The Empire of Eranes Karays An ancient and venerable family, tied to the Tysarion Line by means of no fewer than ten marriages in the past century. Famed for their fleets, and possession of the Shipbreaker Gigantes, they dwell on the Southern Coast. The Shipbreaker is a swift swimmer, and can easily dive to the bottom of the sea. Ruled by brutal Archon Kellan. Lanessen Wealthy and young in comparison to other Lines, the Lanessen Line dwells in the Realm of the Crags. Their wealth stems from platinum and gold mines, and from their large merchant class. They bear the Earthwarper Gigantes, which can tear through the ground with ease. Ruled by the kind-hearted Archon Voss. Tysarion The Royal Line. Feared for their cruelty in ancient days, they are defined by their superior position in the hierarchy of the Empire. They possess the Dominator Gigantes, and rule the Empire via a diarchy (composed of the Inheritor of the Gigantes and a chosen co-ruler, both referred to as Dynasts). Currently ruled by seemingly heartless Dynast Laenerin Tysarion, and aided by Dynast Okannen Saltos. Loken The ‘Red Line’, owner of a massive army of mercenaries and feared as slavers. Rulers of a small archipelago of stony isles and a tract of the Eastern Coasts. They possess the Flayed Gigantes, a terrifying horror, and are ruled by Archon Varrena. Saltos This agrarian heartland of the Empire is ruled by Archon Lukasarion. Bearing the Screamer Gigantes, their Line’s armies may be lacking but they do not fear many foes. All need to eat, after all. Akaresea The withered, once-mighty Line of Kings Past. They used to rule their people, but their vassals the Tysarions overthrew them in days past. According to some, their Gigantes was switched with the Forgotten in some nebulous plot to avoid an especially potent Gigantes’s loss. This is born out by their feeble Skirmisher Gigantes, possessed by young Archon Aegis. It is questionable as to how they would have ruled the Tysarion Line with such an unwieldy Gigantes. The Forgotten Exterminated to a man by the Tysarion Line over two hundred and thirty years ago. Every city, town and homestead in their Western Realm was brutalized, and the survivors slain en mass by pogroms. All that is known is that their continued survival would have spelled the end of all other peoples. Their Gigantes was said to be unbeatable, but slain in human shape before the last Inheritor could shift. The scrolls that escaped burning dub it the Panoply, but mention of it is punishable by having boiling gold poured down one’s throat. The Gigantes Six (once seven) incredibly powerful ‘Giants’ bound to specific families. When an Inheritor dies, their Gigantes transfers to a young member of their bloodline, thus bastards are frowned upon and often slain out of hand. A Gigantes cannot heal, but if used again after a cool down time all wounds will have vanished. The Inheritor cannot heal unless he or she uses their Gigantes as a ‘life support unit’ of sorts. Each one has a different power, and a different use. The Shipbreaker A forty-foot tall Gigantes capable of swimming with speed. It is defined by webbed feet, and a neutrally-buoyant body unlike the light bodies of other Gigantes. This confers it incredible strength and stability, but it truly excels in the sea, where it can out-swim anything else in the water. The Earthwarper This forty-foot Gigantes is distinguished by a heavy coat of ‘scaled’ armor and immense strength, along with claws and jaws. It can claw tunnels through stone, and scent mineral deposits. However, it lacks speed or stability, and prefers to make its way on all fours if possible. Unlike the Skirmisher, it can easily move on two legs when needed. The Flayed A sixty-foot, skinless giant, capable of vomiting a mist of boiling blood or secreting said blood from its body. Regarded as a terror weapon, as its blood is searingly hot and corrosive, even to the land it walks on. Often has hair, but sometimes is bald. The Screamer Fifty feet tall, the Screamer is larger than average. Its defining attribute, however… I’m not certain yet. I know it has a voice-related feature. The Skirmisher This twenty-foot tall quadruped is a largely unneeded addition to the Gigantes. It’s only real advantage is immense speed and agility, combined with a powerful jump (capable of leaping several hundred feet). This is offset by its small size, brittle and lean frame, and distinctly flawed connection to its Inheritor. Its cool-down time is about a week, far longer than the day or two of the others. It is only used as a messenger and scout. The Dominator A masterfully made, absolute power, looming sixty feet tall. Its body is strong, durable and coated with flexible armor plating at once capable of weathering a scorpion bolt and flexing easily enough to allow great movement. However, its true power is its ability to produce an independent army. When the Inheritor is in the flesh of the Dominator, he or she can deliberately secrete a smaller Gigantes, although it is incapable of thought. If uncommanded, these Soldiers will go wild and seek only to cause destruction. The Dominator can control these brutes, with difficulty, directing them to attack or carry loads. Soldier Gigantes vary from ten to thirty feet in height, but always display wildly differing appearances, just like humans. They are almost impossible to destroy, save by complete dismemberment. The Dynasts of ages past buried great stockpiles beneath many strategic locations, including cities, in the event of rebellion. The Dominator is used sparingly, as its voice draws any nearby Soldier stockpiles to break free of their cache and approach to serve their Creator without regard for the destruction they cause. Soldiers can be made to serve other Gigantes with difficulty, and have been used as terror weapons on occasion. Important Events Year 1 of Landing The Dominator is used to create an army of Gigantes to subjugate the native peoples, the Scaruna. Year 45 Of Landing The walled, mountain-city of Kleos is overwhelmed by the Screamer, Dominator and thirty Soldier Gigantes. With its fall, the reign of the Seven Archons is assured. Year 120 of Landing The end of any records of the Forgotten. It can be deduced that they were annihilated at this point. Year 200 of Landing Dynast Vaegor Tysarion declares war upon a rebellious Archon Loken for the abduction of his young son during the Centennial Tournament. The First Gigantomachy begins. Year 207 of Landing Dynast Vaegor is slain in combat with the Earthwarper and Screamer, his Gigantes going to his son, who then slaughters most of the Loken Line and fortress before fleeing with a horde of new Soldiers pursuing him. In the aftermath, Archon Loken is executed by Soldier. Year 354 of Landing The Archon Aklion Karays is assassinated by the Archon Loken whose sanctuary he called upon at the Central Hearth of their Fortalice. This sets the Realms at each other’s throats, sparking the Third Gigantomachy. _________ Thoughts?
If you want people to consider your world in general it would be better to focus first on the overall conception of your story; genre, style, base aspects of the setting, maybe a little about how the plot relates to these, what aspects of it will most feature. I would prefer to hear more about that, and an explanation framed around that. From what you've said here this seems like a relatively typical fantasy with the most notable feature beyond that being a series of competing states which each possess a powerful mythical giant as a sort of special weapon. The gimmick definitely helps. But gimmicks can be corny. I think a really good setting that grabs you as distinct and interesting enough is not defined by gimmicks or choosing a completely different setting idea. It's by generally finding your own style, which might be more or less novel, but having a real sense that this is a distinct meaningful setting is most important. Although gimmicks and more obvious overall differences work well for an elevator pitch, they don't make the actual reading experience as good. And they aren't necessarily convincing.
It just reads as a Wikipedia page. You have the ingredients, but you have to figure out where you're going to go with these concepts. The biggest danger to doing excessive world building before actually starting the story is two fold. First, you can fall in love with your concept so much that your story becomes more showing off your world building than it does to actually tell a story. A really well built world should be subservient to the story, not the other way around. And it can be very easy to get into the writing party and say, "Okay, but where am I going to include the Shipbreaker... Oh, I'll just have them go on a ship for no reason and have a Shipbreaker attack them." instead of "Okay they're waiting for someone in the harbor and this scene is really static. How can I liven it up? Oh, I know, how about one of the sailors freaking out about a close encounter with a Shipbreaker." Second, you can't ever get to writing a story because you fear that it will not live up to the potential of your world. I'm going to put this very bluntly: no one cares about your world. Seriously, no one does. And I don't mean that in a sense that it's not robust or it isn't the right direction in the story or that you should just scrap it and start over. (Please, don't do that.) What makes a person care about the world, is when they can care about the characters who exist within it and the themes that you are looking to explore. Your world should logically fit into the themes because the world is what made the character who is now exploring those themes.
On the other hand, if you can avoid failing for the above-mentioned traps, then worldbuilding can be very useful. I got several ideas for somewhat-unique stories precisely due to spending a lot of time worldbuilding. In other words, a properly-crafted world can itself write a story. It is much easier to make something unique that way, as long as you don't spend so much time worldbuilding you never start writing a story.
Not beyond the basic outlines. Lately I haven't had time for writing that much (well, relative to how much I usually write -though most of it actually consists of reading and research). More importantly however, quite a few of them require additional details to be worked out in larger worldbuilding, as they draw heavily on the events which happened during earlier periods - ranging from relatively recent periods in the history of the Empire up to the prehistory and origin of the civilization itself (so a timeframe of cca 10 000 - 15 000 years. Speaking of which, how much time would civilization take to recover to 15th century level if we today got hit by the event akin to Toba population bottleneck? 'Cause that is roughly what happened). Which comes back to what I had mentioned somewhere before: worldbuilding is important if you are going to write multiple separate stories in the same setting, unless you don't care about the consistency at all; and especially so if either those stories, or the events which had caused them, span long periods of time. EDIT: I said, can. Whether it will depends on the writer.
I would like to think society has progressed enough, that if you like world building, you can be free to world build openly and without shsame.
I can't write without it. If my story is a fire then my worldbuilding is the firewood. If I don't have a firm understanding of the setting and what types of characters and conflicts it can support, then I have nowhere to stand. Nothing takes shape.
For me, it would merely be the difference of whether I would spend time now on worldbuilding, or spend time later on rewrites. Call it a personality flaw, but I am unable to "go with the flow" and ignore internal inconsistencies in the story; and I suspect that for people like that, worldbuilding would actually be incredibly helpful in ensuring productivity later.
Okay, but my point is, whether you avoid the pitfalls or don't avoid them. Or you have a plan or don't have a plan. Or you use your world building to write the story or world build as you write. This isn't a chicken or the egg argument. (I know people turned it into that, but that's not what this is.) This is me telling you without context, no one cares. You list a Wiki page of stuff and say, "Hey, how do you like my world?" Well, I don't know. I haven't been there yet! It's good you have a lot of stuff to work with and I'm glad that helps you, but I can't give you an opinion on your world because there's nothing to give an opinion on. These are just your notes. They don't tell me anything. How do you plan on using these things. This is like you whipping out a tool box on a job site and saying, "How do you like my tools?" They're nice, I guess, but can you use them? Once I see the story and how these pieces go together, I will definitely be able to say whether that's good world building or bad world building. Because that's the only way to tell whether these elements actually worked to help you or they just were too much of a burden.
I'm the same way. I want to understand the world, or at least the relevant parts of it, as much as I can before I dive right into it. Where I have to catch myself, though - and this is something I learned from making this mistake in the past - is to not focus of purposefully looking for ways to introduce world elements, like Kallisto said. IMO, the purpose of worldbuilding if you do it beforehand should be to know what your options are for the story, not to provide story elements. The mistake I made in a past story is that I came up with all kinds of interesting settings and history behind them, totally overloaded with the details, and then tried to shape a story around ways to convey those settings and histories. It all broke down and I had no idea where to go because I wanted to go fifty different directions. Now, I'm trying to do it more carefully; I've got a three-part story, parts 2 and 3 will involve other countries, but part 1 is focused on my MC's home country. So where I'm at right now, just as I'm beginning to actually write, I've fleshed out most of the MC's home country and have a good understanding of where he comes from. The other nations in the later parts of the story, well... I have their names, names of a few cities, a general idea of their cultures, and that's about it. I figure, I'll save this for later when I get to a point in the story where I ask "Well, what do I actually need here?" and have the liberty to do as I wish, and not be written into a corner because the plot demands I contradict an already-established worldbuilding point that I didn't really need.
Firstly, I'd try to keep it simple. If you introduce too many names and too much arbitrary detail, the reader can easily lose track of who's who and discover too late that they really should have been taking notes in order maintain an understanding of what's going on. This is not a good position to place the reader in as they could easily put the book down at that point and not bother picking it up again. I think the world described is too big. When you come to write your story, it will likely involve a few characters who try to solve a problem that is most pressing. It isn't going to span centuries and won't involve many different families. I'd focus on the details you need in order to tell the story and then look for the hidden facets of the setting. You could elaborate on the economic and social structures, the cultural traditions, the practical measures people take to survive in that particular landscape. Make the reader think it's a real place with real people living there. From the reader's perspective, the world appears to provoke the story. It provides the characters with their skills, knowledge, and attitudes. It provides the problem they need to solve and the methods they try in order to solve it. From a writer's point of view, it can be the other way around. You can decide first what the main problem is, and what the final solution will be. Then you can think of what the characters will do to arrive at that solution. Then the skills, and the items they need to accomplish those tasks, etc. The world you build would them fit these pieces together into a coherent and believable whole and make the reader think the world came first. The reader sees cause-and-effect. The writer can write the effect and then work out an appropriate course. The elements are included when they become apparent to the characters, not just when they are needed for the plot.
