Deep Worldbuild Project Part 4: Technology and Magic
Deep Worldbuild Project:
Part 2: Landscape and How it Affects Culture
For a newer and more practical post on this topic, click here.
Welcome to the fourth installment of the Deep Worldbuild Project series. Yesterday’s post was about the wildlife, and before that we talked about map outlines and culture. Today’s post is about the technology and magic in Kaloris and its neighboring countries.
Let’s start with Kor-Baen, just because it’s at one end of the country and it’s my favorite. ;D
Kor-Baen is home to the Dwarves, as well as a couple of rangers. Well, “home” is a bit of an overstatement for the rangers, but whatever. Like with the rest of Kaloris, cities are placed at key locations, and like in the post about landscape we’ll see how it (landscape) affects culture, but with a narrower scope this time.
What kind of technology places have depends on what materials are available, which depends on the surrounding landscape. With Kor-Baen there’s a lot of rock and metal and not a lot of lumber. What lumber they do have comes from the small evergreen forest down by Dakineth, and with there being a large Patharai population in those woods, even the dwarves aren’t in a hurry to go in there for lumber.
That being said, they do go into the woods on occasion, usually about once every two months and then only in large numbers, to carry back as much lumber as they can because they know they need it.
In the three chief mining cities – Avuineth, Onolineth, and Istrineth – the technology is very simple. I mean, this is a medieval fantasy world, so all of it’s simple, but the technology in Kor-Baen is particularly simple. In the mining cities they have mining carts and tracks to assist them, and they use hand tools for the actual mining.
After they’ve extracted the ore they toss it into furnaces until it becomes liquid and they send it through a simple sieve to catch the rock and whatever else is mixed into the ore. From there it’s poured into molds and set aside to cool.
Sometimes the mining cities will send the purified iron to the river cities where it’s turned into wrought iron. Those facilities are powered by waterwheels. Those river cities also provide fish acquired from their ice fishermen.
In the rest of Kaloris, as well as in Roenor, the technology is fairly simple. They have a crude sort of plumbing that involves wooden seats over holes in the ground that lead to sewers, and the rest is medieval-esque. Stone ovens and fireplaces; letters and messengers for long-range communication (or carrier birds, sometimes); horses, wagons, carts, etc. for transportation; etc. Their navy consists mostly of fishing boats and a couple of caravels, so they’d better hope they don’t get into a war with Roenor and their large navy.
Audrelia has very little by way of technology. They use cooking fires, they have yet to adopt the plumbing systems that their neighbors use, and they walk everywhere unless they can find a stray flamingo. Yes, I said flamingo. The Morressir use spears for their fishing instead of the nets that even their Elven countrymen use. They stick only to necessities whenever possible.
Roenor has much of the same technology as Kaloris, but they have a more advanced navy, as mentioned above. In addition to a few fishing boats and several caravels, they also have quite a few galleys, longboats, and barques.
This post is titled “Technology and Magic,” but I think the latter will be very sparse on Themar. If there’s any at all it will belong to the Elves, who don’t use it very often because it’s unnecessary. In that case, the Adrelian Elves would use it more, and out of a wish for comfort. The Adrelian Elves are more foolish than the Elves elsewhere. I’m not entirely sure why, yet.
I guess that about wraps up this post. I’d share another chapter of my WIP, but I haven’t written more yet. I should do that. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the post and I hope you’ll stay tuned for tomorrow’s post. :) Bye!
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