I can break down a segment of my lore for my big main project:
Elves were an interstellar species that after a massive war were reduced to a more primitive time. Few elves alive remember that. The elves also don't know that every 10,000 the species that nearly annihilated their home world plan to come back and decimate them over and over again. In perpetuity.
For me, the lore of Eldoria starts with consequence.
The world was shaped by an imperial war that didn’t just redraw borders, it fractured cultures, displaced peoples, and left scars that future generations have to live with. Much of the story is told through Goblin viewpoints, a race often misunderstood by others, but deeply rooted in history, education, and community.
Magic exists, but it’s costly and often tied to sacrifice rather than spectacle. And power, whether political, magical, or military, always comes with a price.
At its core, the story is one of legacy. How the choices of one generation shape the lives of the next.
Did I respond to this yet? I don't see me threaded into this tapestry yet, so I guess not. Okay.
So which lore are we covering here? There is the fanfiction I've written here, but I've got originals and each one is written as a length of hair, braided together on top of the very head that imagined them. And that get's really complicated to untangle when it's been untouched for years.
Earth. It's our dear ol' Mommy that nurtured us hairless apes until we matured enough to believe we didn't need her "You will respect me" shit anymore; in other words, throughout history until modern times and even then into the fantastic beyond. Like I said, the series has a complicated relationship with each original when referencing the variety of eras. I've got 9th, 10th, 11th century, modern times, slightly alternate future that still feels no different from modern, and After Earth; the A.E. gets a little weird.
But the lore? Gods did exist. That's past tense. Which means everything that we know now is still valid, just that all the folklore and myths were real and now gone. If you consider that as fact and not theology, the axis of the world revolves a tad differently. That's pretty much the lore because the in depth context of each original in the series follows a single POV of the protagonist and that's more like a game play than a cutscene, if you know what I mean.
In an alternate timeline during WWII, Japan and Germany made significant advancements in biological engineering and psychic theorythrough their inhuman experiments. Despite their progress, these achievements could not alter the course of the war, and eventually, their research fell into American hands. Utilizing the foundations laid by German and Japanese scientists, America pursued its own projects to gain an edge over the Soviet Union. In response, the USSR developed advanced machinery to keep up. Restricted after the war, Japan and Western Germany covertly advanced their theories on enhancing the human mind and body during the Cold War. This scientific race led to the creation of psychic soldiers capable of altering reality and war machines that counter them.
Following the USSR's collapse in 1990, these projects shifted to civilian uses. With the help of human supercomputers, humanity entered the space age in the 2030s, and nations began establishing space colonies. Harnessing psykers' abilities, humanity started terraforming nearby habitable planets and, over 70 years, colonized 48 planets. However, tensions among America, Japan, the European Union, Russia, and China over colonial profits sparked tension and led into the Anomalies Wars, a event which wreaked havoc both on Earth and in other colonies as reality-shifting weapons and bio-engineered creations were unleashed on a large scale. After a decade, no victor emerged, and humanity's population dwindled by 98%, with survivors confined to only two colonies called Gaia and Dà ruǎn. Meanwhile, on the distant colony called Ruyanei, many bio-engineered beings survived and began building their own civilization from the remnants of the warzone they now call home.
Lore is a system of knowledge, a collection of stories, mythology, and world history that provides the backdrop for what is happening today. Lore is the worldbuilding that makes fiction feel immersive, vivid, and narratively realistic.
The Naruto series features chakra, tailed beasts (bijuu), and the history of ninjas as lore.
The One Piece series features devil fruits, the history of lost civilisations, and the legendary treasure (One Piece) as lore.
The Death Note series features the Death Note, the world of shinigami and humans as lore.
The LOTR series features rings of power, the history of Middle-earth, the language of the elves, the genealogy of kings, and the creation of the world as lore.
Almost all major series have lore that makes the story unique, meaningful, and profound. Lore is more than just aesthetics; it is also an extension of the author's well-thought-out story plan, promising a comprehensive series while also setting the pace of the story's conflict.
Without lore, fiction (specifically the fantasy genre) usually has difficulty determining the direction of the story. It's not absolute. But, with lore, conflict and plot would move within the world's internal logic, gradually revealing layers of lore, providing a complete picture of the world.
So, my question is, what is the lore in your fiction?
Critical note:
If you ask me what the lore in my fiction is:
Blood Rose Princess series: A world with amnesia for the sins of tyranny, the Disaster Princesses who are actually the living wounds of the world itself… and what deepest secret does the Eldora world hide?
I am currently writing two stories that are considered mythology in my religion. One is a Golem Romance (more based on mysticism), and the one I just posted on here is a historical Romance with pirates (which I was pleasantly surprised were very much real during the 17th century). I think the next one will be a shifter romance, which is again based on mysticism and historical folklore. This was a great question.
