What lost treasures, what wonders and mysteries, exist in your stories?
Are the characters in your story enjoying the fruits of a golden age? Or, are they living in the shadow of a dead empire?
Published on August 2, I wrote about the rise and fall of Rome, about the durability of civilizations.
Compared to other eras of collective human history, the saga of Rome is well documented.
But, what of civilizations that have all but vanished?
INTO THE FLOOD AGAIN
Flood stories appear in many cultures. Did humanity experience a collective cataclysm or cataclysms?
Enormous gaps in knowledge exist, yet markers remain of millennia past. Massive buildings or ruins defy present understanding. Cave drawings, rune carvings, or unearthed tablets offer partial clues. Faint memories linger, guarded and coaxed to new life in campfire tales to inspire new dreamers and adventurers.
MYSTERIES
In your worldbuilding, what is known of those who came before? What mysteries remain to be unraveled? What lost treasures inspire questers to risk life and limb?
Are these treasures prized only for their rarity — or for the world-bending properties they are said to possess?
How are these ancient monuments perceived by the characters in your story?
What sayings do the characters in your story use to describe the bygone age?
Are the weathered echoes of the past something that provokes fascination but holds little sway over the course of events? Or… do these monuments serve as inspiration to renew and recreate what was lost?
Some Roman structures became readily available quarries for later generations concerned with their own building needs. Other testaments to Roman engineering are still with us today, while certain megaliths around the globe exceed what we know of Roman ingenuity.
History is marked by the revolving cycles of growth, golden age, decay and collapse.
In what point in time is your story set? How do your characters see themselves and their place along the ever-turning wheel of time?
Share about the story you’re writing. How is the passage of time woven into your worldbuilding?
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I'm currently writing an "otherworlder" fantasy and in my world, the past isn't a settled history; it's a bunch of living titans, but people forgot who they actually are.
You could say that they all see the same monuments and ruins connected tot he titans, but their "history" of them is a mirror of their own values. And they are the "ground" my characters are fighting over.
Cool post!
Great topic! One of my favorite series is the Gentlemen Bastards books by Scott Lynch (the first book is called “The Lies of Locke Lamora”). It takes place in fantasy Italy many lifetimes after an advanced race has disappeared. All that is left is the special magical glass and minor technology that nobody understands. People in the story build and live around these unique structures. They don’t really change the plot, but they make the world rich. It says to the reader, “this place is different, and not fully known.”