#travelers are welcomed and sailors are plenty. there are guilds that emerged early post-cataclysm in response to predation from...

[springcatalyst]

*asks you about world building*

*sickos haha yes image*

All my stories take place in roughly the same timeframe in largely the same environment: hesitantly named Synsolic as an analogue to Earth (I may change that later because I don't know if I like it but it's stuck for a while now so. We'll see)

It's fantasy because I am a sucker for fantasy, populated by humans, merfolk, fauns, satyrs, ipotanes, and nightlings- which are also called shadowlings or aveoliths in varying contexts. I know "faun'' and ''satyr" are largely used interchangeably in a lot of things, but they're different species, here, though they share similarities with each other as well as with ipotanes, the other ungulate species. Merfolk are actually made up of two subspecies, iarans and nix, but while they differ physiologically in a lot of ways, culturally they are one and the same, so they're generally grouped together. I think that's as far as I'm going to get into species things for now, because I've got *checks notes* 32 pages of species things in my own nonsense word docs and I really don't think you want all of that. Unless...

BUT

The world as it is now has been fractured. I hesitate to call it post-apocalyptic because that implies a level of supernaturality and/or violence that generally isn't present, but the gist of it is that over a century past, in the mountain range at the northern edge of the continent, the tallest peak erupted. Think Mt. Taupō or Mt Tambora, with some variation. The ash, the pyroclastic flow, the acid rains and sulfide clouds, combined with the continued effects that the material that made it into the stratosphere had on climate in the next few years, contributed to a heavy death toll. Even after the initial activity ceased, cities fell just because they couldn't feed themselves in the unnatural winter that followed, in the subsequent years' lack of a true summer. The sulfuric content released poisoned the air, especially close to the mountain, though if you were close to the mountain, you were probably dead anyway from that initial eruption, just from being buried in ash or debris. More people were lost than can be counted- in the hours after the eruption, but also in the years that followed.

Some were affected more than others. Merfolk, occupying mostly the southern seas and having the added protection of the waters' surface, retained more of their infrastructure, and with it, knowledge and history, more of their people, than terrestrial humanoids. Satyrs had typically occupied the forests in the north, and so there are very few, if any, true satyr cities remaining. As a result, merfolk are now known for their knowledge of technologies that were lost to others, and satyrs are largely travelers or scattered among other species, unlike fauns, humans, and ipotanes, who have places that are more theirs. (The species are not completely distinct, they live amongst each other in a lot of cases, but there are places that are mostly fauns, or mostly humans, for example, where other species are more a minority. Satyrs don't really have that.)

It has been a long time since the cataclysm. Nobody currently alive lived it, in fact, there are few that even remember somebody who did, and if they did, they were almost too young to know it. But it lingers in the way that things are, now. Cities don't really exist as much as towns or villages, small settlements that can support themselves with little outside influence. There's not a whole lot in the way of governmental influence, and there's definitely not any nations anymore, though they were more of city-states before, anyway. This is a double-edged sword, because the cataclysm made people come together in a way they weren't previously, but it also gave people who wanted to use or harm others an easy avenue to do it, with no formal punishment a disincentive.

The world is mostly in-betweens. Towns or herds or any other type of community are few and far between, and in the spaces linking them is just a vast wilderness that, too, has been changed by the cataclysm. Ash is rich soil. There are forests where there were once prairies and there are rivers that were redirected. The closer you get to the mountain, the more changed things have been. The landscape is scattered with overgrown ruins, again, with increasing density as you draw closer to the source. People are isolated because of this vast space they must span in order to reach others. There are many travelers, but they rarely cross paths, because how could they? There is so much space.

There is SO much more I could say but for the sake of your sanity I'll leave it here. Extremely swag of you to indulge me and if you EVER are actually interested in me elaborating on literally anything PLEASE ASK. I WILL GLADLY