in a conditional manner, as with Chinese emperors who ruled with "the Mandate of Heaven": that is, only someone virtuous in the eyes of heaven could rule, and if he lost that virtue by failing to fulfill his obligations as emperor, he would lose the Mandate and therefore the right to be emperor.[1]

3. Divine powers. Some leaders and their governments come to power on the basis of having magical or supernatural powers bestowed upon them by the divine or the spirit world. Some African tribes and the Aztec nation, with its powerful priest-kings, are examples of this.

Fantasy settings in particular offer rich ground for this sort of empowerment principle, for such settings can plausibly have many gods or spirit forces actively engaged with their followers. Their effect on leaders, rulers, and the world can be immediate and tangible in a way that we haven't seen in our real-world history.  Whereas in history, the Doge of Venice would marry the sea upon taking office to ensure prosperity for the city, in a fantasy setting this could be much more than a ceremony of state. This initiation could literally involve a sea goddess and her jealous or spiteful reactions if she ever becomes unhappy with the Doge would be something to carefully reckon with in the future.

Science fiction settings may also have their equivalent of "divine powers" bestowing the authority to govern. Perhaps technology is used to overawe a population and give the appearance of a divine imprimatur. Or possibly psionics serve the same purpose that magic does in fantasy settings, and persons so gifted are presumed to be specially favored by the gods.

~ ~ ~

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1. For more on this interesting take on divine authority and how it differs from the European concept of Divine Right, see this About.com article on the Mandate of Heaven. http://asianhistory.about.com/od/ancientchina/f/What-Is-The-Mandate-Of-Heaven.htm

Pictured: Chinese Emperor Kangxi (1654-1722), regarded as a noble, wise and compassionate ruler, undoubtedly ruling with the Mandate of Heaven.

Popular Consent

This is the process by which the people themselves agree to a government structure and the individuals who will lead it, rather than looking to outside forces or divine approval to determine what their government must look like.

For a person (or persons) to exercise power in such a structure, they usually need to gain some level of popular acclaim to hold office and govern.[1] This is most evident when leaders or rulers are chosen on the basis of elections: the vote itself is a measure of acclaim. But what makes someone "vote-worthy"? For that matter, what makes someone worthy at all of being appointed to positions of power or otherwise being trusted to govern?

The practical reality is that people tend to consent to be governed by individuals who have achieved some measure of acclaim in their society. It might be self-generated acclaim, like the "popularity" of a politician on the heels of a well-run campaign. Or, it might be public recognition for things a person has actually accomplished. No matter how noteworthy a person's accomplishments, if they have labored out of the public eye and their distinctions go unremarked, they are unlikely to rise to prominence and hence to power.

In a system of popular consent, the populace ultimately agrees to be led by one who rises to distinction, or a leader or leaders are actively chosen by the populace or an elite subset thereof. A person acclaimed by his peers in this manner gains the legitimacy to rule. This is also the process by which democratic government structures are created, in which the authority of government is exercised by many.

1 Popular Acclaim. Acclaim can be gained by anything from a crowd cheering for one person in an outburst of spontaneous support, to a council of elders endorsing an individual, to holding votes and elections on any scale.

A distinctive action or body of accomplishments are often associated with earning popular acclaim.

Examples:

a) Heroes. A leader returns victorious from war and is heralded as a hero worthy of leading the people. Alexander the Great followed this pattern.

b) A movement for change. Successful revolutions, military coups, and other political changes born out of rebellion or resistance fall into this category. Such movements often produce individuals who lead the movement, and are acclaimed by the masses at some tipping point where they gain political ascendancy. Robespierre is an example of this, rising to power as a leader during the French Revolution.

b) Combat challenge. An individual might challenge another for a leadership position through combat, with the victor deemed fit to rule. This is a practice more common in certain tribal settings, or environments where people expect their leaders to be strong warriors.

c) Elections. Relatively broad scale elections occur in which the finally tally of votes show who has the most popular support and thus the authority to govern. If elections are honest and not rigged, it could also be said that individuals who win the vote also garner enough acclaim along the way to stand out from the crowd and appear to be an appealing candidate.

2 Elites deciding for the masses. This is any situation where an elite chooses the members or leaders of the broader government, often from among their own number. This process is often separated from the knowledge or sight of the masses and may even be conducted behind closed doors. The "will of the people" comes into play here in that "the people" go along with what the elites decide.

Note that elites in this situation may not feel particularly obliged to bow to the actual will of the people—although the wise ones will be sure to keep the population content or disempowered (or both) lest they topple the ruling elites.

Examples:

a) Elite choice. After deliberations, a group of elites select someone to join their number or to lead them. In this way the Sioux affirmed Sitting Bull as their tribal leader[2], and many medieval towns chose their mayors.

b) Distinction by commercial success, as in a plutocracy where a wealthy person buys their way into power. The Hanseatic League of medieval Germany is an example of this, where rich and powerful merchants formed a trade organization that exercised de facto governance powers over a large area in northeastern Germany.

c) Military coups and dictatorships, where a power elite seizes control of a government and boots the previous authorities. Not all military governments have the support of the people; those that persist without popular consent will be addressed in a future tip.

d) Elections by a minority of the population, where the people qualified to vote are restricted pretty much to some elite class. Places where the voting franchise is tied to property ownership can fall into this category, as in Revolutionary America where only landowners and people worth a certain amount of income were enfranchised to vote.

e) "Open" elections stacked to keep elites in power. The elections of the Central Committee of various communist parties during the Cold War are an example of this: although a slate of candidates was presented to the people for a vote, those candidates were all part of the ruling elite. No independent or seriously contrary voice was allowed to become eligible for office. In effect, the people permitted to become office-holders were pre-selected by existing leadership.

TIP: When establishing a government for your setting, first decide what gives the government the authority to do what they are doing. Look deeper than just "laws on the books that permit their actions," for any laws can be created to justify governmental action after they are in power. Rather, here we are looking at the philosophical underpinnings, what we might call the "moral" basis of a government, and only then at how that manifests in a particular society.

Why is this government a just arrangement, and why should it exist at all? What is its fair and moral claim to authority over people?

Once you answer these questions, you will understand the basis of the moral authority of your government, and be able to logically extrapolate how this might shape the government that results. [3]

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1. This is not to say that only popularly acclaimed individuals hold power in a government. There are many instances of there being a "power behind the throne," or of clandestine individuals virtually dictating the actions and policies of a regime. Even an ostensibly second- or third-tier official might wield power out of all proportion to his official position. On a broader scale, though, our interest here is in identifying what "the people" are consciously supporting and what they believe they are getting in terms of government.

2. In the case of Sitting Bull in particular, and many Native American tribes, there was also a spiritual dimension in play when leaders were selected. Those who had some spiritual distinction gained additional favor when considered for leadership positions. But unlike the "divine right" model of governance, spiritual distinction itself was not (usually) an essential condition of being selected to govern or lead.

3. Future tips will get into details about different styles of government.

Pictured: Detail from An Election Entertainment, by William Hogarth (1755), in which Whigs buy themselves some popular acclaim before an English election by hosting a dinner at a tavern.

19 MEASUREMENTS: LENGTH AND DISTANCE

Let's say our characters live in England in the High Middle Ages. It's the 13th century, and time to take care of routine matters of daily life.

The wife is sewing new tunics for her husband, and has measured out six ells of homespun cloth for the purpose. Meanwhile, her husband is out in the fields, helping a cousin with his spring planting. He walked a full league to get to the distant allotment of land. His cousin's strip is quite ordinary but easy to spot: it is four rods wide, and the ends are marked by two oak trees a furlong apart. Later, when sowing is done, they might stop for a swim in the nearby river. It is safe to dive into from an overhanging bank, for they say the bottom is a full two fathoms deep.

Ells, rods, furlongs, fathoms: while these terms are colorful and evocative of a well-developed setting, what do they mean, exactly, and should we be describing things this way to our readers?

These measures of length and distance have long since fallen out of common use, and the modern reader may well wonder exactly what distances are referred to here. (The meaning of the terms is given below.) At some ineffable point, "length" morphs into "distance," the longer gauge of the two, but in either case, we as world builders are left with this dilemma: what do we call these units of measure in our custom-built setting? How are they determined? And will our terminology make sense to our audience?

TIP: Generally speaking, archaic or original terms of measurement make a setting feel more distinctive, but there is a risk of confusing the reader by using them. When referring to length and distance, use contemporary measurements if this a) makes sense within the narrative and b) will NOT create an anachronism in your story or setting.

Measurements unique to the time and place are appropriate if they are defined (explicitly or through context) and make sense to the reader. Which way to go is a judgment call based on style preferences and the needs of the narrative or setting. Personally, I recommend judicious use of period-appropriate terminology, not simple conversion into our modern miles, meters, inches and so forth. This avoids anachronisms, and takes advantage of a great tool for creating a sense of place.

Pictured: medieval manor map shows fields marked out in furlongs.

What's With All These Odd Terms, Anyway?

How societies come up with units of measure is a pretty quirky thing. In pre-industrial settings, measurements were typically based on something culturally significant, of practical use in daily life, and/or based on the length of one's limbs or digits. A horse is so many "hands" high, the human foot is used as a measure of length, and so on.

The "ell" mentioned above, for instance, was a measure of cloth reaching from one shoulder to the end of the opposite middle finger. This concept came about because cloth merchants would hold cloth to one shoulder and pull it out to arm's length to measure off units for sale. (In continental Europe the ell referred to a shorter unit; see list below for details.) In this way one's own body—always conveniently handy—was used as the rough measuring tool. This unit was later called a "yard," and also used to measure the length of arrows.  Old literature sometimes refers to these as having "a cloth-yard shaft."

Standardization

Obviously, something like the ell varies in length from individual to individual. How then do units of measure become more standardized? Normally this is driven by the needs of trade, construction, and manufacturing. The need for precise craftsmanship and accurate market accounting demanded that units of measure be broadly agreed upon. The ell, for instance, did not forever remain a varying distance between shoulder and finger-end, but was eventually set at a certain distance (the yard, and later, the meter) so that merchants could measure out goods in standard units.

In industrial and post-industrial societies, units of measure are invented to reflect the evolving needs of science and technology. Arbitrary systems evolved like the metric measurement system (easily divisible by 10), which helped streamline manufacturing and made it easier to share technology between societies and cultures.

Length and Distance in Your Own Setting

For world building purposes, I encourage you to consider what the common units of measurement in your world will be. You may not think you will need this, but the first time you refer to distances specifically ("10 miles to town" instead of "quite a distance to town"), how you frame this is going to matter.

If you want to give it a thorough treatment, you can create entire lists of weights and measures (including their unique names), but this isn't necessary for most common needs in story or adventure. Still, it is important to look at when and how you refer to quantified units, and then ask yourself what works best in that space: a contemporary equivalent of the measure? Or something framed within the context of your world and culture?

If your setting is an Earth analog, terms like those on the list below may be perfectly fine to use. If your world is more unique, or it is definitely not-Earth, you might want something customized to the setting that does not remind readers of Earth cultures when they first read the term.

To provide some inspiration as you consider measures of length and distance, here is a brief recap of how some common units came to be. I have seen some of these terms used incorrectly by authors attempting to create an "old time-y" sense of period in their writing. If you use these measurements taken directly from our own history, be sure you understand what they are referring to. There is nothing more silly than writing "He hiked for days over many tiring furlongs to the city," when a furlong is only 220 yards.

Most of these units are now rarely used or are completely obsolete, but I think their genesis offers useful food for thought. These terms fit well into some fictional settings, while for others you may want to retain the measurement concept but give it some other name that fits your world and is not evocative of the European or Classical World cultures that most of these derive from.

Be sure to check out the links at the end of this tip for more resources on this subject.

Common Length and Distance Measurements (Pre-Industrial)

Note: The arm and hand-based measures here were originally mostly used in construction work of various sorts, allowing the laborer to measure on the spot with his own limbs and appendages. See the Da Vinci-based illustration at the end of this tip for examples of relative body-based proportions.

Finger: the length of the middle finger, from the tip to the joint where the finger is attached to the hand. Equivalent to 2 "nails" or 4.5 inches (11.43 cm). This term can also refer to the "digit," a finger-width measurement equal to ¾ inch which was a common unit of measure in Anglo-Saxon England.

Hand: one hand equal 4 inches (10.16 cm). Today it lingers on as a measurement for the height of horses, taken from fore-hoof to point of withers.

Palm: the width of a person's palm, equal to 4 digits or 1/6 cubit, or about 3 inches (7.5 cm). Commonly used in medieval and early modern Britain. When the palm is measured from the wrist to the end of the middle finger, this distance is called a span, equal to 9 inches (22.86 cm). Romans called the shorter version palmus minor and the longer one palmus major.

Cubit: from the Latin cubitum, "elbow," representing the length of a man's forearm from elbow to tip of middle finger. This length is about 18 inches (45 cm). This unit of measure was frequently mentioned in the Bible, but was used through Roman times and in English measures as well, with some variation in how many digits this broke down to, and thus slightly varying lengths of cubit. In the English system the digit is ¾ inch, making the ordinary cubit 23 digits long, or exactly 18 inches.

Ell: the word comes from Latin for ulna, which originally meant elbow, but the evolution of the term is not entirely clear. Some think the ell was originally a double forearm length, i.e. 2 cubits or 36 inches (the same as a yard). The original English cloth ell is longer than a yard, being the distance from shoulder to fingers of the opposite hand. This derives from cloth merchants holding cloth at the shoulder with one hand and pulling the piece through the other hand. The ell as measured on the continent was shorter, more an "arm's length" unit.

Yard: distance of 3 feet or 36 inches. The yard was established around the time of King Henry's reign (1100-1135). Tradition has it that Henry I decreed that the yard should be the distance from the tip of his nose to the tip of his outstretched finger, a distance that was equal to half a fathom.

Rod: The rod and the furlong were the basic distance units used by Anglo-Saxons before the Norman Conquest. A rod was a unit of distance equal to 5.5 yards. It is thought the term might have originated as the length of an ox-goad, a pole used to control a team of oxen. This unit is also called a perch or a pole, and is also related to the length of the military polearm called the pike. The rod became the basis of land measurement, land records and taxes in England.

One square rod (272.25 sf) equals one acre. There are 40 rods in a rood, and 160 rods in an acre.

Chain: the chain was used to measure distance over land, and was typically four rods in length. The traditional British surveyor's chain (Gunter's chain, introduced by mathematician Edmund Gunter in 1620) is four rods long, equivalent to 1/80 mile, 1/10 furlong, 22 yards or 66 feet (20.1168 m). An acre is exactly 10 square chains, or four rods wide by one furlong in length.

Furlong: Medieval peasants worked open fields divided into long narrow strips of land called selions. Furlong comes from the Old English fuhrlang, meaning "the length of a furrow." This represented the distance a team of oxen could plow without needing to rest. A typical acre was measured as 4 rods wide by 1 furlong in length, and was considered to be the area a team could plow in a day.

A furlong equals 40 rods, equivalent to 10 chains, 220 yards, 660 feet, or 1/8 mile. A 200 meter dash covers a distance very close to a furlong, and this measure is commonly used today to describe the distance in horse races.

Fathom: 2 yards or 6 feet (1.829 m). The word comes from Old English faethm, "outstretched arms", because a fathom is the distance between a man's outstretched fingertips. A common measurement in England during Saxon times and into the medieval era. One foot = 1/6 fathom. The term lingers on today in nautical terminology where it is used to measure water depth, length of ship's cables, and so on.

League: The Romans adopted this ancient Celtic unit of measure as the leuga , and it became a common distance measurement throughout western Europe. It roughly represented how far a person could walk in an hour. The original Celtic unit was rather short (about 1.4 statute miles-perhaps a reflection of the terrain they had to cover), but over time the unit grew longer, and varied also from country to country. As a rule of thumb, an English league in the Middle Ages was about 2 miles long. In later times it came to reckon about 3 miles in length, perhaps a reflection of road improvements and changes to terrain as England's great forests were cut down.

Some uses of these terms:

- If something is visible "for miles around," but you don't want to say miles, put it in leagues (but remember: one league is three times longer than a mile).

- Land measurements will be in furlongs, chains and rods. League is used to measure travel or distance between settlements.

- Construction work will reference many of the body-based measurements. A carpenter might build a table three cubits wide, while a door sill might rise one hand high.

- Some convenient measurements, like feet and yards, are the same as today (and since they are not obsolete, are not included on the above list as individual items).

BONUS LINKS

Here's a fun automated conversion chart. What is one mile if you're expressing it in leagues, chains, rods or cubits? Plug in one number here, and get instant equivalency in all other length and distance measures. http://www.unitconversion.org/unit_converter/length-ex.html

Here's a pretty comprehensive dictionary that includes the history of hundreds of old measurement terms. http://www.unc.edu/~rowlett/units/index.html

Pictured: A version of Leonardo Da Vinci's Vetruvian Man illustration, showing the proportions of a man, showing the dimensions from which various length and distance measurements are derived. (Credit: Unitfreak / Wikimedia Commons.)

20 SIGNS AND OMENS

A sign is a symbolic message from supernatural or divine forces. It conveys information or advice to the observer, usually something that cannot be known by ordinary means. One particular type of sign is an omen, which portends good or ill at some point in the future.

While the physical event or thing that is a sign may be obvious (such as sighting a sacred animal associated with a god), its exact meaning is often obscure. The sense made of such encounters depends upon how well the sign is interpreted by the observer, or by a wise person skilled in reading such things.

TIP: Determine your society's attitude towards signs and omens. While signs can be simple set dressing to a narrative, they can also be given much more weight and can play an important role in the spiritual and personal life of a given culture. If they are valued, decide what amounts to a sign and how folks (and specific characters) react to such things. This can influence character actions and even plot events, if you wish to go in that direction.

The practice of interpreting signs is widespread across all human cultures—or was (in our timeline, at least), before such supernatural-based beliefs gave way to scientific skepticism. Depending upon the culture, signs might be read by anyone, by someone specially trained to the task, or by persons born with a special talent for perceiving such things.

In more skeptical settings, signs may appear but be dismissed, ignored, or believed only by a few. In the most disbelieving settings, signs are not thought to exist at all.

Note that all of these attitudes can co-exist on one world, as they do on ours, depending upon the belief set of any given culture.

The more science-based a culture becomes, the more these beliefs and practices fall by the wayside. (Or if you don't have a science philosophy on your world, cultures that dismiss portents will probably also marginalize the entire concept of signs and supernatural involvement in human affairs.) Still, even these skeptical societies are likely to retain a cultural memory of portents in the superstitions that live on into "modern" times.

An example of this from western culture is that of the broken mirror. Common belief (or today, superstition) has it that breaking a mirror portends seven years bad luck unless you immediately sprinkle salt over your left shoulder to ward off evil. While the modern person may laugh this off, there was a time when the omen of a broken mirror was taken quite seriously.

What's the Difference Between Understanding an Omen and Divination?

While signs in general are informational, omens in particular portend the future. Divination also attempts to read the future, so these are both forms of prognostication.

The difference between them is that divination is generally an action done specifically to foretell future events. Viking priests and runemasters did this, for instance, when they cast runes in order to read the future; Roman priests did it when they gutted sacrificial animals to read their entrails and learn about an impending battle. Many folk practices are divinatory as well, from rituals to learn who a girl will marry, to what part of the woods a hunter should seek in for game.

Omens, in contrast, are things or events in the world which tend to appear spontaneously. While they can be asked for or sought out, they are more likely to just suddenly happen. The observer must first recognize that what they are seeing is an omen (or a sign, which imparts more general information), and then they must interpret its meaning.

We'll get into divination in a future tip. For now, we'll focus on signs and omens: information, advice and warnings from unearthly sources.

Omens, Portents, Signs

I use these terms interchangeably here to mean a signal from the Beyond that is intended to impart information to the earthly observer.

Generally speaking, signs convey something meaningful, usually of personal significance to the observer. The exact meaning, however, can cover a great deal of territory. This might include personal guidance, answers to questions asked of gods or the universe, something of import to the community, warnings or advice in times of danger, and so on.

A sign is often linked to personal stress or urgent problems, and frequently came in answer to a spoken or unspoken plea for "a sign" about what the questioner should do or the best action to take.

People also read omens in the appearance of a creature or object associated with a god, taking this either as proof of the deity's presence, of the god's particular interest in their affairs, or as subtle guidance about their problem. For instance, ravens are associated with the Norse god Odin, for they are his messenger birds and go forth spying for him. While a Norseman might not read special meaning into an ordinary flock of ravens seen routinely in a field, a single bird cawing outside his door before sunrise a few mornings in a row could easily be read as an omen or a sign from Odin.

What that sign meant exactly would depend on what was going on in the Norseman's life at that time. If he did not feel he could properly interpret this divine sending, he might ask for help from a priest or a runemaster skilled in scrying (and in this way, divination could be used to interpret omens encountered in the world).

Pictured: examples of omens from the Nuremberg Chronicle (1493) showing natural phenomena and unnatural births

Guidelines For Creating Signs and Omens

The theory behind the appearance of signs is that a supernatural force is communicating with the earthly plane. For world building purposes, it is a good idea to start with an idea about what that supernatural force is, because that will both shape the kind of sign that appears, and affect its meaning as well. For instance:

- A Japanese ancestor spirit appears in the dream of a descendent warning of a threat to the family. At the same time, the flowers placed at that ancestor's altar tablet do not lose their bloom for a full month. Between dream and supernaturally vibrant flowers, the descendent knows this is a real warning, not simply sleep-time imagination, and heeds his ancestor's words.

- A Native American tribe is negotiating an alliance with another tribe, but the leader of negotiations sees a coyote cross his path several times when he is outside of camp. Since coyote represents Coyote, the trickster god of his tribe, this could be a warning that their potential allies are being deceitful. Or it could be a divine suggestion that trickery is needed for the negotiations to succeed. The real meaning might require the help of a shaman to figure out.

- A Norse crew is not certain where they should sail for their summer's raiding. Before they can cast runes to divine an answer to this question, a flock of ravens flies straight to their ship in the harbor, circles the mast three times, and then they speed away due west until they have vanished over the ocean. Taking this as an obvious omen from Odin, the shipmaster also sails due west, and so their viking trip begins.

Signs and omens generally appear in the material world, but may also be encountered in dreams and vision. Historically, omens are more often associated with bad news or cautionary information than with good, upbeat things (as witnessed in the term "ominous").

In a given setting many signs will have common meanings associated with them. Not all will be easy to read or understand, and some will be frustratingly cryptic. That's where the need for interpretation comes in.

Who sends signs? Anyone or anything divine or supernatural can do so. They might come from gods, ancestor spirits, or other entities who have a personal interest in the earthly human, or who were appealed to for intervention or advice. Signs might also come from elemental forces, which by their nature are more earth-bound than most supernatural forces. If you wish to put a more modern spin on it, they might be seen as stemming from the collective unconscious or an individual's own psyche.

What constitutes a sign? Again, this could be virtually anything: a flower blossoming out of season, a rare bird landing on one's windowsill, a dream that feels portentous, natural events like earthquakes and storms, unnatural events like the birth of a strangely deformed child, and much more.

If a god sends it, the sign or omen will often (though not always) include something associated with that god. Ravens might be sent by Odin, or a tiger sent by the Hindu goddess Durga, and so on.

A sign is distinctive because:

- it is unexpected

- something about it draws the observer's attention

- the observer "knows" somehow, often in a sudden flash of insight, that what he is seeing has special meaning

The meaning that is perceived is almost always framed by the individual's culture and how they see and understand the world.

Perhaps a Sioux Indian on a vision quest sees a cloud that looks exactly like the profile of his late grandfather. This would have profound meaning under those circumstances, for a vision quest invites revelations and signs from the Beyond. Or a passing stranger drops a coin in a beggar's alms bowl that comes from the beggar's homeland far away. Is it mere chance, or is it an omen? If it makes the hair stand up on the back of his neck, or he has also dreamed about home for the last week, then it is easy to see this as an omen.

What kinds of information do signs convey? Signs as a general thing are informational landmarks. They can pertain to anything at all: whether one will be lucky in love, whether this is a good time to plant, whether it is a good idea to ask the mother-in-law for a favor or not. Signs tend to advise about current situations, while omens tend to reveal the future.

These messages depend upon the nature of their divine or supernatural source and also what needs to be said to the earthly person. That boils down to what you as world builder have defined as the scope of interest and "known information" from that source.

For instance, a war god might be able to advise about all things martial and about personal ambition and endeavor, but might have nothing to offer about motherhood or problems with children. (Or then again-he might. It's up to how you design that deity and envision his involvement with earthly affairs.)

Does a person have to ask for a sign before one can be seen?  That's up to you. Traditionally, signs appear in these circumstances:

Unbidden. Unasked for and unexpected, something shows up that seems peculiar and causes the observer to notice the unexpected portent.

In answer to a plea or a prayer. An individual might have invited the message, and eventually their plea is heard. The time-frame for this is completely variable, from moments to months or even years, but typically it happens such that the individual recognizes it as a response to their asking for a sign.

Pointed out by another. Often an individual is oblivious to a portentous sign, and it is up to someone else to point it out to them. A friend might say, "Haven't you noticed that raven following you around for days?" Or "Your bread has failed to rise three mornings in a row. What is your hearth goddess trying to tell you?"

Sought out on purpose. This is different from the plea or prayer, in which a person essentially says, "Show me a sign!" then waits for what comes along. Instead, in seeking out an omen, a person takes steps to force one to be revealed.

This process blends into the practice of scrying, so I won't go into it in great detail here, but here is one example. Roman priests did this all the time when they read portents before a battle. They often wanted more information about how the battle would go: not simply whether there would be victory or defeat, but looking for hints about how to win or what to be wary of to avoid defeat. So they would sacrifice an animal, gut it, and read the entrails. This is a form of divination, but they did the practice specifically to allow the gods to show them signs and information about the impending conflict.

The challenge in aggressively seeking an omen or sign is that what one secretly desires can skew the interpretation.

TIP 2: Reading too much into it: When a person avidly wants or hopes for a certain answer, this can easily skew what they read into signs and portents. This can be used to good advantage dramatically if you are looking for a way for your characters to be misled. Let them pursue portents, and read what they want to see into them. It certainly happens in real life, although for dramatic purposes you will need to use caution in how you present such a red herring lest it feel like a plot thread with no payoff. Historically, such things are often interpreted by persons skilled in scrying, who won't let their personal wishes color the results.

Interpreting Signs

Signs are almost always symbolic in presentation and meaning. This is what makes their interpretation challenging. For some signs the meaning is relatively clear: the heron, for instance, is associated with the quality of patience in many cultures. A person coming face to face with a heron on a river bank, then, might easily read this as an admonition to be patient in whatever their current challenge is. But it is also associated with the firebird (phoenix), and in that case it symbolizes rebirth and renewal. Which of these readings applies to the observer of the sign? Perhaps either, neither, or both. Partly this is determined by how the observer's culture views a symbolic message, and also by overarching needs of your plot or setting.

To nail this information down, determine who in a given culture is expected to interpret a sign. Is it the individual who saw it? This was the case with the Sioux who went on vision quests. In other cultures, only a shaman, priest, or other wise man or woman was considered qualified to properly interpret signs. In still other cultures, the individual might share the omen with the community, looking for input from many, or may go to a wise person for verification that their personal interpretation is correct. Other practices are possible as well.

From the world-building point of view, what is important here is that you identify what steps people in your setting will routinely take to interpret portentous signs.

Actions Taken

So a sign has been seen and it has been read. What next?

The importance placed on signs will vary from place to place. In some settings, it may simply be regarded as a routine or minor supernatural message and may not be given much weight in the grand scheme of things. In others, every sign might be considered a direct message from a concerned deity, and as such, something to be taken very seriously indeed.

In the former case, signs may not even be read diligently, while in the latter, even a small omen may change the course of an individual's life. In a science-based world, omens may be laughed off completely.

In your own fictional world, decide how much credence and importance is given to omens. Their impact on characters and events will usually be in proportion to this.

Backlash From Ill Portents

While people hope to get useful or helpful information from their reading of signs, sometimes the portents bode ill, and ill may in fact occur. What happens then?

In some places, people who foretold ill tidings were then looked upon with suspicions, or shunned, or even persecuted after the fact. Especially if the bad things came to pass, they were sometimes suspected not only of reading the omens, but of actually causing the bad or unusual event itself.

In A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Mark Twain famously had his time-traveling protagonist Hank not only predict an historical eclipse, but convince the court that he caused it, and thus established his credentials as a magician.

How people in your setting respond to such things depends entirely on the sociocultural details of your world, but backlash against bad tidings or unusual events is something to keep in mind. In some settings this could result in a literal witch hunt, while in others, it might only add to the prestige of the shaman (or Connecticut Yankee, or whoever) who had the foresight to warn the community. How this falls out is up to you, but is a point to consider in the life-cycle of seeing, interpreting, and acting upon signs and omens.

Pictured: On the verge of being burned at the stake, time traveler Hank Morgan apparently summons up an eclipse, evoking this celestial sign as proof of his magical abilities. (A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain, 1889.)

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Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION

STRUCTURE TIPS

3 Travel

4 Core Cultural Values

5 Who Writes the History?

GEO TIPS

11 The Construction and Geography of Roads

12 Mountains as Boundaries

13 Resource Mapping

14 What Scarce Minerals Mean For Your World

SOCIO TIPS

13 Pilgrims and Pilgrimages

14 Dialects

15 Messenger Birds

16 Signal Fires

17 High-Speed Telecommunications

18 Sources of Government Power

19 Measurements: Length and Distance

20 Signs and Omens

How to Get Free World Building Tips