Welcome to our Worldbuilding Wednesday! On Wednesdays, we will discuss the creative process behind different facets of the Twinverse, from as lofty a concept as the entire cosmology, to specific characters and their role in the setting. Worldbuilding Wednesday is meant as a behind-the-scenes column to give insight into how the setting itself changes and evolves, beyond just the events of the books.
In keeping with our previous Worldbuilding Wednesday post on creating a cosmology, the next step involves examining whether your cosmos needs any special natural laws.
A natural law is a (supposedly) unbreakable rule of the cosmos. Much like gravity or magnetism, it is just a facet of how the setting is, and it may affect some or all of its denizens in some way. A common one is the magic system in your setting: defining how it works, how one accesses magic, what can they do with it, and how does it affect the reality around it. But there can be other laws, and they could make your setting unique or add flavor to it.
Such laws don't need to be cosmological in scope: A Song of Ice and Fire's long seasons are an example of a natural law that creates a unique backdrop, for instance. Cosmological constants (e.g. Moorcock's Eternal Champion archetype) are another example. Another example is what happens after death: every setting will have an answer to this (even if the answer isn't known to anyone in the setting, or if the answer is "there is nothing after death"), and the way the afterlife works is in itself a natural law (even if it might have been artificially imposed on the cosmos overwriting the previous natural law).
In the Twinverse, there are several natural laws supplementing the "standard" ones. Most are unknown to some degree, and they don't tend to affect most people.
For example, upon death, souls travel through the Deathgate into an afterlife realm (various religions have their own beliefs about this) or into Elthril, where they become haunting ghosts. But Elder Races have a different fate upon death - likely because the natural law of death itself wasn't fully written when they came to be.
An egregious example of a natural law that came into being as a result of artificial manipulation, and affected every single living being in the Twin Worlds, is the Reflection. Thankfully, this is also a natural law that was (hopefully) erased at the end of the War of Saints.
The Keodraith is a theoretical natural law that explains the appearance of Celestial Children after a deity ascends, implying that the deity's ascension causes their essence to "imprint" itself into their worshippers, giving birth to children who superficially resemble the deity.
There could be more natural laws that are still unknown to the people of the Twin Worlds, of course. Natural laws also dictate the scope and capabilities of each thaumaturgical path, as well.
All these laws exist for two reasons: to flesh out the setting in a unique fashion, and to create hooks for stories. And all these laws could be conceivably broken, which would be a story in and of itself (certainly the story of the War of Saints should be worthy of being told, leading to the destruction of the Reflection).
I strongly believe that setting up some natural laws that make the world unique go a long way towards both providing the author with ideas for further development (e.g. what cultures develop under these laws and pressures?) and giving the world a unique flavor. On the other hand, they shouldn't be forced just to create uniqueness - shoehorned material always detracts from the believability of the setting itself.
Can you think of any natural laws in your own setting that make it unique and encompass the entire setting? How do they enrich your setting and your stories?
Thank you for joining us on another Worldbuilding Wednesday, and see you next week!
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