archipelago-of-the-lustrous

[archipelago-of-the-lustrous]

Gems in Progress chapter 2: worldbuilding, part 1: the Planet of the Lustrous

Ohhhhhhhh my god sorry for the public inactivity, but i had other projects and life just lifing, and also this piece of work is THE HARDEST. It's so difficult and took so much of my mental strenght to do.

I split this section in three parts: in this first one, I'll dwelve in the ENTIRE world of Houseki no Kuni, trying to understand what's going on with the canon worldbuilding and give it my own spin. In the next parts, I'll focus on the geography and on my fanon landmass.

The infos i used for the canon notions about the HnK world come from the Houseki no Kuni Wikia translation of "Life and Culture of Y-3579203181277".

Shoutout to the amazing Artifexian and his worldbuilding skills and teachings, because i'd still be panicking without his tabs and tips.

In this OLD POST OF MINE, dated november 20, 2019, i theorized the world of Houseki no Kuni is our world 3 or 4 billion years in the future. On further studies I think this is not really possible; the Sun will probably already be too hot and too big not only for life forms to survive on Earth, but even water to still exist on the planet!

We could theorize that the six impacts on Earth caused the entire planet to move a bit away from the Sun to let it not cook in the heat of the growing star, but that's speculation.

Let's say that, from the extinction of humanity (that we'll assume is not too far from our current age, between 100 and 1000 years) to the start of HnK, there's between 200 and 500 million years. Long enough for life on Earth to re-evolve in different ways, not long enough to develop with the same complexity of before, and especially, not long enough to die burned by the Sun. Still close to the end, tho! That's a scary thought. Just lets go forward.

The sun is much brighter, and this is amazing for life on Earth that eats those juicy juicy sunrays: but UV radiations are not good. Maybe that's the reason why these little photosynthetising cells decided to inhabit minerals: to use them as prisms, to take the good light, but not all of it. This works, wow.

By this time, the moon would be more far away from the Earth and the Earth would rotate much slower; but we're talking about a post-impact world, here. SIX impacts! When the Moon was formed (let's take the Theia impact theory as the canon one here), the impact made the Earth rotate faster; let's say that's exactly what happened, on a smaller scale, six times in a row.

This image is from that "Life and Culture of Y-3579203181277" thing; "A" must be the Moon, and the other 5 are the result of meteoric impact... but where's the sixth?

Here it is!

The sixth (and probably the last) impact event probably didnt hit the Earth in a way that took away molten pieces of it; instead, it crashed down on Earth and formed a huge impact. The shape of the Land is OBVIOUSLY a meteoric crater. But i already explained it...

As a recap:

The Sun is 4,8/4,9 million years old. It has a mass 1,04 times bigger than at the time of Humans, and shines 1,17 times brighter. Seems like not much, but it DOES affect the life on Earth...

The Earth itself is 0,9 times smaller than it was before the Six Impacts, and its rotation on the axis is much deeper, around 35%. The huge meteoric impacts affected deeply the balance of the planet, but luckily, all 6 together almost "re-balanced" it to an equilibrium. Its still much more than before (23%)

A day on the Earth now lasts 20 hours instead of 24. Both these aspects and the increase in mass and luminosity of the Sun gave the Earth a more extreme climate; not enough to completely destroy the life, but enough to make it extremely difficult. But Gems aren't organic life and they don't care about temperatures! But we do. So let's go on.

In a so called "ocean planet", the atmospheric pressure must be definitely high to keep all the water inside the planet and to not make it escape in the deep space; I will consider the atmospheric pressure to be around 3 times stronger than the current Earth's, just because. Idk. I have no canonical evidence for that. It's just cooler I guess.

Using a useful site, based on the luminosity of the sun and the atmospheric pressure, this is the colour of the sky, at day and at night; the day is much brighter than the modern one, and the sunsets much redder and stronger in colour; under it, the colours of the vegetation using the same system.

I reached the limit of words ahhh!!! See ya

[archipelago-of-the-lustrous]

Gems in Progress. Chapter 1: the main idea

Hello! Finally the first real post of this blog!

I think it would be nice to not hide the ideas and the way i'm creating this new gem society, and show my work flow and progress in this blog. It will be tagged as #gems in progress, and all the posts will be numbered.

All the explanations will be under the cut.

The inspo

First, I need an inspiration behind the whole aesthetic and new culture these gems people will have.

i already had the idea of setting this Gem Society in a complete opposite to the canon one: on the mountains. So, i opted for the main geographical inspiration to be the Alps.

In my previous iterations of this "gem archipelago" i already had some ideas: an archaic society, roughly similiar to European late Bronze Age- early Iron Age.

From the public library of my town i borrowed this amazing (albeit a bit old- but if you know me, you also know i LOVE old stuff!) and giant book called "Peoples and civilizations of ancient Italy", a super important and informative book series about the pre-Roman societies of Italy.

This in particular is Volume 4, specialising on the ancient civilization of Northern Italy: in particular two of my interest, localized on and near the Italian Alps, the Golasecca culture and the Atestine culture.

This is a rough map of the more or less territories I will use as a base for the setting of my Mountain Archipelago. Deep magenta is he ones i'll use more intensely as a base for my setting, as landscapes and archaeological findings, while lighter magenta will just be referenced, and less archeological sites will be used as a references from that provinces. (original pic from Wikipedia)

Using the SOIUSA (International Standardized Mountain Subdivision of the Alps) partition of the Alps system, the zones i'll mostly use as a base are in the Eastern Alps (coloured in light magenta); precisely I'll mostly use:

28, Southern Rhaetian Alps 29, Bergamasque Alps and Prealps 30, Brescia and Garda Prealps 31, Dolomites 32, Venetian Prealps

And in just few bits and pieces:

11, Lugano Prealps 15, Western Rhaetian Alps (only the southernmost parts) 16, Eastern Rhaetian Alps (only southern parts) 17, Western Tauern Alps (only western parts)

Very important for the civilization of my gems will be the complex system of glacial lakes and rivers that exist in the Lombard Prealps and i will translate to my new Island of the Lustrous. The Gems dont need water to survive, but the Lakes that will characterize the place where they live will bring a special climate for their other needs (sun, textile industry, woodcutting, etc)

Then, later, using my dear Mindat (BEST site for geologists), i'll figure out which mines and minerals come from these specific places IRL, and use exclusively them for the cast of OCs that will live in this Archipelago. (Here, as an example, all the mines and mineral findings in the Orobie Alps in the Lombard Prealps)

Unfortunately, I'll have to say goodbye to some of my (too many) old HNK OCs... :( but i'll gain new. However, now its not time to think about the characters. Firts, I need to figure out where and how they will live, then I'll be able to shape a cast of characters.

In the next chapter of GIP (Gems in Progress):

making a map of the region, and figure out the climate. Then after that we can pass to the society... slowly and steady...

[archipelago-of-the-lustrous]

wtf is this? let me explain...

Hi, its me, Aluminium.

I decided to make an entirely new blog for my Houseki no Kuni OC's. Since the manga is over, i want to make it sort of a "spinoff", something almost completely detached from the manga, its themes and, especially, the setting.

For my HNK ocs, i gave them a completely new island to live on ("the Archipelago") and a completely different society from the one we've seen and loved in Houseki no Kuni.

Since it's an extremely long and complex journey, I decided to collect my voyage here. That's it. Buh-bye