Tree-World

March 12, 2007 at 5:08 pm (World-Building)

Well, here it is. Oddness.

The basic concept for the world I am about to start inventing is a fantasy world… atop a giant tree. This has been stewing in my head for some time, ever since I read this (I suggest you read that whole series of articles, by the way, they’ve been very inspirational for my personal world-building exercises). The thing that got me thinking was this:

“So I’m looking for style now. And don’t confuse “style” with “gimmick.” Making your world “Greyhawk, but on a giant tree” is kind of silly. Better to consider what sort of world might really evolve on a giant tree.”

I kind of took that as a challenge. So, I’m now going to conceptualize a world that exist, in its entirety, on a giant tree. Kind of an odd idea, when it gets down to it.

Before I start, I’d like to say this: this world is not intended to be used in a game of any sort, although it would certainly be possible. I do this simply for the joy of creation.

So. First, I need to think… what the hell would a world on a giant tree be LIKE? And what kind of tree should I use? Apparently, I have some decisions to make.

First of all, I’m going to decide what kind of tree to use. It should be deciduous, for one thing. Easier to build a world on a deciduous tree, because deciduous trees have crotches. That’s the part of the tree where the trunk splits off into several large branches. It also happens to be a readily available source of naughty jokes, so that’s all good.

The tree my world shall be on should have a *braces himself for widespread giggling* very wide crotch. What I mean by that is that the branches should emerge from the trunk at a vaguely horizontal angle, creating a wide plateau as well as providing relatively flat land on the branches. This allows for a larger world, which is a good thing.

Now, what kind of cultures would develop on massive tree-world? Obviously, most would be centered around the areas of land furthest away from the edge: building a city on the edge of nothing is not a good idea.

The existence of a world upon a giant tree would allow for some interesting mythologies. Most societies would have myths involving giant birds, and perhaps even stories of horrific beings from the roots. Creation myths would be very interesting… I wonder if it would even occur to them that there could be a ground below the tree, or would they just believe that the trunk extended on into eternity?

Some myths could even involve other trees, and other worlds upon them… most likely as a land inhabited in some sort of “golden age”, a gimmick used in way too many fantasy worlds as it is, but still a good gimmick.

The traditional fantasy features and stereotypes could be brought into line with the tree-ness of it all, too. Dwarves would mine wood. Of course, the wood of the world tree would be much sturdier than the wood of normal-sized trees, and probably equivalent to metal.

Birds would be equivalent to dragons… the human kingdoms could be ravaged by massive hawks, and deeper in the wilderness, ravenous vultures and crows would kill anything that looked tasty. This strange concept could be emphasized even more by the use of small dragons in place of birds… plus, I’ve wanted to have falconers using little dragons for a very, very long time.

Also, what kind of physical features would a world on a giant tree have? Would it have little trees? Rivers? Mountains? Who knows? An, uh… how would water be dealt with? Wouldn’t it kind of… fall off? These questions all have to be answered. Personally, I’m for little trees, as well as rivers.

Mountains I’m not so sure about… on one hand, mountains on a tree seems just downright silly, but on the other hand, mountains are a wonderful tool for dividing lands from one another… I mean, in LotR, the defining fantasy world, Gondor and Mordor are right bloody next to each other, but there’s a bunch of mountains in the way, and it makes them very much more separate.  I’ll think about that later.

I think I have managed to solve the water problem, though. The way I see it, although the water does fall off the world tree, as it falls it gains speed, and eventually evaporates into the atmosphere, where it later rains back onto the world. This method of explaining the world isn’t foolproof. The problem is that to match the amount of water being lost daily, some areas will have to be under constant rainfall. This isn’t too much of a problem, though, as it can lead to some interesting names for various lands… maybe there’ll be someplace called the Rainlands or something. It’ll be fun.

So, that’s all for today… this is a really long post. Oh well. Now that I’ve explored some of the meanings of a world atop a tree, I can get on to explaining the individual lands, races, cultures, all the fun stuff. I have quite a lot of ideas stored up for the upcoming posts, and I’m really looking forward to it. See you tomorrow.