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| By Vlad and Marina Butsky on Flickr |
So I have been building this fantasy world of mine for a long time now. I hope it will become the setting for many books, comics, and even films down the road. But for now, it is beginning to take its first steps on the road to being complete (i.e. it has a history of more than 25 years and has a roughly sketched map at this point).
One of the themes I have been considering is the extreme scarcity of wood. Without giving a terrible lot away, in the not so distant past of this world, much of the known land mass was covered in dense forest. A great cataclysm occurred, and fire all but destroyed the forests of the world. Fast forward to the present, and wood is scarce and extremely expensive, though careful management is seeing the number of trees on the rise.
Think about it! How much do we own that is made of wood? And imagine a world where metals like aluminum have yet to be discovered! How much would change! There would be no wheels, unless they were made of metal, but you can't very well have carts without wood! Or ships! Or barrels! Or paper, or timber houses, or bows and arrows, or fences, or cabinets, or crates, or desks, or any of a practically infinite number of things! How do you transport cargo? How do you record history? How do you heat your house during the winter months? How do you even build houses? Better yet, without wood, no fire. Without fire, no metal smelting! Or pottery kilns! Or cooking raw meat! Unless there is some kind of alternative fuel source!
The possibilities are practically endless! And so alien as well. I didn't think of all these things off the top of my head. It took me a good while to compile that list. And I'm sure there are things I haven't even thought of that are just as important (in fact, the last item I had just thought of as I was typing this). And it would all be so alien! Beyond our realm of experience!
This is what I love about Worldbuilding, about writing. If you let your imagination lead you, you will find yourself encountering worlds you never even dreamed of! (Mine is apparently filled with vegetarians who use bone or rock weapons and tools and carry everything they own on their backs or on pack animals!)
What do you guys think? What are some things you use every day, and imagine if one of the key components suddenly disappeared from the earth entirely? What do you come up with?
~ Tommy
