#inspo: vanithea

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Happy WBW! What are common rites of passage in your novel? How are they celebrated?

Well there’s the day that an Auxiliary passes their exams to become an officer! You get a letter first telling you that you passed, sort of like a college acceptance letter. Depending on the family, there might be a personal celebration at the news.

Then there’s a date for the swearing-in, where all the candidates who they want to hire will gather and be given their badges, and add their name to the current records book. Very ceremonial, very long, like a graduation ceremony except. For the beginning of a journey not the end of one.

Families and friends are invited to that one, but they don’t usually come to the post-ceremony rager that the senior employees throw to welcome the newbies in lol. Aka the party that taught Ash she doesn’t really enjoy them.

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happy world building wednesday! what was goin on with that island where the main city is now in LORE, before the city was established there? did anyone live there, and how did it end up getting used for the city?

You mean that lil pink thing below the ship?

Nobody lived there, it's kind of a glorified puffin rock. Do puffins exist? I don't know. You get the vibe tho

In terms of use for the city, that is where the half-mer of the city go to every full moon! Their transformation is somewhat involuntary, and being near the ocean makes it easier on them.

Full blooded merfolk who live in the city can accompany them as well, if they want to, but they have full control over their shifting so it's not as necessary for them.

But if, for example, Willow has to go on this trip (and she does), her mom might tag along with her! As moral support, and for fun mother-daughter time or whatever.

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Similar to the whole "homophobia doesn't exist" thing, I've just now decided that Vanithea's income model is an amorphous combination of minimum wage and UBI

In the sense that some folks are still paid more than others, but everybody is paid at least XYZ amount, regardless of whether or not they work or whatever.

As long as you've been living as a resident of the city for more than a month (or have declared your intention to live here permanently and agreed to be >watched> to make sure you don't run off* with said money), you'll get that UBI.

And it is of course an actual livable wage! If you go into a job, you are almost guaranteed to make more, so most people do, but if you truly don't want to? You can 100% get by on that universal wage.

* Checking up on declared citizens to make sure they haven't absconded with their money is considered one of the most routine, boring jobs an Auxiliary can do; it's basically going from address to address and knocking on doors.

(It's a great activity for freshly trained baby officers though! Gets them familiar with the city and it's low risk)

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Guess who’s arrived!

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Hmm so Vanithea has libraries that fall into three main categories.

Archives: spaces devoted to a single subject! Some of these are like “books on magic,” and others are reserved specifically to housing Auxiliary journals. Not all Aux.s keep journals, but those who do, they are preserved in dedicated archives. The public can’t access the Auxiliary ones, but the other archives are fair game.

Libraries: the kind of spaces we are familiar with! Books of all sorts, fiction and non-fiction, open to the public, run on a lending system. You find most of them in the Volcanic district (and most of the archives too, tbh).

PICs: Public Inquiry Centers are a weird mish-mash of both. Think of them as like, college campus libraries: They’re a little more formal than traditional libraries, they have dedicated research spaces and quiet rooms, but they’re still open to the public. These are meant more as help centers, so they’re scattered throughout the city!

Obviously the PIC that Ash works at is in the Demonic district.

It's been a minute, but! World building!

Seeing's I'm sitting in a library, how does that work in your worlds? Are there public libraries or just private collections?

Do they lend out things other than books, like a tool library or magical artefacts?

@worldbuildingwedasks

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Introducing the city of VANITHEA

There are seven districts in Vanithea:

to the east, the human district; a majority of the population is (surprise!) humans

to the southeast, the Earthen district; a majority of the population is human and half-elven

to the southwest, the Volcanic district; the entirety of the population is human, and the Auxiliaries there are medical professionals

to the west, the Oceanic district; the population is split fairly evenly between human, visiting mer, and half-mer.

to the northwest, the Airborne district; the population there is human, and they are experts in handling the proud race of griffins and aerial dragons. 

to the north, demonic district; because there are no demons in the city, the district is primed to house all and help all

and in the center of the city, the fae district. The branches of Center Tree houses the fae of the city, and the hollow trunk serves as an Auxiliary tower.

Center Tree was a gift from the fae when Vanithea was first established, and it has grown to a much larger scale than the map would let me make it, but it’s there, and it’s great, and we love it. 

All of the little tower icons you see there are Auxiliary outposts, centers where the average citizen can enter and seek aid or answers to their questions.

And all of the bridges on the map are real structures, too! The idea was to build them at the places where each district crossed into the fae district, to promote a feeling of connectivity (and signal when you were entering the fae district).

NOTE: to see where Vanithea is on a larger world map, >click here<

Thank you Inkarnate for your fantastic map-making site!

LORE WIP PAGE ||| BOOK ONE WIP PAGE |||

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Happy Worldbuilding Wednesday! It's time to talk about rules :P What are some of the things that constrain people in your world. Laws of magic, laws of society, laws of physics--whatever applies to your WIP. What are some of the rules that your folks have to work with? And what are some of the ways they can be broken?

LAWS OF MAGIC YES

There’s two big laws of magic: one, magic cannot raise the dead. Two, whatever magic you’re using, you have to replace the energy.

(Neither of these rules are breakable. Probably.)

Think of it like physics; for every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction, right? If you want to use nature/enhancement magic to grow a tree, you’re going to have to sacrifice something of equal value as all the energy a tree uses to grow.

This is why the elven forests, with their molded trees, are so fucking impressive, and why the elves are such good group casters. It’s much easier to balance the cost of a big spell when you have five people to split it between.

ANYWAY

There’s also the Vanithean rules to contend with! Most of those rules are similar to today’s laws (ya know, don’t murder, don’t steal, etc), but the city is also big on documentation.

It probably stems from humanity’s desire for control in a hectic, magical world when they don’t have any magic themselves—

But there’s a lot of merchant licenses, declarations of travel, paper reports and journals to be filed by the Auxiliaries, censuses and documentation of all the magic users in the city and what magic they can do, and potentially more.

Vanithea has a very rigid approach to magic and life in general, whereas outside of the city, everything is a little looser.

This is especially fun when Ash, who has grown up inside the city and never traveled outside of it, gets out in the world to experience this.

Thanks for asking!

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happy worldbuilding wednesday! ^-^ what's a huge event in your world's history? do people know the real story or has it been changed as it's been told over time?

Livvie I think I love you

It just so happens that I have a GREAT chunk of my worldbuilding doc that fits this excerpt

A huge event in Lanithon is the creation of Vanithea. The city was great in concept, and every race had a hand in raising it, but in practice... it was a mess.

Petty fights got out of hand, racism and racial conflicts were abundant, crime made citizens abandon the city with no warning, and medical outposts / hospitals were overrun and understaffed. The Auxiliaries emerged out of necessity.

Here’s where it gets interesting.

Recorded History: Jaron Aliga gathered a group of friends. He made sure he had some magic users of each kind in the gang, and swept through the city targeting crime and criminals. Everyone was tried, and those who didn’t repent or agree to parole/community service were driven out of the city.

At the end of the month, Aliga was voted Vanithea’s first Director. He appointed different members of his gang to be the heads of his new organization: the Auxiliary Force for Good. Over the years, the name just got shortened to the Auxiliaries.

Real History: The “group of friends” was more like a gang. Some of the criminals they targeted were killed, some were captured, some were driven out of the city, some were tried and jailed, and some where tried and allowed to live in the city.

Aliga seized power instead of being elected, and all of the men he appointed as District Managers were men, and they were also all human. This upset elves most of all, and a few even left the city to go and live back in the Maraline Grove again.

It’s not so much that this history changed over time so much as Aliga recorded it differently to make himself look better. And since his was the first Auxiliary journal, it’s revered and never questioned.

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Oh! The Auxiliaries wear uniforms!

They have leather jackets with lots of pockets, and black pants!

Ash suits this look very well. Zach looks like a penguin.

What groups of people wear uniforms in your setting? What do these uniforms look like? 

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Introducing Charles Amden:

the only person to ever be exiled from Vanithea

Charles was one of the Earthen district’s top Auxiliaries, to the point where he was the first choice to be the first human and the first Auxiliary in history to be allowed to enter the land of the elves.

Charles’s existence in the Maraline Grove was part of an attempted diplomatic mission. The Director of Auxiliaries at the time told Charles in private that the end goal was to gain the trust of the elves and get them to reveal a piece of information they were rumored to know: the location of the lost unicorns.

But Charles was an impatient man. He gained their trust, but then decided the best way to learn this information was to torture the High Elf until he revealed the location.

It didn’t work. The High Elf died rather than reveal any information he might have, and the rest of the elves escorted him back to the city, where they insisted on Amden’s execution.

Director Lionel Rush bore part of the responsibility, though, and managed to convince the elves to settle for exile. Charles Amden was removed from the Auxiliary forces, exiled from Vanithea, and the elves have remained antagonistic to humans to this day.

Created for the Exile theme of @homesteadchronicles ‘s Moodboard Monday!

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Satan’s Secretary takes place in the Lanithon year 1635

Years are counted from the year Vanithea was founded, so the city literally transformed time-keeping as we know it

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Question! Which part of Vanithea is the best to be found in when you’re a lone traveler?? Is there a certain part that’s more welcoming than the rest??

Well it depends on who the traveler is, of course, but I personally maintain that the Fae district is the best place.

It’s basically just a huge park. We’ve got flower gardens, forested sections with trails for walking and hiking, beautiful open green hills of grass, we got everything.

Not to mention the giant, just huge tree growing in the middle of the district. If nothing else, that’s a landmark you can make your way towards.

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What I learned from this post is that I will simply never be specifying how to say it, because you all came up with so many cool alternatives that I simply cannot pick

Just wigged myself out wondering if Vanithea, the name of the city I made up, is pronounced “van-ih-THEE-uh” or “vuh-NITH-ee-uh”

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At least two people have responded to the Vanithea map with “it’s like fantasy zootopia!”

Which is hilarious to me because I also said that in the LORE Comic Sans Presentation

Glad to see we’re all on the same page here

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Something I love doing, especially in the LORE Series, is deciding what the recorded history was VS what the actual history was.

For Example:

Established around the year 50, the Auxiliaries emerged out of necessity. Petty fights got out of hand, racism and racial conflicts were abundant, and medical outposts / hospitals were overrun and understaffed.

Recorded History: Jaron Aligua gathered a group of friends. He made sure he had some magic users of each kind in the gang, and swept through the city targeting crime and criminals. Everyone was tried and those who didn’t repent or agree to parole/community service were driven out of the city. 

At the end of the month, Aligua was voted Vanithea’s first Director. He appointed different members of his gang to be the heads of his new organization: the Auxiliary Force for Good. Over the years, the name just got shortened to the Auxiliaries.

Real History: The “group of friends” was more like a gang. Some of the criminals they targeted were killed, some were captured, some were driven out of the city, some were tried and jailed, and some where tried and allowed to live in the city.

Aligua seized power instead of being elected, and all of the men he appointed as District Managers were men, and they were also all human. This upset elves most of all, and a few even left the city to go and live back in the Maraline Grove again.

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I discovered a Major Oversight in Vanithea’s design just now when I realized I don’t know what people do for fun