One Year Later; or, Back to the Brink

What a long strang- no no no, we're not doing that old line. Let's start over at the beginning:

I started this blog a year ago in the wake of the Great Designer Search. At the time, I wasn't entirely sure what I wanted to write about, but I knew that I wanted to write. I wanted to be something. I wanted to build myself up, and at the time, I saw three ways to go about it - as a writer, as a player, or as a deckbuilder.

Playing was out of the question. I just didn't have the time or freedom. And as for deckbuilding, it remains something that I'm passionate about, and it's something that I enjoy sharing. What I hope to bring to the table in deckbuilding is the enthusiasm for innovation and fun that I think gets lost all too often in the drive for victory. But that is an essay for another time.

Which brings us to writing - I've not been particularly prolific, and I attribute that somewhat to not knowing where exactly I'm taking this blog. I did call it Journey to Nowhere, after all. But I'm proud of most of these posts, and excited to be starting a new year of them.

And to start that new year, I'd like to go way back to the very start of things - my world of the Great Designer Search, Atheram (which I am going to rename "Athera" because I like the sound of it better. No promises that it won't change again).
If you need a refresher, check out my GDS2 post-game from last year.

And with that, a destination (if only a temporary one), I'll begin what I hope is an interesting series of posts - this Journey to Athera!

It's been a year. I feel like I have a much better understanding of what I was doing, and what I was doing wrong, and where I could have done more in my GDS2 submission. With the benefit of a year, I think I know what I want from myself, and revisiting my design of this world is just the start of my execution of that. The purpose of this journey is a little self-serving, but also an exploration of the evolution of a world - from my initial entry last year, to now, to wherever this goes in the coming weeks. I'll admit that I don't have a real plan or idea of where this is leading at the moment. That's just how we roll on Journey to Nowhere.

To some extent, this is a ground up reimagining of the entire concept, but it's built from the same original foundation. In comics parlance, I guess you could call it a Reboot.

Let's get rolling.

Part 1 - Worldbuilding

Athera - An spiritual world untouched by death.

Athera is a world where death has stopped. Rather, things die, but they don't move on. For some, death is a sleep, and those who die simply wake up rejuvenated the next day. For others, death is a rebirth, releasing one's essence into the world in an afterlife that's more physical than philosophical. As a result, spiritualism has become a major cultural force, since people can directly interact with mystical phenomena that normally would be completely abstract. It's been several generations since "The Event," and even the oldest beings who experienced that dramatic shift in the balance of the planes can barely remember what happened or why. But what sounds like a blessing turns out to be a curse, and the plane is on the brink of collapse. The unknowable forces that loop life and death have become so overloaded that unless something untangles their flow, all existence on the plane may cease completely.

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The major flavorful theme that I want the setting to touch on is that of death. In the same way that negative space in art emphasizes the space that is filled, the absence of death should highlight how death affects the various civilizations that inhabit the plane. In my rough outline, I've laid out some basic philosophies for each allied color pair as to how they are defined in a world without death.

 - I'm starting with the two black colors because I want to emphasize that it is not the case that death is powerless in this world. Death just means something different. For example, red/black are represented by a "death cult" that is all about self-sacrifice - in a very literal sense in addition to the figurative. Red/black cultists live their lives to the fullest and they die their deaths to the fullest in elaborate death-rituals. In the world of Athera, where death is a new beginning, they (along with the death that they embrace) are seen as a positive, altruistic force.

 - The black/blue inhabitants of Athera are researchers, scientists, and explorers who like to call themselves "Necronauts." In a world where there are no real consequences to death, it becomes something that can be safely dissected and examined by those who have the interest. Some necronauts conduct expeditions into the so-called "afterlife," but recently those who have returned have returned... changed. Others have noticed subtle variations in the background patterns of the world and fear that a deathless world may not be as idyllic as it seems. These necronauts are only the first to realize that their world may be doomed if death does not return.

- Pragmatic and utilitarian, blue and white realize that a lack of death just brings about more chaos and complications. They also realize that someone has to organize and manage the so-called afterlife or things could get very crowded very quickly. Thus, the blue/white citizens of Athera have become Mediums in a sense, talking to the dead in methods closer to politics and commerce than to spirituality. They are the ones who have to lay out the ground rules for inheritances, birth-dates, and lines of succession, which is much more complicated in a world without death.

- White/green has become a cloistered line of exorcists and zealots, whose religious fervor is centered around "returning wayward spirits to the Soul of the Earth." This, more often than not, results in imprisonments and forced possessions in order to prevent spirits from being reborn into "living forms." In their eyes, undeath is unnatural no matter the circumstances, so even those who have been completely reborn in death must be punished and returned to the Earth. Though their line has dwindled in the many years since The Event, the few who remain are as convinced as ever that Athera's unnatural cycle of life and death must come to an end. Unfortunately, their faith has blinded them to the harm that they are causing to the rest of Athera's inhabitants, and the fact their harsh, punitive methods have no constructive impact on the problems they are so focused on.

- Green/red is a tribe of nomadic shamans who have long understood that life is defined by death, and that death is a necessary closure at the end of all things. They are ruled by art and passion, and they disdain the reckless abandon of the red/black cult lifestyle, holding that true passion for life can only be realized when there are consequences to one's actions. Their belief system is one of living the life that is given to you and no more, and to that end, seek to mend the spiritual and cultural damage that has been done to the plane of Athera by the end of death.

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In general, the balance I want to strike in terms of colors is that white would come across as stuffy and fanatical, even veering into evil and destructive (knowingly or unknowingly), while black and red are more constructive and positive, making many of the major contributions to the story and to the advances of civilization of the world. If there is any setting for Black to shine, I think that it should be one where the force of death is downplayed, or even viewed in-world as positive. It's something a little new, and it might be a little high-concept, but just from the notes I've been taking in the past few weeks, it's an idea that I think could be very interesting to build on.

And that does it for Part 1. I'll be back (hopefully soon) to go into detail on what I want colors to be doing mechanically and for more on Athera's so-called "afterlife."

Here's to the next Great Designer Search!