The Senate/Parliament. Situated in the capitol and inspired by st peters cathedral and the Reichstag. This is where the senators convene for meetings and decide policy. large central dome room has stained glass ceilings and a skylight. outer buildings have offices and meeting rooms and archives.
story wise this location would be playable and fully explorable, but would be destroyed and turned into memorial gardens after the timeskip. After pushback from senators on policy, Lucien and his advisors would orchestrate the bombing or burning (undecided) of the Pantheon, during session. This would allow Lucien to blame his enemies (the Ophirans), eliminate his senators and declare a state of emergency/martial law in the ensuing panic. This event would parallel the burning of the reichstag and hitler’s Declaration of martial law.
Initial Dome design: i like the idea of it being two-tiered.
i started designing some glass portraits of previous leaders for the ceiling but these are still in progress and haven’t been incorporated yet.
early colour concept
making the dome
surrounding building
i felt that it didnt have enough colour so i made the pillars red marble and then added clouds for contrast.
started designing banners. Since this is the symbol for a fascist and authoritarian empire i took inspiration from real-world fascist imagery and the Nazi eagle, as well as religious imagery and ancient roman sigils. i ended up with an angel with spread wings which matched the silhouette i had already come up with: a cross with a circle in the middle. variants of this shape appear as symbols throughout the story – the three points of the cross represent the three suns and the central circle represents the planet, while the cross also evokes catholic imagery.
here is the current WIP of the pantheon.
next i will fix up the gardens, add some small people walking towards to building for scale and add the stained glass roof on the dome.
During a lesson with Jane Hankin my classmate and friend showed me a PowerPoint presentation that documented her world, characters and the story of her IP. Seeing her thoughts so well presented made me realise I wanted to have a ‘bible’ of sorts that I could refer back to for information, instead of just trying to recall ideas I had come up with. After Ms. Hankin assigned to create similar PowerPoints for presentation to the class, so I returned home and started planning.
The Orbit:
I knew that I wanted my planet to be tidally-locked with binary suns before even starting development because the first mental image I had of this world was a town that sits in permanent, dual sunsets and a snow-globe city in a harsh desert. This presented some difficulties however, as I knew that binary systems are typically uninhabitable and aren’t optimal for life. I used several solar system simulators to ensure that the orbit would remain stable and predictable, and realised that I needed a dense centre of mass for this, so I amended the system into a trinary one, with a small dark neutron star now central to the system. I then studied the orbit and weight of stars in the trinary Proxima system to ensure the size and mass were realistic.
After establishing a consistent orbit I went to add my planet into the simulation and realised it would only work in a circumbinary (P-type) orbit with the black star acting as the anchor. This then allowed me to create a unique seasonal system, with summer occurring when the planet was closest to the larger star, winter when it was far from both and then a unique transitional season when the planet was closest to the smaller star.
I named the neutron star Mythra after the Persian God of the Sun ‘Mithra’, and the main star ‘Helios’ after the Greek God of the Sun, as these two cultures have inspired several areas on my planet.
The ‘Day Side’:
I envisioned the ‘Day Side’ or ‘Solar Chapter’ as an alien and harsh landscape with very few spots of refuge.
Since the Perihelion was the hottest part of my planet I researched the hottest places on Earth and found the Danakil Depression in Ethiopia; the bizarre, alien look combined with the scorching temperatures made this a great starting point for me. I wanted it to be a low area in a massive crater with an oppressive heat.
Surrounding the northernmost point I wanted a completely barren landscape with dust and volcanic craters, resembling the surface of Mars, or Fuerteventura where I holidayed last Easter. The strange and barren landscape of Fuerteventura was initially depressing to me, but I came to appreciate the beauty in the uniqueness of it, and the slightly unearthly feel the desert had.
Moving further south I envisioned a ring of red mountains surrounding the shallow ‘Badlands’ crater, filled with canyons and tunnels (remnants of extinct rivers) that wound through the rock. I wanted the tall plateaus to be unbearably warm, but the shaded canyons to be slightly cool.
The Northern Red Wastes is a desert that covers the remaining sections of the Solar Chapter. I imagined it would be sparse and varied between empty red sand dunes to tall sandstone monoliths. Wadi Rum (in Jordan) and Uluru in Australia were my two main inspirations. I wanted to include a middle eastern desert due to the biblical parallels in my story, and the inclusion of sandstone monoliths came from my visit to Australia since I thought they were stunning and unique.
Though it was unlikely to matter much for my project, I also wanted to think about what kind of plants and animals could survive in the Solar Chapter, if any at all. I remembered that the shadows would be static, allowing me to create shadowed, cooler portions of the desert where plants could survive. I then researched aquifer systems in deserts and how plants could be sustained by them, to ensure that the environment was functioning realistically.
After establishing plant life I thought about animals knowing that they would be rare, and likely only small scavengers as well as adapted for the harsh conditions.
Once I had established the natural landscape I thought a bit about the settlements. While I imagine there are several small settlements across the area, each governed by a Lesser Noble house, the main City both of this region and the Planet would be on the border of the Redmount and the Northern Red Wastes, likely sheltered by a crater or ring of canyons. The city would have to be completely enclosed and protected inside a climate-controlled dome with a consistent temperature and an artificial day/night cycle. I imagine the buildings as tall, layered skyscrapers with intersecting floors and bridges, built in a white stone (maybe marble with gold veins) or similar material. The Nobles would live on the higher floors, with beautiful statues, stained glass windows, golden ornamentation and rooftop gardens (complete with ponds, pools, topiaries and flower gardens), while the Workers would live below, in less fancy but still beautiful buildings. Fountains, large open plazas, towering multi-floor statues and high walkways add character to the city.
In the bowels of the city, however, I imagine a network of tunnels, poorly maintained and patrolled by a brutal police force, where the Serfs live. These tunnels would connect different buildings or sections of the city where they work, so that the Serfs wouldn’t have to be seen outside their working positions by the city’s population. This was inspired by the ‘Underbelly of Dalaran’ from World of Warcraft, the ‘Leyendell Sewers’ from Elden Ring and Victorian era ‘servant doors’. I wanted this to highlight the giant gulf in class and to show that despite the city’s beautiful surface, a darker corruption exists below, where the citizens rarely think about.
Inspired by the biblical city of Ophir, where all the bricks were said to be made of gold, is a ruined city of the same name. Structurally inspired by Petra in Jordan and ‘Ironforge’ from World of Warcraft, I wanted to create an underground city that had once served as the heart of ‘Exile’ society. While the exiles were a historically nomadic peoples, they once had settlements in an attempt to leave that life behind, the greatest of these being Ophir. I want the city to have been destroyed long ago, by the supposed ‘Good King’ Rychaed, in ‘fall of Pompeii’ style devastation. This city could be a permanent reminder of the barbarity of the so-called ‘most civilized species in the universe’, as well as a catalyst for character development upon its discovery.
Now I imagine the remaining Exiles live scattered in small, subtle settlements in the canyon walls of the Redmount in an attempt to not draw attention to themselves.
The Twilight Band is an exclusive, thin strip of land through the middle of Elysium that only the wealthiest can afford to live in, due to the year-long habitability. This area was the very first place that I imagined when I thought of this world, and I knew this was where I wanted my protagonist to have grown up.
The Sunrise Sea was a later addition to my project, after it was suggested to me that a sea could serve as a natural barrier to people attempting to cross into the Twilight Band. I wanted the reefs to feel tall, vibrant and expansive to highlight the unearthly feeling, and the animals to be strange and colourful. Bioluminescent plankton or algae could make the waves glitter when they hit the beach, and small islands/atolls could be fun to navigate in gameplay setting.
The Meadows was the first place I thought of in this project; a golden field with multicoloured flowers and an orange sky, pink clouds and a red sun. This eventually became a red sun and a gold sun, and the area became more and more reminiscent of Tuscany, or Umbria.
The Glades would be dappled through the meadows, creating a larger biome. I wanted the trees to have gold leaves, white bark and a yellow sky, but this eventually changed to any variety of autumn colours for the leaves. ‘Eversong Woods’ from World of Warcraft was a big inspiration for this area, as that had always been my favourite starting zone in the game. New England in America is another inspiration, as I have always thought their autumns looked incredible.
The Rosen glow peaks were inspired by a phenomenon called ‘Alpenglow’, and the Ladin folk story behind it. The story goes that; “A dwarven king with a beautiful pink rose garden in the mountains stole away a local girl to be his bride by turning himself invisible. However, when the townsfolk came to save her they saw the crushed roses beneath his feet and were able to find him. In a rage, the dwarven king cursed his garden to never be seen in day or night, but forgot to mention the sunset. Now, whenever the sun sets, a pink glow descends on the mountains, which from a distance looks like his rose garden.” When I first heard this story in the Dolomites I thought it sounded fascinating, and I wanted to include a reference to it in my world.
In a story sense, this area serves as a barrier into the ‘night side’ or Lunar Chapter, and is connected to the Blackridge (another mountain range). This area also has a darker, more purple sky due to its proximity to the ‘night side’.
The Twilight Band would be the only section of the planet with extensive wildlife due to its optimal conditions for life. I imagine that predators are extinct due to Elysian intervention so the wildlife is peaceful. I think that cervids (deer, elk, stags etc), large felines (cats) and large aves (birds) are the most common animals, though I think they have interesting features such as multicoloured feathers/pelts/fur and odd ears/antlers/wings where they may not typically be or on animals that do not traditionally have them.
Similarly, I imagine the flora is abundant and colourful, though I haven’t gone as far into planning for this due to its low importance.
The Emberhall (or Embercourt, or Lilystone Court – names still to be decided) is another city also important to my protagonist as I imagine this is where she grew up. This place was inspired by Mediterranean villages, Lake Como, ‘Naboo’ from Star Wars and ‘Silvermoon City’ from World of Warcrft.
This area felt very personal to me, so I wanted it to be made up of places I loved. I have often holidayed in Tuscany, Croatia or Greece during the summer and the Alps in the Winter, so I wanted it to feel like it could be a mix of these places.
The Lunar Chapter is less developed in my mind, but I know that I want it to be eerie, cold and very different to the rest of the planet.
The Blackridge and Darkewood serve as a natural border between areas. The Blackridge is a range of tall, icy mountains and glaciers with steep drops and frozen waterfalls that are unscalable for anyone without advanced technology (anyone below the Noble class, essentially). The mountains are inspired by Scandinavia’s fjords and the forest by the Siberian Taiga.
The Blackmire was a later addition to my project, and I am still unsure on whether or not this area will be cut in production.
The Root Network is where I imagine an exile settlement exists in the South.
The two cities I have envisioned are the homes of two major families. Ivoryton live in a gothic, vampiric city inspired by ‘Revendreth’ from World of Warcraft and ‘Hogwarts’ from Harry Potter, surrounded by a town inspired by ‘Gilneas’ from World of Warcraft and Bavarian towns, while Silvermere live in a long (but not tall) palace inspired by Versailles and the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, surrounded by a town inspired by Edinburgh and Glasgow (where I grew up).
The paternal family of antagonist Lucien are Ivoryton (though he is identified with the Royal House), while a secondary protagonist Rosamine is a Silvermere, so I wanted to have an idea of what these two cities looked like specifically.
Finally I wanted to establish the Stellar Chapter. This region would be significantly smaller than all others, as it was given to the Starling family belatedly.
The Southern peaks was designed around a character from House Starling; Polaris, since I had already decided his vague design some time ago. Since Polaris’ clothes are star-patterned and iridescent, I wanted a beautiful night sky and a multi-coloured aurora.
Lumicity looks very different the rest of the planet, design wise, as it was constructed very recently. This area should look like cyberpunk cities, colourful and luminescent, since it was built and is overseen by the Starling Corporation, a space-travel tech company. This city would be entirely enclosed, much like the Capitol, due to the freezing temperatures outside the dome.
The Everdark is the Antihelion, and was designed around my childhood fear of the dark. There is no light, and no warmth. I don’t want to be sure if life exists or not on top of the ice, as it keeps both my reader and myself on edge.
I do think that I want life to exist under the ice however, as the idea of something frightening being beneath you is scary to me. This life could be sustained by deep-sea underwater vents.
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