My Summer Camp 2021 Worldbuilding Pledge Document

Written by CorsairAquilus

It's that time of year again, Summer Camp 2021 is almost upon us! After having a ball doing it last time (and fleshing out a *lot* of world and story in the process), I've decided it's time to do a second crack at it!

Q1. WHICH PROJECT ARE YOUR WORLDBUILDING EFFORTS TIED TO?

The project for this year's Summer Camp efforts will once again be Odysseys of the Calinan Sea, my Bronze Age novel/short story universe.

Q2. WHICH WORLD ARE YOU WORKING ON?

I'll be working on the planet Annyrion, an Earth-like world which is mostly in its late Bronze Age. It is a universe with low-to-medium magic - it exists but it's generally not commonplace. There are gods and they do show their hands, but only rarely and through intermediaries. Lots of empires, heroes, intrigue and adventure!

Q3. WHICH AREA OF THE WORLD(S) ARE YOU WORKING ON?

I'll be focusing on the Calinan Sea region, which is where most of my works take place, including the southern coast of Arikanda and the northern coast of Calina. Depending on the prompts I may include some stuff from further afield, but as usual my primary focus is on the Calinan Sea.

Q4. HOW MUCH ARE YOU AIMING TO COMPLETE?

I made it to Diamond last year - I may still get there as I have a fair bit of free time on my hands, but I'm also trying to route my creative energy into actually getting some prose down, so it could end up re-routed there. I don't feel as urgent a need as last time, but I would certainly like to get a lot of development done - Silver (aka 20 articles) would be a good minimum target, with a view to overshoot if I feel the need. Who knows, I may hit Diamond (31 articles) once again!

Q5. WHEN WILL YOU WRITE?

As mentioned I do have a bit of time on my hands, so I will be able to write something every day (whether that be a full article or part of one). I'm studying at the moment, so I'll probably either do it between classes or in the evening.

Q6. WHO IS YOUR SUPPORT NETWORK?

I usually tend to fly solo when I write without much consultation or support from others, but this time around I may shake that up a little and engage with the WorldAnvil community (probably helps that this time I'm not jumping in halfway through!). A fair few of my friends have expressed interest in seeing me finally hammer out something solid and see what I plan to do, so I'll probably share some of the stuff I'm especially proud of to my socials.

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Organising My Worldbuilding

1. PICS OR IT DIDN'T HAPPEN

I went through a process of organising my worldbuilding into categories earlier this year (and it's been more or less happening in a lesser form since I started developing Annyrion) so this thankfully does not require work. Below are most of the categories and sub-categories I've assigned my work into (some of the categories have been minimised to hide SuperSecretStuff or the need for further revamping).

World Categories

2. IMAGE INSPIRATION POOL

The Map

For those that haven't seen it before, this is the current map of Arikanda, where I'll be working:

The focus will fall on the north and south ends of the Calinan Sea, although if last year was any indication, some of the northern regions may get a few articles.

Landscape Images

As you might imagine, a work like Annyrion does require a fair bit of visual inspiration. Like the setting itself, I take a lot of visual inspiration from the Mediterranean Sea; Southern Europe, the Aegean Islands and Northern Africa. With that said, there are other biomes; for example, the Kalriv hail from an arid desert region not unlike the Southwestern US, while the city-state of Maganti has a landscape similar to Brazil/Rio de Janeiro. These photos come from a combination of my own photography from my adventures in the Mediterranean and various public domain sources (each attributed to their original author). I've tried to avoid images with modern-day architecture where possible to avoid shattering immersion.

Courtesy of Cerqueira

Courtesy of Colin Debson

Courtesy of Gautier Salles

Courtesy of Greta Farnedi

Courtesy of Jamie Hagan

Courtesy of Manuel Rheinschmidt

Courtesy of Pixabay

Courtesy of Stefan Kunze

From my travels

From my travels

From my travels

From my travels

From my travels

From my travels

From my travels

Character Images

I have also designed some character art to give a visual of the kinds of people you'll be seeing in the Calinan Sea. These are designed in either Hero Forge or the Portrait Workshop Beta. While not perfect representations (what representation is?) they are a good idea of how people in this world dress and look.

Avadian trader captain

Kalriv Legionary

Kalriv Legionary

Lalu'i

Magantine Firedancer

Solathine noble

Volkian Ranger

Wessuth mercenary

3. LAYING IT OUT

To be completely honest, I've never really been one for too much in the way of bells, whistles and customisation - kudos to those who can, there are some wonderfully-crafted layouts out there, but I kind of like the current templates as they are. I did use to do two line breaks at the end of each section of a template, but that now looks the way I like it without having to do that. My template is fairly bare bones and I may not actually use it, but it's there!