I love Dune. I see it as a speculator work of fiction, and after reading it over three years ago I’ve been obsessed with the idea of having extremely hostile environments for planets being almost necessary for a galactic empire. However, unlike in Dune, I wanted the “magical resource” to not be locked to a single planet in the universe, but instead explore how it could affect different planets’ ecosystems. This led me to starting conceptualizing one of these planets, the planet of Dnalice. To make a true writing exercise for myself different from Dune, I choose to set it in a different type of Tundra. As the name suggests: dnal-ice -> Ice Land (land is backwards).
So, we have a planet frozen solid, a magical material (at this stage still mysterious even to me), and now we just needed a conflict. A reason to make stories interesting around this planet. Honestly, here is where the original story became more a world-building exercise. I imagined two factions, both based on completely different ideas and taken inspiration from far reaches of literature. The Empire, and the Queendom.
The Queendom
I love the concept of an immortal queen, yet I was unsure for the longest time how to represent it. I eventually stumbled upon a book called “A Court of Thorns and Roses”, and despite that book touching topics completely irrelevant to my sci-fi setting and world building, I was enthralled by the various Faerie courts, that systematic power balance of medieval nobility and fiscal/magical strength. However, as I just mentioned, the Fantasy/Romance combo of that book is not easily translated into a galactic empire, so I needed more inspiration. This is where another spectacular Epic comes in: Red Rising. Pierce Brown describes a society where each caste has a visual color, and how that color fits in it. This fitted perfectly with my idea of Fae. Different Fae, either created by the Queen as slaves, or as nobility. Then, Pierce’s exploration on how the elites could be equal in almost all but title, where there cannot be a true Emperor, made me once again change my mind. So the titles, such as the Queen, are awarded by show of strength and acumen, and can change. This is how I build the calendar for the novella I am still writing in my free time, counting how many Queens have passed since the founding, and for how long they have reigned. However, this faction is not important for our first game, as we decided to set it within the bounds of the Empire.
The Solar Senate of Rome
This one had to feel different, yet more grounded to our history. An extension to our human history on Earth, but in the future. So I simply chose who I wanted to win, and picked Italy. Here I wanted to try something like a short story from Asimov, where an AI controls civilization in a benevolent way of prosperity. However, we can all agree that the current press surrounding AI is highly negative, and I would like to think that it will remain so in the future (otherwise I’m unable to imagine how it could turn into a Utopia), so the AI is the Emperor, which is hidden from the public eye, yet has the final say over the Senate. A Senate meeting in Rome, as now the most powerful city within the Empire. How it became such, well, that is a story for a future blog post.
I hope this small teaser can get you ever so slightly more excited about the possibilities within the world building. Where we try to explore how Earth has changed in the future as it became a Utopia, now being threatened by a magical alien resource.