Opportunities to World Build

 On Monday (9 May, 2022), I started a temporary, 6-week, job. This has given me some time out of the house (away from distractions) to do some writing and world building. I have this time because the job is a little slow to start, and has some down time. I have to be available at a moment's notice for work however, so light work on world building and writing has been my focus in the 'free time'. 

On Monday I spent some time reading "New Worlds, Year One" (see my last post on more about the book) and writing some notes on the world building. I read about folk magic and lucky charms, learning about the amulets worn by ancient Roman children: Bulla (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulla_(amulet)) for boys, and Lunula (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunula_(amulet)) for girls.

I also explored some of World Anvil's Discord channel (again see last post for more information). 

Yesterday (Tuesday) my day was more focused on map making. Back in about 2004/2005 I used Corel Draw to start creating a regional map, and some city maps, for my big fantasy world. As my last post mentioned I started looking at more mapmaking software, which opened the door to more of the world building experience. Including building the world almost literally from scratch (which I did mention in my last post). 

Yesterday I actually sketched a rough partial world map (pencil and paper), and started to consider a number of elements in my larger world. Like:

• What mythical / magical / fantasy creatures live in the world. 
• So far I have thought of including:
• Centaurs
• Dragons
• Dryads
• Dwarves
• Elves
• Giants
• Gryphons 
• Humans
• Merpeople
• Phoenixes
• And various faeries of other forms. 

• What the rough continents would look like, more specifically where they'd be in relation to each other, and which continents the creatures would be indigenous.
• This led to looking into plate tectonics as I already had ideas for one region of the world. 

The plate tectonics became more interesting as I started to consider if 3 continental plates could collide. I found interesting resources:

• Triple Junction - where all three meet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_junction
• Physics on how to determine the stability of a Triple Junction: https://earthweb.ess.washington.edu/brown/downloads/ESS403/Triple_Junctions.pdf

The second resource helped answer my questions, with the diagrams at the end of the document. I did have to remind myself, write a note, that Divergent boundary/movement creates a Ridge (R), Convergent boundary/movement creates a Trench (T), and Transform boundary/movement is a Transform Fault (F). The letters in brackets are used in the description on the second link. 

The ones I want to include are either TTT or TTF. Next is looking further into the actual physics of the movements to know which one I should use and how that affects the mountain ranges, then where I have leeward and windward sides, etc.