I was browsing through some of the oldest post I’ve written way back when I started this site, and discovered that I first wrote about pre-medieval wilderness worldbuilding almost exactly seven years ago. (I’m also well over 500 posts currently. Yay, me!) I often feel frustrated that despite my years of work, I seem to be making barely any progress. The amount of material I have doesn’t really appear to grow and it often feels like I am only moving pieces around a bit instead of actually creating anything new.
Reading again through What are the Ancient Lands? and Laying the Foundations for the Ancient Lands turned out to be quite interesting reads, though.
Of course, my motivations and inspirations to work on a setting of this style have not really changed since then. A dissatisfaction and boredom with Fantasyland, and a great appreciation for Conan and The Witcher. And some of my favorite elements of Planet Kaendor can be found all the way back in those early posts about the Ancient Lands. Even back then, I was already writing about populating the world with giant reptiles and insects and forests of giant mushrooms. I wrote about wanting a lower amount of magic and a stronger presence of spirits. But quickly I started to run into surprises.
Looking at them side by side, Planet Kaendor really isn’t Ancient Lands v4.0. A blend of cultural elements from Northern Europe and East Asia? When did I ever had that idea? Well, in 2013, according to the date. I do remember having had such an idea, but I had totally forgotten about it for years. Planet Kaendor is very much inspired by the Mycenaeans, Hittites, Egyptian New Kingdom, Achaeminids, and Mauryans. Those aren’t even remotely similar.
The Ancient Lands were meant to be a setting about the age of the great empires of elves and dwarves who shared the wild world with tribes of human barbarians. A contrast of city states and barbarians still exists in Planet Kaendor, but there aren’t any empires. Or even elves and humans.
The Ancient Lands also had major populations of gnomes and beastmen. And a great underground city that was ruled by demons bound into giant crystals, south of which live dark elves and lizardmen. None of these have anything comparable in Planet Kaendor.
The new setting is certainly drawing from the same well of ideas. Or perhaps better, it is being build from the same big box of Lego pieces that I used seven years ago. There are a few elements that I spotted that have endured through my various setting to this day with seemingly very little change. The Sorcerer Lords of Ven Marhend, who rule an an oligarchy over a great port city build into the side of a huge cliff are still there. As is the fey witch Queen Meiv of Halva, a city build of white stone at the feet of a great northern mountain range. But at the same time, there seem to be more things that are completely different.
The truth remains that I don’t really have more material now than I had five or six years ago. But it doesn’t mean that I didn’t make any progress in all that time. For every step forward, I seem to have made a step back. But I now realize that at the same time I have made a huge number of steps sideways, finding myself in a very different place from where I started.