Young Writers Society

2. Creating a background 1

In the beginning was nothingness, but what was before that? When a story begins, it's important to have something where it all started. It's like a timeline that doesn't just start when the first word of a story is written, but started long before the events that are part of the story. So you have to pick a point where you start to develop a bit of a "story". Why is the world in which the story is set the way it is today? Were there any reforms, religious entities that led to strange laws being in place today? Were there any catastrophes or human influences, perhaps from gods or a god, that led to the world being the way it is today?

There are some ways to fill in these gaps. Some are not necessary to build up an understanding of the plot, others answer some questions, especially in very intense stories that alternate between past and present. You can start to put windows in, in our WB house, that help the reader to have everything a bit more tangible. But be careful! Overloading this information can make it feel like a textbook. That's why it's important to stick with this window motif. We don't see everything inside the house, but only what the window gives us to see. This means, that some of this information isn´t necessary to be in the story, but rather envelop the story.

A background doesn't always have to be something that happened thousands of years before, but is just meant to answer some questions that may come to the reader's mind when they are reading. Why is it the way it is? Probably a rather childish question the "why" but in answering this question, one gets at the same time a new scope of ideas and information that are not given in the story but help to surround and stabilise the windows of the house with stones.

As a small task, it can help to enter a stage of " unawareness" here and think again about where there are small holes that might be left uncapped in the story. Are there perhaps some points that are still open? If you want you can share some of your missing stones.

Creating a background

Are there perhaps some points that are still open?

Oooh...this is actually something that ends up being rather vital to some points of my story, so I'm probably going to end up talking about way more than what this questions asks...xD

Soo...I actually ran through my chapter by chapter outline just to check for anything plot related that could have a whole due to lack of background information and I think I do have a couple of spots.

So...there's one point on how Vantaxia 42 where this gang of time travelling pirates are wreaking havoc and the explanation for their supremacy is put down to not just them being from the future but Vantaxia 42 just having almost zero piracy in general. I don't think I've come up with a convincing historical reason as to why for that just yet. Like I have a base idea of like just super efficient navies coupling with the economy of most countries just negating the effectiveness of piracy, but there's no set explanation there.

There's another much smaller point as well, which is well...there's this village called Little Wingota which is sort of base camp for the pirates. I've written a few extra background stories of the pirates capturing and taking this place over and how they got the inhabitants to leave, but I haven't fully fleshed out the history of this village in the years before the pirates did what they did.

And yeah that's about it I think. Most of the other history is in place...and well this world has so many background stories that play in. The whole premise of the book in fact is based off of a prank conducted literal billions of years of ago in the development of the world. Then the reason that the three girls in the story who die when they aren't supposed to are marked that way also cause of a background reason relating to an alien invasion of Earth. There's a few things that are very much in the background and the "timeline" of this world and since this is a time travel story, it does concern both events that happened a long time before this story and events that will happen a long time after this story takes place.

Also...xD, I think the timeline of this world starts with a line very close to the one in the post. "In the beginning there was nothingness"....cause I did kind of have to write my own sort of multiverse creation story for this especially cause one of the main protagonist Harry was born before the creation of reality itself.

@HarryHardy


@MailicedeNamedy

Create the home town (city, town, village, etc...) for one of your protagonists and / or for the antagonist.

Both my antagonist and protagonist come from the same hometown, the Mutation Zone in Ayer Pedang. Ayer is a common . . . 'prefix' of sorts to place names in Malay. It literally means 'water'. Pedang, meanwhile means sword. The origin of the name is a legend where it is thought a warrior's sword fell into a lake in this region.

The Mutation Zone is called that because it is the part of Ayer Pedang ( a little more than half of the large city) affected by what the citizens call the Mutation Incident in the 1960s. Here, a lot of the wildlife has mutated. Some, including humans, were mutated into mysterious creatures known as the Corrupted, which seek other mutated animals and humans to eat. Others remain largely themselves with some modifications, e.g. humans have some superhuman capabilities.

General History

It is rumoured that a mutation incident had happened in the country before, and that there were actually a few mutants and a few Corrupted produced from it but the government covered it up. This can be evidenced in the fact that the modern martial arts styles of the MZ have their predecessors which seem to account for TypeA-D mutations. These speculations would date the first mutants to about the late 1800s.

During the 1960s, a mysterious incident occurred in a tin mine (now defunct) where a rare material, now called the Corruption Core was dug up and caused negative mutations, called the Corruption, creating otherworldly creatures that destroyed everything in their path. However, Corruption was not caused in every individual affected.

The main natural disasters to occur in the city of Ayer Pedang were floods, where certain buildings were damaged. Some of the major ones occurred in the 1970s, correlating with the period immediately after the Mutation Incident.

The nonmutant side of the city initially encouraged mutants to raise families under certain conditions, e.g. in a lab at first, at the Liminal Zone between the Mutation Zone and the Unmutated Zone. Thanks to mutant campaigning and the formation of the Mutant Council in the midst of that, this practice was abolished as the labs were deemed inhumane. Though officially recognised, the Mutant Council does not hold much sway over the City Council's decisions. The Mutation Zone brews with a sense of the Unmutated's authority, with many black-suited guards and officials wandering the place, monitoring the inhabitants, while protected in their special suits.

Since the Mutation Incident, Ayer Pedang no longer focuses on the tertiary sector, instead becoming more of a manufacturing ground where cheap goods are made. However, what tertiary activities are left mostly consist of scientific research into the nature of the mutations and how to combat them.

Aesthetics

What makes the Mutation Zone most interesting is how a lack of assistance from the outside world has forced people to innovate. (And how the abandonment of a lot of buildings by those still unmutated has given them the materials to do so) For instance, the protagonist's family eats their meals inside a decommissioned ferry, and his bedroom is on the second floor of that ferry. (Though it's more like a dormitory, with minimal dividers between bunks for some privacy).

Some wealthy mutants live up on the very border with the intermediary Liminal Zone. This area has more high-rise buildings, like condominiums, some with penthouses. The antagonist lives in one of those penthouses. However, this area is a lot 'newer' in comparison to the southerly regions of the Mutation Zone. There aren't any old heritage buildings, and furthermore the buildings here have survived far fewer floods than the ones in the south. There are some doubts about their structural stability.

3. Creating a background 2

Creating a background is a process that is not only important at the beginning, but is always bubbling over the course of the entire story and even afterwards. Much like the universe, this process starts once but never stops.

World-building is like creating your own world, a miniature locomotive world or like the house in our example. The windows are inserted and a story, which are the bricks, already make up the ground floor. But the house is still empty and lacks furniture, a point that will be addressed later. Today we will deal a bit more with the windows and the frame, the painting of the ground floor and the stabilisation of this "floor plan".

A lot of information created for a background is rarely necessary to understand the story, but helps the writer, who in this case is a "creator", to build an understanding and answer final questions.

A next step in the background process is to somehow connect some of the information you have "invented" to the story. This is, of course, a two-way street.

1. You create some kind of background for an event based on the plot elements that is somehow relevant to the story or answers some questions.
2. You combine some created background information with e.g. conversations of daily life to make a kind of "liveliness" in the story.
3. You take an event in the story and develop it further and build some side characters there (who don't appear in the story, for example) or plot elements that go into more detail than they do in the story.

Again, it is important to know how much is too much, what can appear in the story or what should simply serve as a kind of fanservice for the reader. For example, are the protagonists sitting at the table reading a newspaper article?

We now take the step of adding frames to the windows, maybe some flowers that can stand on the windowsill as well as a coat of paint for the stones that embellish the ground floor of the house.

Creating a background is a huge process, which is also described in the next point (4. Creating a background 3). Again, since there is no right or wrong answer, and this is just a guide, you can always look for another way to develop a story and its world.

Activity 3

Let's take the information we got in the previous post to assign a new task.

3. You take an event in the story and develop it further and build some side characters there (who don´t appear in the story, for example) or plot elements that go into more detail than they do in the story.

Develop a scene that you particularly like or that still seems a little unpolished. It doesn't have to be a scene where the protagonist appears or any other character. It can also be something that happened in the past and may not even appear in the manuscript. Ultimately, this task should look like creating a kind of blueprint. Structurally, it can be in bullet points, or just an outline with all the ideas you can think of for it.

In the end it should help a little bit to build up an understanding for some situations and also help to divide a "whole" story with the whole world into smaller chunks to have a better overview for the development and creation.

You take an event in the story and develop it further and build some side characters there (who don´t appear in the story, for example) or plot elements that go into more detail than they do in the story.

Ahh...so I have nearly the perfect scene to chose for this one. There's one scene in my story, which is very much extra background info that I've been toying with for some time now. I haven't fully decided if this scene will exist within AAA as a flashback or will it just join the myriad of scenes that created this world, but it absolutely central to the premise of this story, so its certainly something that I'm gonna totally jump on the chance to flesh out.

So..here it is...

First some context...AAA's entire plot, well its primary/secondary plot, it has like two primary plots plus one subplot...but anyway, so this hinges on the fact that these three recently deceased girls who were killed at the wrong place in the timeline and must be returned to the land of the living end up needing to do these seven trials. This is obviously a rather silly law and it was put in place as the result of a prank by one Harry Hardy. This scene is that moment, where this law was thought up.

So while we get to the scene, a little bit of background for the background scene....

This takes place two minutes after the creation of what is known as the Third Alphaverse. So...bit of context there once again, the Alphaverse is the name for all of reality pretty much, and these realities last for exactly 27 septillion years to the dot. (Earth Years). And the Third Alphaverse is the third version of reality, so like two entire realities existed before this and only Harry, his siblings and three others have lived through all of them.

Anyway, getting off topic here, but basically at the end of The Second Omegaverse, there was a massive shift in celestial power as Jason, Harry and Jennifer officially embraced their true selves for the very first time and one of those other three were killed and things happen™.

Long story short, as that reality finally collapses on itself, there's a certain length of something between that happening and the next reality forming. I can't really call it a length of time because time as a thing doesn't exist there, the timeline stops at the end The Second Alphaverse and a new one forms for the Third Alphaverse. But in that nothingness between the two realities, these three realize that for this new world, they have to take responsibility now that they've claimed their true forms, and so Jason, being the Prince of Death has to officially lay claim to The Underworld, which by that point is a tiny planetoid pocket dimension packed to the brim with a people that have nowhere to go and its just a big mess.

So Jason before the creation of the new reality proposes to create a set of laws and build this brand new version of The Underworld into operation as a much more organized entity. This plannings take a bit longer than anticipated and things get to the very final possible cause of death when the third reality officially forms, the first signs of life and inevitably death are starting to form and Jason's gotta get down there stat and start doing his job.

And now we finally get to the scene...and let's start with setting.

Its mostly a black featureless void. A single point of light is visible in the background, a rainbow of colors that are the brightest anyone will ever be able to see. The six celestial forces that were scattered and compressed in the destruction of The Second Omegaverse have bunched up together and formed a single point of pure energy. On tiny second later and it will explode into the next reality. Harry, Jason and Jennifer, in their true forms, towering pillars of energy communicating through simple thought.

Karnage, Sonotos also in a similar state hover far off in the distance mourning the loss of King. That's the other trio..but anyway they're just off in a different region not bothering anyone.

Soo...the scene itself.

Jason frantically mentally memorizing his new laws, trying to come up with the suitable reason for the final one and there's a bit of a debate around it. Jennifer is distracted by her own thing to do, the creation of a reality creates the heat, and as the cold she needs to be down there. Harry similarly has to ensure the dark realm doesn't collapse into the light but is allowed to form freely. Jason also needs to be down there for the death of the first living organism.

Jason probably suggesting something very reasonable like immediately letting anyone in that situation resurrect immediately then he himself talking about how that could upset people and of how the probability of that is zero.

Harry at this point most likely corrects him and tells his the actual probability which zero point a bunch of zeroes one something percent. Even Jennifer at that point is like "not now Harry"

Then behind them, reality explodes as the six celestial forces uncoil, pink, yellow, red, green, blue and purple. Matter begins to form, time and space become a thing and the first planck instants of the universe start to flow. The other two celestials, abandoning the form of their deceased third brother run off to deal with their sphere's of influence vowing to return.

These three have to make a choice. Harry makes his joke mentioning how it'd be fun to put down some insanely complicated set of trials. Jennifer considers how the probability is pretty much zero and agrees, thinking its hilarious and couldn't possibly harm anyone. They run off.

Jason has a decision to make and he can sense life forms coming into existence. Behind him, reality has already expanded in those few attosecond and now over two million big bangs are happening at the exact same time across dimension and he's very much pressed for time.

Just as he can sense the first race - The Kialvorgiari - The Demons and the first living race - The Anyitire Veransis - commonly known now as the Ancient Hydranians are starting to evolve, he makes the choice. He goes with Harry's proposal, the laws are written officially and he hurried down to the Underworld, getting there a few seconds before the very first microorganism dies and the first cycle of life in this brand new reality completes itself.

And scene...yeah that's about all I've got for it.

I completely forgot to reply to you both.


@HarryHardy


@Liminality

Creating a background 1

Are there perhaps some points still open?

While I have a rough outline of how events played out to shape Ayer Pedang as it appears in the story, there are quite a few gaps, especially surrounding the martial arts aspect.

1. The formation of the system of governance

- Who started the Mutant Council? This is important because given the timeframe of the story, they would still be alive when the novel begins. So my main characters should know who they are (but I don't, haha)

- How does a family head get elected to the Mutant Council? How did Hai Gang and Aruna get elected in? I think that based on Hai Gang's philosophy, every family head should be in the council or have some representatie there, but that would leave open the question of how family heads themselves are chosen in the first place. Which is hard to answer because I've already created family heads that seem to come from various backgrounds. Most of them, like Hai Gang and the Bridge family head are the parental figures and teachers of the other family members. Spouses are considered regular members. But what about Aruna? Is she a teacher too?

- Where did the Unmutated City Council come from? I'm thinking it was already in place before the mutation incident, but it might be important when exactly they made the official distinction between Mutated/Unmutated.

2. Why martial arts and duelling are so important

Currently my answer for this would be a. it's tradition and tradition is highly valued in this society and b. studies in this world have shown that practising martial arts greatly reduces the chances of a mutant becoming Corrupted. Maybe there would have been a discovery of a martial arts school near the Mutation Site when the Incident first happened where all the teachers and students were not Corrupted and that motivated the authorities to try and encourage martial arts practices in the MZ.


3. You take an event in the story and develop it further and build some side characters there (who don´t appear in the story, for example) or plot elements that go into more detail than they do in the story.

My current scene is actually really good for this. So, having found out that Kingpiece wants to take over the Mutation Zone, Ren and Aruna team up to try and spy on her for specifics. Before they get to that, Aruna has received a contact from a mutant who just returned from the Unmutated Zone (like Kingpiece) and who had some involvement with Kingpiece's operations already. Coincidentally this person, Wander is also someone they remember from their youth.

Bullet points:
- Wander was supposedly going to the UZ to study under a kendo master, but that turned out to be a cover-up for wanting to get away from their family as a young person. The year when Wander left was 2013.
- The story starts in 2018. Kingpiece returned briefly to the MZ in 2014 to speak to Hai Gang for the first time, and realised that no, even after having found success in the UZ, she couldn't let go and still wanted vindication for him failing to save her (she views it as him abandoning her) when they were attacked by an anti-mutant group.
- The precursor to Kingpiece's Rook family/ present-day posse: the Pack was a gang of mutants in the Unmutated zone who strove to protect the mutant-owned businesses in the Central Business District of the UZ, using sabotage and intimidation to stop attempts to transfer ownership of the businesses or any unfair practices played by the surrounding, more prosperous businesses owned by the Unmutated.
- Mutants in the UZ go through a rough time, because of the misconception that the Corruption is transmittable via contact with a mutant. So they're discriminated against and it's hard for them to find housing, work, etc. Nonetheless, some mutants are able to live there and there are a few mutant sympathizers among the Unmutated, as well as a scheme run by the government to create housing and work for them. (It's not very effective however, as many government schemes tend to be.)
- Side character: Sao, a young man recruited by Kingpiece around 2012-2013 into the Pack. Sao didn't know how to fight and mainly managed accounting. He had a Type-C mutation. Wander was a friend of his. His betrayal of Kingpiece to the Unmutated authorities led to Kingpiece gaining more sympathy and support from mutants in the UZ, contributing to the rise of her present posse and power. No one knows what happened to him since.

4. Creating a background 3

In this final part of creating a background, we are looking at things, that aren´t visible in a direct shape for the reader, but are there, to give the writer (and at some extent to the reader) a better feeling of the surroundings.

A background isn´t just the way how history of the races in your story is told, but also the environment, laws, and maybe common things like dialects, specialities or something completely unnecessary, but just is there to give your story a final polish to give everything a kind of smoother surface.

It can help to ask yourself some questions, like:

- What does the area around a locality look like? What animals and plants live there? Are there any special features there? Maybe a secret cave somewhere, or a magical river? Something completely impossible on our earth? What is the weather like there? Are there any special features in the temperatures?

- What laws are there? Some that make sense and some that are just pulled by the hair? Any ideas you'd like to implement here so that the characters have to do something weird? To what extent is religion (or one or more religions) involved? What mythology is there? Is there a connection between possibly a deity, a myth and a law or rule that comes to mind?

- What language do the inhabitants of the different places / cities / races / planets, etc... speak? Are there any special features, like a word they always use? Are there any local specialities that the characters like to eat and drink that exist regionally? What is the story behind it?

- Is there anything completely unnecessary that is not relevant to the story, yet somehow determines the lives of the protagonists?

It sounds very much like a detail-oriented job that ultimately comes back to the point I mentioned in a previous part; it's important to feel good. You have to like the house you create and only when you have everything ready on the house can you see what is missing. With this point, we have now finished the ground floor.

We have painted the floor plan and the walls, added windows and with this point here we have also furnished the house with furniture, lamps, books, a fridge and everything else you can imagine. And again, from the reader's point of view, it is important to note here that they only see what they can see through the window. He may only see the table and the sofa next to the carpet, but not the lamp standing in the corner. It is important here to know what can be inserted and what cannot for the story. Can it be inserted at all or does it seem irrelevant and like filler?

NaNo is slowly getting to the halfway point and most people are already fairly far along with their stories. That's why it's now time to think about the structure of the story. Are there things I can add that were mentioned in this post? Is there any bizarre information that could somehow become important? Have I developed a legend or my own language or dialect? (Not to the extent of a complete language, of course, but some specifics, like a "hiya" at the end of a sentence?) Think about it for a moment and comment below.

Creating a Background 3

Are there things I can add that were mentioned in this post?

Surprisingly nothing at the moment. I feel like everything currently strictly required does exist within the worlds I've designed, but of course that is very likely to change as I write. AAA is so far at 17k or about 5% complete, but I've already ended up introducing about six background characters I didn't initially anticipate along with an entirely different world setting that I created very much on the spot cause it just sort of felt like it was required. Soo...potentially in the future I will have to add, but with my particular style where everything that sounds important is already developed as much as possible but the other less certain things end up getting developed on the spot....I've got nothing to add...yet.

Is there any bizarre information that could somehow become important?

Oh most definitely...there a lot of bizzare or just I would say unusual little details I create just for throwaway jokes sometimes...although they aren't always things that end up being suuper important. It is hard to tell if any of these will be important, but I'll rattle them off anyway.

The sign posted to the general entranceway to the Milky Way 27 is faded and it reads as El MIl Va. Its used as a throwaway joke in a few pieces I write, but it hasn't caused any big issues...yet.

Superhero agencies from the year 2037AD according to Earth 36 (The one we're in at the moment) started employing a range of new battle tactics known as Bathroom Warfare specializing in combat on slippery...bathrooms...yes..you read that right. It actually came in surprising useful once for TAP as a few people on YWS may have read...but I have no idea if it will make an appearance in AAA.

The most major I think that could be considered bizzare at least to human readers would be the various method of acquiring energy used by certain alien lifeform through the story. Cause while we humans are carbon based beings, that's not true for all beings, nor do all beings use the reaction known as respiration to power their cells. So we've got beings who drink and eat things that humans might consider either poisonous or dangerous whereas we also have aliens who find things humans consider mundane to be dangerous.

In AAA, this probably has its strongest effect in the biologies of beings such as Vankous Frost, whose species uses the far more inefficient combustion reaction to power their cells and as such they consume a lot of compounds like heptane, octane and other liquid hydrocarbons that exist in their solid state at the frigid temperatures of Zenomia.

There's also Stean, a Notpyrkian whose cells in addition to regular food, also can carry out a highly inefficient form of photosynthesis.

Harry and other Celestials also while being able to generate their own energy through the celestial forces, do have their own version of breathing where their bodies perform nuclear fusion with various isotopes of Hydrogen and Helium which is what they tend to process while breathing. This gives them the ability to breathe in water and directly break that down into the Hydrogen they need, exhaling oxygen. This particular ability combines with their innate magic to provide them with the ability to essentially "breathe" even in the vacuum of space.

And that was too much science, parts of which might be wrong, I only did a little bit of biology back then...and I haven't fact checked all of this cause I mean..these are explanations I almost never use in the actual story its just for me to know..xD, you'll often see these abilities just get used or mentioned without any explanation whatsoever unless in very rare and specific circumstances.

Have I developed a legend or my own language or dialect? (Not to the extent of a complete language, of course, but some specifics, like a "hiya" at the end of a sentence?)

Well..this...this is something I've done a lot of actual. You can technically call Harry Hardy himself pretty much THE Legend of this reality, there are so many stories of his past exploits that are captured in several light quite often with our human characters often gushing over certain legendary feats while you'll see some of these actually unfold from Harry's own point of view. Its an interesting contrast I think, cause from the POV's of our more mortal characters you see a lot of legends all over the place before we eventually switch to someone like Harry's who's being around since the beginning of everything and knows the facts about all of these things...so...yeah there's that.

And languages and dialects, well there are technically hundreds of these that I reference...its unavoidable when you have the mixing of sooo many different species and timelines.

For example, from Earth to Earth, I try to indicate slight differences in slang words to show they are different dimensions, or add different words to worlds at different points in time. These aren't always very noticeable though, they mostly fly under the radar. The languages that I have developed a decent amount and fleshed out are the four primary languages of magic. I never go into detail, but especially for the two more prominents ones, Ancient Hydranese and Alpheek, I've created rudimentary sentence structures, verb conjugation rules and have a vocabulary of maybe a hundred words each. A word gets added every time I need one. Its very simple but it is technically its own language with individuals alphabets that I have created unique symbols for.

For example the sentence My name is Harry!! would look like this in Alpheek.



That is pronounced as Harry Mia Jikyua Ik which literally translates to "Harry my name is!!" because 'tis the structure used in this language.

Activity 4

We now have a setting, a structure and a bit of a background to the story. But there is much more to good world building than these big points.

In this activity, we go a little smaller and look at the life of a possible minor character, or even a civilian who cannot be named in the story.

What is the daily life of one of these ordinary civilians like? Are there any new ideas or things you would like to share here that could not be answered in the previous point? Are there any special features that are different from our world?

The task is to help develop an understanding of the small details. It should also provide a diametrically opposed view of the plot and the main characters, who probably don't always lead a normal life. These details are like the patches of dust on the furniture of the house. They are (unfortunately) there and you have to live with them.

Activity 4

What is the daily life of one of these ordinary civilians like?

Ahhhh...once again we have the conundrum of there being so many different worlds in this story...but lemme try and get something out for each possible version of a "civillian".

Umm, so for a couple of these its nothing special worth mentioning. For example, Earth 27 is just Earth but more developed so, there's a few extra features, but the jobs are largely the same, just a bit more automated with perhaps a lower proportion of being working in hard labor and a higher proportion working in more tech based fields. Otherwise its just Earth..with fancy features I will mention in the answer to the next questions.

Mars...Mars is a little different to Earth. The civilization is honestly not too different out there. As a species they've evolved for life on that planet and its not too dissimilar to Earth actually. This is a Mars that is probably unrecognizable from Mars-36 which is the Mars most people living in the dimension reading this would now. That's a Mars where the water does flow a little thanks to a few quirks of the atmosphere, the temperatures are a bit extreme but nothing too crazy. The signature thin atmosphere and mostly red color is still there though. Its basically the day in the life of a regular Earth citizen, except of course its longer...by 40 mins...yeah so like basically no difference. The major things you might notice to be different as a human would be things are lot dustier so people where masks all the time umm...this description was first written pre Covid. There's also no countries over there, Mars is just unified as one single ruling body so you know everyone speaks the same language but of course naturally some dialects have sprung up on regions that are very far apart. And yeah, about that...its not that different. You wake up, you go to work, come back..do some stuff..sleep...repeat.

Now we move to the final location somewhat prominently featured...cause the Vantaxia ones aren't really going to count as "regular civilian" cause everyone on that ship and in that town are not living ordinary lives being pirates and time travellers and there just aren't any ordinary civilians, so their way of life would be the ordinary...its a weird cycle...but I'll avoid that one for the moment.

Finally, we get to the underworld...so this is perhaps the most interesting of the lot.

Firstly, we have a regular demon's life.

So, the underworld operates on the USD (Universal Standard Day) which is 22.05 hours approximately in Earth time so noticeably shorter. And this day is broken down in twenty seven segments that are the USD system's equivalent of hours, each of which in Earth time is 49 minutes long.

A demon usually has to work for 2 of these 49 minute long "hours" a day. Its mostly one of three jobs, containment supervision, operation or soul retrieval. Soul retrieval is essentially flying over to wherever a death has occured and escorting the soul back to the underworld. Operation or really operators are the ones who handle the incoming messages as The Undead Router updates the logs of everyone who has ever died and such. They process every single death, including warning the required authorities of deaths that happen at times, places or by a means that does not align with the actual timeline.

Its a complicated sort of idea where the timeline at the moment of creation of reality forms in its entirely from that realities creation to its eventual destruction as a series of possibilities of which one set is selected. All deviations from this original are noted. It is the decision of the varying personnel to figure out whether to allow deviations, edit deviations or change them entirely back to what the original was supposed.

The last ones, containment supervisors are actually not quite aptly named, but they simple have to supervise various parts of the underworld, from the lesser punishment areas, to the limbo spots, and well just basically, every demon from the one who runs the library to the one who runs the biggest punishment has the same job title...cause...well Jason named most of these...he's boring like that. Disclaimer, that last part was typed by Harry Hardy not HarryHardy...and yes there is a difference

So, when they are not working, they are in their various residences scattered about where they do lead fairly normal lives with family, although. One major difference is probably the ages, the demons have a lifespan of 120,000 years on average, and most demons go to school for upto 20,000 years to learn everything that they need to in order to function at their various jobs...yes if you thought your school took forever....try the Demon Academy...

Their day to day lives require a lot of sleep. Their workdays are so short cause the sheer amount of information they have to process in those two hours is huge and they need to recover at fully capacity. When they are not asleep, its often some of the few sports that the underworld has to offer or just you know, the basics...such as eating and whatnot.

A regular dead person's is life...is well, there's a few two many categories to really go over this. But they don't need sleep, don't eat, the ones in limbo just kind of stay there...till they are approved for a subsequent life. No one is left in limbo forever, the systems works such that it will cycle a soul through multiple lives until either the positive or negative is higher. If its marginally higher, they spend a decent life approximately similar to their former life but doing small tasks for the underworld and just kind of living. The others who are marginally negative spend time with those aforementioned punishments which are constant. Both of these also have set sentences before being cycled once again until the positive is super high and they move to a different pocket dimension which is basically paradise or a few other options that all involved leaving the afterlife behind or they've become super negative in which case they get banished to The Land of the Eternally Bound to basically just suffer for eternity I suppose. There's a bit more in there about how these particular things help shape the universe but that's not relevant here. So yeah, day in life, just kind of existing, small amounts of work or just constant minor punishments.

Are there any new ideas or things you would like to share here that could not be answered in the previous point?

I think I kind of just went ahead and answered this question in the previous one already...soo..whoops.

Are there any special features that are different from our world?

YAS...okay...but, let's see. Living in the underworld means you travel via just flying...all demons can do so including travelling through the eighth dimension which is commonly referred to as the shadow dimension cause most creatures of darkness can access this. Its a dimension that bends space and time a little allow you to travel faster. Their sports are different, there's a lot of these, but the most popular is a sort of table sport where each participant has a variation of a long thin stick with certain differences added in as per category and they have to try and knock the other person's stick off a "table" of sorts.

Mars' different features would include having a lot more flying vehicles. Very few are land based there due to gravity being so easy to beat. Its one third of Earth's I think. The lower density of the atmosphere also helps.

Earth 27 is actually quite a bit more developed, with almost every car in operation having a hover or flight feature essentially ruling out the need of airplanes especially with the advent of the new teleporters. These are in their infancy and very expensive, but they can get you to travel hundred of miles in seconds.

Earth also boasts of a sky hook that is used to launch its spacecraft, there are no more rockets being launched from the ground. Space travel is getting increasingly more common as well with the colony of the Moon declaring independence about a decade from the point in this book, and Earth having its inhabitants move out to most major planets like Mars, Venus, the moons of Jupiter..etc. Travelling to the moon is pretty cheap by this point and most people who save up can afford a trip to the other planets too.

Interstellar ships owned by Earth are still largely exploratory ships designed for sending envoys to other star systems or to the intergalactic council. There are a few interstellar spacefighters though.

Interstellar is possible and fairly affordable if you chose to travel on a ship owned by a different planet like Mars. Earth 27 is officially recognized as a member of the Milky Way council as of 2019 {story takes place in 2024) and the citizens of Earth are allowed on board although a slight stigma remains there, its still very fresh and people from Earth are considered..you know...the newcomers.

And that's about all...I think...

5. Before we move to the next floor

We have now seen a lot in World-Building and looking at the house we have built so far, we have the ground floor finished and furnished. But there is still a lot missing to complete the house. And even then the house is far from finished, because it is always going on with changing, creating and enlarging.

At this point we will take another quick look around before we go up to the next floor. It's all about trying to integrate worldbuilding into the story without turning the story into too much of a stagnant textbook. Many of the elements we have seen can be inserted into the plot in passing and serve as illustrations for the reader. It will seem to them as if they are walking down a long corridor and new doors open where they can look in.

Therefore, this part only briefly addresses the fact that everything that has been created so far does not necessarily have to be inserted into the story, but nevertheless some bits of information should appear to give the reader the opportunity to make the intangible tangible.

Now for the quick question; is there one thing, one small detail that you absolutely want to have in the story, no matter what the cost? And if so, how did you envisage incorporating it into the plot?

In the next part, we will look at some of the details that give the house an atmosphere.