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Message: <blockquote data-quote="doctorbadwolf" data-source="post: 9665522" data-attributes="member: 6704184">In terms of worldbuilding principles and goals, It serves some additional practical purposes, as well. First, “The City” as it is often called serves as the trade capital and crown jewel of the Commonwealth, though not its actual political capital, which is absurdly placed in my home town of Bakersfield, CA (and the why of that is a tale in itself). The City is home to every kind of person imaginable, from all of the 9 Realms except dark Ginnungagap, which is home only to hungry abyssal terror. And even then, in secret, abyssal tainted folk dwell in the great jewel of Earth, working corruption and decay, and so there is plenty of work for the heroic Rangers in that place even in peaceful days. The second practical purpose is to have a place where the brightest light casts the darkest shadow, and to thus have a place for the all the varied stories and characters that can be born from that. Lastly, less practical, is the simple purpose that I love parkour, aerialist stunts, and personal flying machines from both fantasy and science fiction, and I love having a city that is entirely a single superstructure, miles wide and tall, with a central structure from which ships launch into orbit. The second great mass driver of the future era of the setting is in Kenya, up the side of a mountain, and is a gentler launching system since it is much longer and thus can accelerate at a lower rate to reach the same escape velocity, and I’m still working on The City of Gardens that has formed around it. The third sky port of note is outside Bakersfield, which leaders try every decade or so to rename but which people can never get to a large enough majority vote for a single name, so the bland old name remains. That city has been turned into a terraced city covered in a mix of trees and hanging gardens and solar shading, amidst the relatively modest towers built since the city became the Capital. It has three skyports, two of which goes all the way from one side of the Central Valley to the other before climbing the mountainside, and the third is more traditional and relies of rockets burning a biofuel harvested from the forest which has been grown throughout the hot, Previously dry, city. Water recycling and collection has allowed California’s Central Valley to be a place of rivers and lakes again, as it was before dams were built and industry began draining its natural resources. One thing that runs through all of this that I haven’t mentioned, and is something I’m curious for other views on, is messiness. When I build worlds, nothing is satisfyingly symmetrical except the esoteric beliefs of some groups, academic types mostly. Magitech is scientific but spirit magic is very much not, for instance, and magic changes what superstitions people form but people are more superstitious, not less.</blockquote>

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