Hey everybody! Welcome back to Fluff About Fantasy on another wonderful Saturday. I signed my publishing contract on Thursday, and I can’t wait to get started this coming week with the publishing process! It’s so exciting. Today, I want to talk about worldbuilding! This is one of my favorite topics to talk about, and I haven’t written about it in a while. At Fluff About Fantasy, I have touched on questions to shape your world, naming places, and drawing out your own maps, to name a few. Today, I want to talk about a technique that spurred my creation of the Twelve Houses in the Upper Realm. I hope it will inspire you too!
The Twelve Houses
Now, just for a brief recap if you haven’t read about my universe yet: the Upper Realm in Chasing Fae is made up of twelve noble houses that have control over different portions of the land. Think of it like twelve separate kingdoms, but lorddoms instead. (That is actually a word! It’s a very old word, but it’s a word.) When I first began conceptualizing these, I wanted them to be distinct lands with their own cultures. There would be similarities between them like the agricultural production of one area in comparison with another and the governmental style. But the intimate details of each House would be unique to that area.
To accomplish this, I chose to pick one element that would be the essence of the House and then build every other detail of the culture around it. I really like using this method because it allows all of the details to fit together cohesively. Let me give you an example.
The House of the Evening
This is my favorite of all the Houses that I’ve created, and it is the one that I personally would want to live in the most. I wanted to make sure that the House of the Moon and the House of the Evening were very different places, so I let the House of the Moon center around the mystical, magical properties of the moon in terms of spell-casting. That created a more intimate, mystical society with priestesses and one of the highest concentrations of magic in the entire Upper Realm. For the House of the Evening, I decided to go with nightlife.
I grew up with my dad taking me to bars and restaurants to listen to live music most weekends. I fell in love with the atmosphere. Even as an introvert, there’s something about blending in with a crowd that’s all tapped in to the same rhythm, the same beat. It was the same thing at school dances; sometimes the animosity between people can disappear for a night when the bass is turned up loud and everyone’s jumping up and down to their favorite song. I wanted to capture that feeling in the House of the Evening.
The House of the Evening has the best nightlife and the best festivals you will find in the entire Upper Realm. Every night, there’s live music pouring out of every tavern. This is the place young musicians come to try their hand at the craft. You can travel all over the land and hear every genre of music you can think of. There are shops for craftsman instruments of all kinds, but particularly violins. (This becomes relevant in the series.) The House of the Evening brews the best beer and grow grapes to create amazing fine wines. People in the House of the Evening go about their own lives during the day, whether that’s in the home or out at their job. But in the evening, everybody comes together to spend time out on the town. Community comes alive in the nighttime. It’s late nights and late mornings in the House of the Evening. Looking over the towns at night lit by candlelight or tiny fairy lights, looking up at the purple hued mountains covered in snow, it’s just beautiful.
Thanks for reading, everybody. If you’re curious about the House of the Evening, you can read a profile here!