Asking for feedback on world setting idea

scribesaga

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hey, i just wanted to know what people thought of this idea for a world setting. I was going for a dark fantasy theme.

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The world of Lyra is but one of three habitable worlds hovering the great gas giant of Goliath. Tidally locked, most of its surface is frozen in ice. The side facing Goliath receives enough warmth to create an ocean with several small but fertile landscapes. The other side of the world is always lit by the distant sun, but it isn’t warm enough to melt its frozen landscape.

It is on this world that multiple species have risen to prominence. Humans and demi-humans of all kinds shared this world in mostly violent war and inter-species conflict.

With such conflict came great calamity.

Turns out, blood and death in great abundance tempts the ether towards the material plane, and once the bombs were dropped, the final line crossed, the age of magic shattered through like a bleeding wound.

Magic flooded the world, bringing a new age of mysticism and wonder, but was shortly overshadowed by a new darkness in the sky.

The black sun rose, somehow visible on all sides of the world, and from then on, nothing was ever the same.

For eight days it hanged in the sky, cursing the very earth below.

No one could sleep, no one could suffer its hateful stare. Billions huddled in their homes, trying to escape its dreadful gaze.

Eventually, one by one, all were taken by madness in their dreams, and marched out into the streets where they gazed at the cursed sun until carving out their own eyes.

Their screams became known as the night song, and it lasted for eight hours.

Once their screams died, the sightless went into a frenzy, hunting down everyone in their path.

When the night of the black sun passed, it left a world of awkward silence, and haunting melodies. The sightless cloistered underground, prophesying the return of their precious sun, while the world above struggled to recover from such trauma.

They prayed it wouldn’t return.

Their prayers were left unanswered.

It returned eight years later, and like before, it claimed the skies like an invading blight for eight days, which created eight days of newfound terror.

After eight days, it passed.

From then on, the people of Lyra knew to look out for the black sun once every eight years and be prepared for eight days of unrest from the sightless. Multiple times they tried to root out the sightless cults, while protecting the sane from their influence.

For centuries, the people of Lyra suffered the horrors of the black sun until one day the hero came. He called himself the Arch Dom and was accompanied by his Royal Consort. Together they had stolen power from the gods in the form of great knowledge, and using it, he conquered the black sun, shedding the world of its malevolent influence.

His power came at a great cost however, for bearing such knowledge slowly bled away his very humanity, until he was no longer something that belonged to this world. His ascension to godhood created a tempest of storms, and they now wreak havoc on the world. For centuries the god’s storms have ravaged the lands, and few remember the days of the black sun, or the being who delivered them from evil, only to create a new maelstrom in its place.
 

melchi

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I am not sure what the question is. Would it work for a dark fantasy: Yes?
 

Lyric44

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I think if this is the world lore before your story then it kinda isn't going to be easy to write. If your story stars the Dom guy then maybe...?

I am going to assume that the story sets past that point as implied by your last paragraph. Regardless, I think your world building is too narrow. You don't have a lot of options to play around with as it sounds like the world is in ruins from the storms.

You haven't set a genre, but i'm going to assume survival/progression maybe adventure. Even then, I don't really see where a story can start with this little information. It really just looks hopeless for the people. The magic aspect can produce something, but other elements of world building aren't there so I can't give a for sure answer. Ie: Conflicts, Social Constructs, Age of Tech. And this also reads like a synopsis rather than ideas for a world.
Does the world sound cool and interesting? Yes.

But to create a completely new world, especially one that that undergoes armageddon is really difficult. There's a reason why most ruined worlds start on earth because the infrastrucutre is already established.

Anyways, good luck if you do decide to go forward with this project. It really does sound interesting so hopefully it works out for you ^^
 

Avery_Line

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This seems like a hybrid of world building and prose. As a reader, I'm hoping and praying that none of that detail is going to be dumped on me in a prologue or first chapter. I'd be noping out so hard I'd get a papercut.

As for the prose, I am likewise quite wary. There are almost no characters, and the only one mentioned is "hero." There are no indications of a character, their emotional arc, stakes, desires, goals, or conflicts. You're basically saying there's a planet, it has a war, and there's a weird black sun calamity every 8 years. None of that means anything outside of the context of who, what, and why.

For a good example of drumming up dramatic tension and personal stakes with a similar type of world and routine cataclysm, read The Dragonriders of Pern series. Anne McCaffrey has an entire backstory for Threads and why they are so insidious, but she introduces it with very close personal stakes, and we learn of the threat through a tight character POV.
 

scribesaga

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Yeah if i do go with this idea, its purely a backstory for the world. none of it will be dumped on the reader, in fact the reader will have precious few details about the history of the world, and things would be gradually hinted or easter eggs would exist sorta in the background. I'm just brainstorming idea's for the world itself, and how everything got here.

Also thanks Avery. I'll check out the Dragonriders of Pern series.
 
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