#worldbuilding: rs

[reynesong]

012223 Faction Tokens, The Emerald King and The King Slayer Pact

012323 Faction Token, Sāsvek

012923 Weapon Token, Sword and Dagger

Tokens I created for an app I've been using called Fortelling. Its really helpful for building worlds and managing them. It's helped improved and even translated by the users. I highly recommend it.

I'll leave a link to the site below. It's an app, but you can also use the site. It has a link to the Discord server. It's really helpful for updates and bug information. Check it out of you're curious. I've used it a lot. So feel free to ask me if you have any questions.

[genericpuff]

Hi puff I just read EP 273 and I need to know your opinions PLEASE. I feel so upset with the episode hfkfjskfkkd ASL??? AMERICAN sign language before America existed??? Why do Hera's proportions when she says "Did you forget?" look like that???? When Zeus asked if she loved him and her waist was smaller than the width of her head?? Why is Purse Phone running out of the cell with Dio labeled with a *floom*, I didn't see anything grow?? RS please I need food, water, atmosphere, and consistency 😭😭 comparing Hera's queen form with Peer Phony's just makes the art look so jank, I can't 😖 anyways thank you for letting me vent sorry if you already wrote your thoughts on EP 273 elsewhere and I missed it!!

I haven't really written anything concise on Episode 273 aside from the sign language stuff (and the time travelling problems) because I just... frankly don't even know what to say about the most recent episodes besides a very unsurprised "meh". I will give it credit for one thing, every time Hades and Persephone are separated the plot is actually allowed to happen, but the plot that IS there atm is relying a lot on characters being too stupid to solve their own problems and readers being too gracious or too forgetful to realize just how much is being retconned and / or forgotten about for the sake of writing a plot that tries to be deeper than it is. There's a lot of rushed worldbuilding happening at the last minute that's undoing a lot of the reasonable assumptions people had to make to fill in the blanks of the first three seasons and not exactly for the better. A lot of these issues could have been solved if Rachel had actually done any real planning in the beginning, but we're 5+ years too late for that now and the consequences of that have been rolling in every week since S3 began. There's a point where it becomes impossible to analyze because you know there's no logic to it, it's just Rachel writing whatever gets her through the week.

[son1c]

I just wanna say, Gale gives so much Puss in Boots vibes. Like a really powerful renegade who recklessly wreaks havoc on evil (sorry I just wanted to use a bunch of Rs)

When the universe is restored (and the Chaos Emeralds brought back) what happens to him? How does he cope with losing (most?) of his powers? Does he join Sails as a regular pirate, and how does he end up feeling about Bermuda?

Also I love the shatterverse you came up with (Is it called Deepfreeze Domain, or is ther another name that encompasses all of it?), and Callisto especially! I'm assuming Callisto meets Prime!Sonic and Syzygy, Star and Aster meet Shadow? Just because I feel like Callisto would notice at least a little bit that Shadow looks like him, and he probably meets at least one of those guys. Although now that i think about it, Shadow might not immediately meet Syzygy, or maybe even meet him when Sonic shows up...

All of your shatterverse versions of Sonic and Shadow are So Cool!!! I really like how you changed some of the universe dynamics to fit them, especially with the extra worldbuilding for shadow's existence!

gale losing the emeralds causes him to fall ill. they'd been living inside his heart for his whole life, so their sudden absence sends his body into a shock of sorts... everything is different now. he's still got the wings, since they're a physical part of his body/mutation, but they're so much heavier than they once were. he has to relearn how to walk and how to fly. it's a big change for him. good thing he's stubborn!

he definitely spends more time around other people after the finale. kind of out of necessity. ofc, gale didn't WANT other people to see him in such a weakened state--but when the emeralds were returned to their rightful dimension, he was around other people. and he couldn't exactly flee afterwards, so...

gale isn't exactly HAPPY about being feverish and bedbound on the angel's voyage, since he's got a pretty nasty grudge against dread for his behavior, but he doesn't have a choice. at least sails is there to act as a peacemaker. and maybe during that time, gale would come to forgive him. after all, dread's changed. and changed for the better!

as for bermuda... that's a tougher egg to crack, for sure. originally, their relationship was "bitter enemies who want to kill each other". now though? might be more like intense rivals. gale might still threaten him though. and vice versa. what can i say? some things never change.

i do like to imagine a situation where after gale's recovered, bermuda finds him perched on some rocks somewhere and ofc gale is like immediately on the defensive but bermuda's like i'm not here for a fight. and bermuda offers him that same respirator he once gave to sonic because gale's been falling into the water more lately and "nothing is allowed to kill you but me"

gale snatches the respirator with a toothy grin and quips back "...can't have that, can we?" heh.

as for ur other questions, yeah i kinda just refer to my original shatterspace as deepfreeze domain collectively. i mean, they have the trophy, so they make the rules! lol. callisto and syzygy do interact with prime shadow and sonic. callisto even teams up with sonic for a wisp race at one point!

[illarian-rambling]

Thanks for the tags @leahpardo-pa-potato @paeliae-occasionally and @willtheweaver!

OC/WIP Q&A Tag

Rules/Premise: Open the floor for questions about your Stories/WIPs/OCs/creative processes, etc.

This seems like a neat tag! Feel free to ask about literally anything about my wips or characters. Some prompts for asks can include:

What the fuck is up with the gods and End?

What's the deal with that evil desert?

How does magic work?

Literally anything about worldbuilding

Literally anything about my characters

Seriously, feel free to ask about their favorite things, their childhoods, their deepest fears, strange star curses, afterlife destinations, or anything else :)

Here's a list of people and places!:

Honor's Outcasts cast (Izjik, Sepo, Twenari, and Djek)

Mortal God crew (Astra, Mashal, Ivander, Elsind, and Avymere)

Voyage of the RS Starbreaker (Faalgun, Nyda, Kaulakri, Pash, and Anarac)

Places on Illaros: The Republic, Unity, Skysheer, Nabafyr, Janaz, Abrim, the Dwarven Alliance, the Araunian Desert, the Watchtower on the edge of the light, Seluthena, and Nace

I'll tag @kaylinalexanderbooks @somethingclevermahogony @halfbakedspuds @tildeathiwillwrite @mysticstarlightduck and anyone else who wants in!

[meoproject]

Yeah. Well. Val knows Beriith is tall compared to her, but she lacked context as to how tall Beriith is compared other members of his race. And. Hm. Yeah. Beriith is tall, even compared to his own kind. Not, like, unnaturally so? but tall enough for other goets to note it as a significant feature of his.

I also never draw Val's and Beriith's actual height difference unless it's a full body picture :') she's just lunking around several Scully boxes so she can fit in the frame better.

(the map also isn't a representation of any region in the story/world, i haven't made any maps for the world so i had to whip up something map-like for this piece.)

(also Goet language isnt like. a real conlang and not even a real cipher, its just nonsense, i should redo the font too.)

BONUS!

One significant Beriith feature that I can't really convey well is that he speaks with a noticeable accent. I've thought about phonetic accents a lot (thanks to another of my projects which has a character with severe speech impediment of not having lips) and since the balance of fun and annoying is quite delicate, I don't really write them out unless I really have to, and even then I'd downplay it. Beriith's accent isn't meant to be to thick anyway.

More accent talk under cut for those interested.

If we take "middle common" (the language Val and Beriith speak with each other) to be non-diegetic "English", Beriith has, in comparison, fairly flat intonation, and he trills his Rs and has some trouble with "ng" sounds and Ws, which he generally pronounces more like Vs. He also pronounces "th" sounds leaning towards Zs, which sorta runs into the slight logic bomb of "wait, doesn't his name end in 'th', but the watsonian explanation is, of course, that transliteration of his name from Goet to middle common isn't perfect and the h just implies a sightly softened t sound :) (the doylist explanation is, of course, that I decided the name before figuring out how accents work, but if you explain it away, it's not a mistake, just worldbuilding!)

As mentioned before, Beriith's accent isn't thick or anything, definitely not Hollywood-thick, but everyone who hears him speak either knows where he's from or wants to guess where he's from (though you can know but looking at him, Goets are distinct enough, but you know what I mean.)

Val, by the way, speaks the most generic middle common imaginable, like only a step or two below news casters; that's by design (of her parents). They sent her (and her siblings) to a school that specifically taught middle-common without any strong regional accents to give her the most easily-understood accent imaginable. Her family are big into business, mostly in export/import, so her parents figured out having children with neutral, easy to understand, "trustworthy" way of speaking would be the best. Yes, this means Val's parents have a completely different accent than she does, and Val speaks their variation of Elvish with a middle common accent. It does cause some bitterness, Val is kinda... not okay with it, but since her studies are all in middle common anyway it's kinda... whatever, not good but could be worse, but her younger sister is especially upset with not really knowing Elvish that well.

Val is fluent in three languages, middle common, high common (it's occasionally used as a language of magic studies, it's kind of an older version of middle common, or rather a version that has more in common with the older version of the language and branched out a bit differently) and Elvish. Beriith is fluent in like five languages and conversational in several more and "can sort of understand" in many more.

(this wasnt the vignette i was talking about earlier but i needed to get this out of my system.)

[universms]

having to worldbuild on a canon planet that has little to no information on it feels like this in a way. st*r w*rs… why are you like this.

[couldtransitionsaveher]

LONDREKIA LIGHT from UNDER NIGHT IN-BIRTH

JUSTIFICATION:

"The same wish as maidens, for a quiet happiness" - her bio on the character select screen.

without getting too deep into the worldbuilding details she was raised in an all-male investigation organization called Ritter Schild that splintered off from the all-female monster-fighting organization Licht Kreis who are considered superior to them, RS takes missions that LK doesn't want to bother with and the groups have a strained relationship.

Londrekia has built an identity as the prodigy of RS who will prove their worth to LK by defeating their strongest member Wagner. she sometimes questions the motives of her superiors but remains loyal to them because her life in RS is the only life she's ever known, as she was raised from birth in them. in the chronicle mode chapter she appears in, she says the only women she's met before Lex have been LK executors who look down on RS. but despite this and the groups' rivalries Londrekia is said to have similar ideals to LK and wants the two groups to be at peace.

in the 2nd game one of her win quotes against characters who are normal students shows that she wishes she could have lived a 'normal life' instead of being raised from birth in an (all male) organization.

given the gendered aspects of the two organizations i can't help but read her as an egg whose identity has been shaped around being a 'man' (RS member) but still wants what women (LK) have, yet has had so little exposure to being/being around women that she cant even begin to realize this." - Anonymous

Reminder: Submissions are always open! Submit here!

Did you make your daily click today?

[toournextadventure]

Hi! Hope you're doing well! Just wanted to say that I absolutely love your Birb Reader and Wednesday series. They are both such simps for each other, I literally can't with the both of them.

Was just wondering if you were taking requests (HCs) and if so, you were taking any for the series but like as a seperate thing? Because all I'm imagining (especially with the whole idea of R being into boxing) is like she gets a call (maybe an unknown number) that she answers, or even a letter and it's from Kristi or Marcus (they used a different phone after realising R wasn't picking up Kristi's calls) and it just completely rattles her.

So she heads to the gym (I would imagine Nevermore has a gym, there's wolves at the school, and they need to let their rough and tumbles out somehow while human) and she just loses it on a punching bag. Like to the point where the stitching starts to rip and her knuckles are dripping with blood. Maybe Enid and the other furs are there and she tries to get her to stop, but R's too in her head to listen.

So Enid goes to get Wednesday instead (Enid won't mention how quickly Wednesday drops what she's doing to go to R, but she will mercilessly tease Wednesday for it later) and all she has to do is call Rs name, and put her hand on her shoulder. She's direct but gentle and it gets her to stop and R just breaks down at the concern she hears in Wednesday's voice.

Either she tells her what's going on or Wednesday doesn't press her for information (even though inside she's dying to know what got R that upset) and just cleans up her hands.

Sorry for the massive ramble and no worries if you don't take requests or HCs for the actual series itself. That was just an idea I had that would not leave my head! 😅 Thanks and thanks so much for writing such a great Reader series. Genuinely one of my favourites!

It is here because this is a PERFECT idea

Bestie listen, I am FLOORED with this because yes, I am ALWAYS wanting to do hcs or oneshots for this universe, I have SO MANY different ideas and I wanna know what ideas y'all have too! I love hearing it! If you have anymore PLEASE send them they're so much fun and are fantastic for worldbuilding!

Second, you have PERFECTLY CAPTURED Reader's personality and relationship with trauma. She tries so hard to be nonchalant and to stay strong for everyone but she's just a teenager too, she's still a kid, she can't stay strong for everyone all the time. She wants to be perfect and good and she's not but she can't let anyone else see it, and when someone finally does force her to stop being strong? Oh god it's like the sweetest hell

[minimooberry]

hiii ty @vicciouxs for tagging me ilyy 😋😊

💓 FAVORITE THREE SHIPS:

okay so i literally cannot watch anything if there's not even a crumb of r omance to run with lmaoo. i love the ladynoir dynamic the most but all versions of adrien are marinette are dear to me 😭 im also obsessed with ada wong and leon kennedy they're so toxic but it hink that just adds flavor like ive always been a hurt/comfort girly. umm also charlie emily and michael afton they dont even need to be romantic but they're one of my all time faves 4ever lmaoo

🎧 LAST SONG:

love him <33

🎬 LAST MOVIE:

The Invitation lmaoo i liked it actually, i dont have a problem with dark romances but i did support her decision to leave his crusty ass after LMAOO THAT COULDVE BEEN HER GRANDADDY?? HELLO??

📖 CURRENTLY READING:

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes!! I LOVED the movie to an extensive point and i fell in love with tom blyth so im reading the book to remind myself bros batshit insane yk? i loved the themes in it and the credits song had me losing it a little bit

🌶 CRAVING:

nothing to be honest im studying for finals and i'm losing both my soul and me appetite

👯‍♀️ RELATIONSHIP STATUS:

im single and i complain about it jokingly but tbh whenever a man's into me i get icked out almost immediately like buddy get out fo my dms 😭😭its wtv tho i genuinely dont care that much lol

🪷 LAST THING I GOOGLED:

THE DEFINITION OF CIRCUMCENTRE IM LITERALLY DONE FOR MY EXAMS TOMORROW 😭😭😭

💫 CURRENT OBSESSION:

will always be obsessed with resident evil and the sims tbh but rn im trying to actually worldbuild for my ocs for ONCE i realized that i make ocs and only focus on their personalities and relationships and never anything else 😓 like yeah seth's in the government but what does he do? fight monsters and shit. no elaboration whatsoever

OK TYYY im gonna tag @birdietrait @wldestluv-rs @nightlifeseries @havenroyals and whoever else wants to do it 💗💗

[minthe-lover]

Persephone claims she wants to make things better yet she forces three souls to be the judges one of who is clearly very sexist??? How does it even make sense??

If a woman soul appears and says she was assaulted will he say that it was her fault?? Rachel how is that even logical to make these writing decisions?

Also stripping their autonomy is like a horror scenario for the damned. It's literally slavery but oh no look how cute and fluffy Hades and Persephone will be in next chapters to distract us from how toxic this relationship really is.

yeah... like Rs just keeps writing really fucked up worldbuilding.. and I like my fair share of fucked up worldbuilding especially in fantasy style worlds.. but when most of it boils down to the main characters just being the most fucked up rulers possible it just doesn't work.

[risingshards]

I'm thinking about my own worldbuilding writing now and how I feel about the trend to like have a full fledged tabletop RPG intricately designed world before you write anything down that you see a lot (at least I do IDK how prevalent that is exactly).

I'm the type of worldbuilder that like...I like having the ground rules set and how they affect the characters, have a map of locales, and then add in whatever else if it tickles me; this can be frustrating for my readers because I have gotten comments like "why don't you describe this energy baton they use and what it's for" when my detail is just like "I picked up a practice baton" or something along those lines. I like throwing in lots of weird silly stuff especially in Rising Shards, because silly worldbuilding is a fun thing to have characters have to deal with. I do get comments like:

"This world makes no sense [derogatory]"

But I also get comments like:

"This world makes no sense and I love it for that."

Which makes me feel better about it. In RS at least the silly worldbuilding is more a feature than a bug.

I'd like to have projects that have more strict (idk if that's the right word) worldbuilding, but I'm not sure I'll ever be able to on that full tabletop RPG "figure out who invented denim in your world 400 years ago before you write down any of the story" level. It might be fun to try just because it's like not very me so if I approached intense worldbuilding in my sillier way that could be a fun juxtaposition of styles clashing.

[scribe-of-stories]

Author Ask Tag

Once more I get to talk about my work due to fellow Scribe @covenscribe (Scribe unity). Read their post here. I'll be answering these questions focusing on my WIP Fleshtown.

what is the main Lesson of your story? And why did you choose it?

Fleshtown has several: cities can turn into abusive hellscape where an individual human doesn't matter, just their flesh and the work one can squeeze out of it. Those that sit at the top of societies like this are parasites (very literally in this story). Kindness is a powerful thing against those affected by it, but eventually violence becomes the only song society can hear.

What did you use as inspiration for your worldbuilding?

General lexical inspirations that affect nearly everything I write in it are: KSBD, SCP, Worm/Otherverse, and inescapably Homestuck.

Though for Fleshtown itself I think I was exposed to a game called Fear and Hunger (very heavy content warning) and the aesthetic of it stuck with me for a while. Then eventually a thought spawned in my head “I haven't written a romance story yet. I should try that in the flesh walls of this awful city I've imagined”.

What is your MC trying to achieve, and what are you, the writer, trying to achieve with them? Do you want to inspire others, teach forgiveness, help readers grow as a person?

Poet arrived at The City on accident and is really just trying to get out. Virus/Prince is trying to get back to the Court of Parasites so to behead the stagnant king. I, meanwhile, am trying to get them to realize that they don't have a home to go to if they did escape; and the eternal torment of this city can only be stopped by those living in it.

As for a lesson taught: violence is the only tool we have to fight tyranny, but by that very same tool we forge the shackles of the next generation uhhh? Healing a community is a worthy and fulfilling thing? idk Fleshtown has a lot of scattered ideas right now.

How many chapters is your story going to have?

Don't know, hopefully more than 1 and less then 100 but we'll see. It's planned to be a Novella right now, but its rough draft isn't done.

Is it fanfiction or original content? Where do you plan to post it?

Original content, and not sure. I imagine I'll post a non-insignificant amount of it on Tumblr/send it to whatever mutual wants to read it. Maybe classicaly publish it, maybe do web serial stuff with it. Really I haven't had any major thoughts/decisions about that nor intend to till it's more finished.

When and why did you start writing?

Way back in intermediate/middle school me and my friends were nerds playing games like runescape. One of my friend made the mistake of showing me the RS roleplaying forum. From there I went on to roleplay from site to site for a while. I only started “writing” in a conventional sense recently. As for why? Because it's fun and I find fullfillment in it.

Do you have any words of engagement for fellow writers of writeblr? What other writers of tumblr do you follow?

Hey! You, yes you. Write whatever you want. Forget that things like rules exist, forget that stories need a flow or need to follow some set chart. Make something without the limits of what is conventionally “good”.

Have to shout out the first Writeblrs that I really interacted with on here @sunset-a-story and @vicstmichael, who's attention and encouragement kept me working on this platform. Also to @squarebracket-trick @iced-ginger-tea for sending me so many asks over the last while. Y'alls small acts really do mean something to me, and always make my days better.

As for tags: Whoever is reading this. Open tag, you're all getting hit with the talking stick.

[genericpuff]

Wait, RS really said that? I thought it was because zeus is the king that he was purple and to show that Artemis and apollo were his children.

Yep. Apollo and Artemis weren't even his children originally, she had said way back in 2017/2018 that they weren't related (to try and avoid the incest) and then she went and rewrote it anyways to make them his children because she wanted to do some mega plot twist about Apollo trying to overthrow him or w/e.

She really doesn't show a whole lot of certainty behind that statement so it's clear there wasn't much thought behind it in terms of worldbuilding/significance. Just "well sometimes in photographs lightning is purple" but ofc that doesn't apply with Apollo and Artemis if she didn't plan to have them be related to Zeus in the beginning. So the fact that she went "maybe I could make them have high sex drives and that's why they're purple!" is 1.) incredibly stupid and narrow-minded writing, and 2.) really isn't a good look for the god who she wrote as a rapist and the goddess who's typically viewed/identified with as asexual (or at least not someone who pursues relationships).

[lutethebodies]

LTB Tav Tuesdays: Farago Heli, the Elven Exile

My fifth Tav is a work in progress, because unlike last week's ranger, this ranger has only existed in my homebrew 5e as an NPC, and in this case as the right-hand man of another more plot-important NPC at that. However, expanding on his backstory helped me worldbuild an entire conflict in which he was also a bit player, and I found that compelling to revisit if he were placed front and center. More so than that of the NPC he supported, even.

His name "Farago" (one R) is an obvious nod to the word "farrago" (two Rs): "a confused mixture, hodgepodge or medley." His background is a bit cliché—the taciturn ex-soldier who's "seen some shit"—but that also helps his personality suit his name: a farrago, as it were, of doubts, fears, hopes, and wishes. He's probably the most "man's man" type I'll ever play, but as a modest, competent expert instead of a beefy blowhard, because I have no time for macho crap (and neither does he). The "standard stoic Tav" expressions actually suit him well.

In 5e Farago is a Rogue Scout with the Soldier background, built that way to complement his party leader, a Hunter Ranger. His backstory was all about surviving a major regional conflict—the short but destructive Exiles' War where he'd joined the losing side as a picket—to become a freelance wilderness adventurer "exiled" from any official loyalties. He maintains a calm personality (not emotionless but not volatile) and is haunted by his battlefield experiences.

Farago is committed to people (friends and family, not nations or causes), and will never leave a comrade behind. He remembers every insult and nurses resentment against those who've wronged him, but he made a terrible battlefield mistake that cost many lives, which he cannot forget. Farago looks like an ordinary wood elf aside from his most prominent feature, a deep pink strawberry birthmark covering half his face, which he obscures behind greasy dark hair and wide-brimmed hats.

In BG3 (where of course Scout isn't a subclass) I went with Hunter Ranger with the Archery fighting style, which gets him close enough mechanically (though I do miss that ranged sneak attack). I'm not sure how that would square well with the BG3 story, but as a wood elf maybe he could have been part of the Grove's war against Thorm, and he simply doesn't talk about it much. Halsin is welcome to share those stories, but Farago ain't into it. His solo playthrough sits in Act 3 after finishing the House of Grief, but he's also part of my current multiplayer/multi-Tav current run—a "guys and dolls" raid-the-grove romp with only Cannor, Minthara, and Shadowheart.

Farago's romance is with Shadowheart, because he's patient and slow burns are worth it. In his solo run Minthara chased him at the end of Act 2, but he didn't forget the drow slurring him as "darthirr" during Act 1. Making sand castles with the charmingly awkward neo-Selunite Shadowheart (whom he suspects, but won't say out loud, sees her elven father in him) is much more his jam than any of the other companions. He's currently camped in the Lower City (a great source of new hats), so a big farm or small ranch with this young lady when all the tadpole shit is finished sounds just fine.

[silverslipstream]

Happy Worldbuilding Wednesday! Are there any parts of your worldbuilding you've put a lot of thought too but aren't the focus of your story? Bless us with some.

Hey Sgt. Narwhal, thank you for the ask!

Oh ho ho boy, there's a lot I could use in this answer. One thing I'll stick to (to keep this relatively short) are the spacecraft engines used in-universe. Unlike current-day rockets in our world, which use chemical propellants like liquid oxygen, hydrogen, kerosene, ammonium sulfate, hydrazine and many others. While many smaller and older ships (like the characters' main ship, the Dowager Caroline) still use these fuels, the majority of modern-day large spacecraft use fusion-powered engines, mostly those using Helium-3/deuterium reactions. Helium-3 is found on Earth in extremely small concentrations (about 7 parts per trillion), but is up to 2,500 times more plentiful in lunar regolith, with concentrations as high as 50-60 parts per billion in permanently shadowed craters. It's still not very easy to find (on average, it'd take 15 tons of mined regolith to extract a gram of He3). It's incredibly efficient though - using some (admittedly quite clumsy) back-of-the napkin estimations, I figure that around 18-20 tons of helium-3 would be enough to power the entirety of the United States for a year. As you can imagine, that's a lot of power in a comparatively miniscule amount of reaction material. As a result, it's used extensively to meet Earth's power generation needs, along with solar power (both space-based and ground-based), wind farms, hydropower and the last deposits of fossil fuels. Helium-3/deuterium fusion is also much less wasteful and is an aneutronic reaction, meaning that neutron radiation (which is very harmful and difficult to shield against) is practically non-existent. This is ideal for space travel, as helium-3/deuterium fusion is far more efficient than deuterium-tritium, and doesn't require heavy radiation shielding that compromises the size and abilities of spacecraft. While the technology is relatively new in White Sky, having only been around since the early/mid-2070s, it's already seeing widespread use. The Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, ELTO's purpose-built spacecraft for a manned mission to Saturn, uses a prototype magnetized target fusion reactor. This uses electromagnetic acceleration system to confine the fusion fuel, increasing density and temperature for higher thrust and efficiency.

An important measurement in this case is specific impulse (Isp). Isp is the measure of how efficiently a reaction mass engine (like a jet or rocket) uses fuel, like miles per gallon is used for cars. Isp is measured in the number of seconds it takes for the propellant and engine mass to accelerate itself at one Earth-gravity, or 1g. Different fuel sources and engines have different levels of Isp: the AJ10-190 used on the Space Shuttle's orbital Maneuvering System and the European Service Module in NASA's current Orion spacecraft is propelled by Aerozine-50 (a mix of hydrazine propellants) for an Isp of 316 seconds in vacuum. The Rocketdyne RS-25s, used as the main engines for the Space Shuttle and Space Launch System (SLS) use hydrogen and liquid oxygen, with an Isp of 453s in vacuum. Solid-core nuclear engine concepts like NASA's NERVA have much higher Isps of roughly ~850 to 1000s, while xenon-based ion thrusters like NASA's NEXT-C engine used on the recent DART asteroid redirect space probe have much greater efficiencies of ~4,000s, with the European DS4G accelerated ion grid engine estimated to reach 21,000s. The prototype fusion engine on board the Tsiolkovsky has a specific impulse of roughly 65-70,000 seconds. This allows it to accelerate for periods of several days/weeks depending on fuel load, eventually having enough speed to reach Saturn in roughly nine months, compared to around eight years for a traditional chemical rocket.

Of course, mining Helium-3 isn't all sunshine and rainbows and high-tech utopian dreams. It's still an extremely arduous process, undergone in an extremely hostile environment which can prove quickly fatal after the slightest of mistakes. It's also a limited resource - current estimates predict that the entirety of the lunar surface contains 1-1.5 million tons of He3. Experts predict this source will run out around 3500 to 4000 AD - considerably longer than fossil fuels and still many centuries into the future, but still finite.

(Author's note: apologies for the amount of infodumping and scientific jargon - I tried to keep my explanations as simple as possible while showcasing that the technology in White Sky is based on real-world physics, spaceflight projections and technological possibilities. Hope you enjoyed!)

[masked-disciple]

I both love and hate worldbuilding so much.

Like, I'm thinking about how I want to do languages in the Aethel, and I'm like, "there's language groups and usually language just drifts, it's rare people up and intentionally make a new language and it catches on, although trade and politics definitely can help a region's power swap from one common language to another" but if I want to make diverse languages, even if they don't actually appear front-and-centre, I have to do all this goddamn research.

Like, cuneiform looks like That because they used hexagonal 'pens' of sorts to press into clay, and kanji looks like That because they use brushes, and Irish ogham looks like That because it was typically carved into rocks, and Latin cursive looks like That because we used feather pens. But did we diverge alphabets from each other in the proto-indo-european days because of different tools, or was writing invented repeatedly in different places and that's why it's different?

Furthermore, what shapes language itself? Icelandic is a very gutteral language that hasn't really changed in a thousand years because it doesn't need to, but Japanese is a very melodic language with a very firm consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel structure. Why's that? They're both island cultures who kept to themselves for a good chunk of history. What made them different? Why is it that only like five languages use a tongue-click as a sound, and only some roll Rs? What happened to make these naturally happen, and why aren't they more common?

Why is it Japanese is an incredibly indirect language but also incredibly concise, whereas Hebrew and English are both typically pretty direct? Why do some languages not even have relational left/right, and only ever use cardinal directions? Aren't there a few completely atemporal languages? Why is it that English only has a few tonal indicators, but if you fuck up any tones at all in Cantonese, it changes everything you just said? Whose idea was that, and why did it stick around?

These are all questions that absolutely build and help make worldbuilding that much more natural and realistic. But answering them is going to require a goddamn linguistic anthropology degree. I can't just wikipedia this shit in one night and then keep going.

It's worse once you get different species in the mix. A draconic language is not likely to sound anything like a human language, and may not be at all possible for any human ever to speak. I've been writing Denellic almost entirely as "what if Icelandic people got the ability to roll every single consonant that exists, and also knew Latin, and aggressively wanted to insult Latin at every point, and was a language intentionally made to do so, but also the species that primarily speaks it has seven distinct arcanobiological genders with cultural meaning and expects you to stack them on every noun because being neutral on a topic is culturally unacceptable".

I'm literally dying. Am I having so so so much fun? Absolutely. But I'm also literally dying, and if anyone wants to help a worldbuilder out and knows the answers to some of these questions, please please please tell me it'll make my worldbuilding cooler.