Zakkarii Aarlen

As I expected, I am tired today. However, I am surprised by how tired I am because my streaming plans went so much harder than I expected. So today is another short one, and I hope to have better posts again next week onwards.

For this week's worldbuilding, I dipped into a world that I actually hadn't planned on fleshing out much at all. It's the world my Greenhill Adventurers Guild novels are set in. Or will be, whenever I get back to the draft of the first. Anyway, Greenhill is a young city that is vaguely situated near some vague wilderness that is largely uninhabited. It was built around a college of magic, and if I remember right, only a century or so old. Because the college was being built there, it sprang up with purpose and planning. In the first novel, one of the main characters is a recently graduated and advanced level student. But we don't spend the novel in the college; in fact, you only see it in chapter one.

This weekend, I felt like playing the solo TTRPG Archivium, a game where you play as a custodian to a mysterious Archive that no one seems to know about on a college campus. This game was intended to be set in modern times without magic, but I had the brain blast of playing it in the Greenhill college. "It's fine," I told myself as I hurried home from an errand to start diving in. "People just won't know about it since the college is new. They wouldn't expect some dark and spooky Archive to exist."

And so, I sat down and started fleshing out more of the college, which until now, didn't even have a name. (I did say that novel was still a draft!)

The Nixian College of Magical Studies and Research, or "the College" as known by locals, is situated in the center of Greenhill. Off in the distance is a mountain range and Lake Cilia, where the cast of the first novel will travel. Somewhere else are some waterfalls called Gracidia Falls, which I have no real knowledge of other than them being mentioned in casual dialogue as a point of interest. There is also a river, and the character from earlier, Leighton, comes from a farming village somewhere in the general area. This entire area has a vague European fantasy aesthetic. There is one known non-human group of people, the Harekin, who are, as you guess, people with some features of a hare, like Final Fantasy's Viera but with furry legs.

I wasn't kidding when I said I hadn't done a lot of building for this world. I was genuinely interested in putting out my first trio of romantasy novels, with a potential fourth, and then moving on to a new series. The only problem is that I hadn't expected on getting pummeled by two jobs and depression. However, the first book has been on my mind again, so when the idea to play Archivium in its setting popped into my head, I jumped on it. I'm not going to be playing as Leighton; it's a Harekin named Murdac (he/him), but I thought what better way to jolt some creative juice into me for working on the draft than playing a game with the setting?

The College, I've decided, based on prompts from the game, focuses on magic studies relating to the natural world and environment. It takes advantage of its close proximity to the areas mentioned earlier, with plenty of research going on relating to biology and ecology. This would also be a great place for folks studying magic related to combat against beasts and monsters.

Hunter Orders (the name is a WIP) are essentially monster hunting guilds that have exclusive priority on creature bounties and kills. Adventurer guilds can also take these on in the event that the danger is more immediate and dire, or if the critter being requested is common and not registered as dangerous or protected. This arrangement helps deter over-hunting for things like horns or potion components, as well as keeping novice adventurers from hunting beasties larger than them. Hunter Orders typically require new members to undergo a trial to prove their skills before letting them in, so having a quality education in magic and natural sciences would be a boon for people angling for membership.

My character for this Archivium game is one such hopeful. He comes from a low income family, possibly with a single parent that is a soldier. There isn't a Hunter Order in Greenhill's immediate vicinity yet, but it does have an adventurer's guild.

I'm still filling out some details about the school as I work through the initial start of Archivium. I don't know yet if the "Archive" will play a part in my book series—obviously, I would need to strip out anything related to the game itself if I were to do so. But it could inspire something else in the series, and I do have the potential for College shenanigans in a fourth book if the first three were well-liked enough.

If you'd like to check out the series, you can view the synopsis of book one over on my Books page here on my website.