World Geography Fractalling

Greetings,

If you aren’t already familiar with the term Fractalling, shame on you, and go read my introductory post on it.

This article is to show you how to fractal out a world’s geography. A daunting, but well worthwhile task.

First off, what is necessary in a world’s geography? How complex does it need to be? Well, if you take one look at Earth’s geography, you immediately see that it will be next to impossible to replicate that level of detail in any world you concoct. Thankfully you don’t need to.

But many fantasy authors make ridiculously small worlds devoid of global detail. They might be good at plotting a nation’s geography, but they try to take the same fractalling methodology from their nation development and apply it to global geographical development, and it breaks down very rapidly.

So here is how you do it right, to get the most amount of detail possible (without relying on random map generators: we want design and creativity here) with the least amount of effort.

First off we need some big shapes. Really big. What are these big shapes for? They are for the general layout of the continents. Very basic. Stick to triangles, or at the most squares. Huge ones, each covering about half of your globe. The pattern for Earth’s is two triangles, points down, for reference. Because of this simple format for Earth, it is pretty easy to change it up. On one world we did a diamond, and then a line next to it.

Then you go break those up. First skew, and then shatter them into a couple pieces each. Keep long straight lines at this point. Now is also when you decide about how many continents you are going to have. Stick in the 4-10 range, as beyond those points makes them either too small or too simple. You don’t need one shape for each continent yet though.

Now drop the shapes: we are going into a new mode. Lines!

This is a fun type of shape fractalling. Based only very loosely on your earlier shapes, draw a bunch of lines showing the essence of the land and its directions. This part is more vector based, rather than mass based, if that help you any or makes any sense. They can cross, curve (but not squiggle yet), intersect, or run off in weird directions. Be imaginative.

Now merge the two sets with squiggly shapes outlining each of your continents. Base them off of both of the previous stages. Remember at this point, and keep it in mind for the rest of the development, that the top of your square map is stretched out because you aren’t drawing this on a globe. Unfortunately. Just take it into consideration.

Now you can break those continents up into various islands (especially the ones that are fragmented like the Pacific Isles and Oceania), think Europe and the coasts of the Asian continent. Get the rough drafts first, of course, and then move on to the next step.

In this one, zoom in to one continent, shaping and molding it. Pay close attention to the way that it was made (glacial, volcanic, etc.) because this effects the coastline and the shapes of the mountains. Get an idea of the mountain ranges, sketching them into the land mass with lines like you did before with the continents. Do this with each continent.

Now zoom back and look artistically at how the whole thing balances and looks together. Tweak the orientation of them to each other. Stretch, squish, grow, splatter, simplify, etc.

So now you have a really good base to build off of. You can now take this and start your history, and add on as that dictates. Cities, etc. Go have fun!

Fractalling

Greetings,

My siblings and I like to coin words. We have made some dandies too, like swavery (smooth+waves, like the motion of leaves in a light wind on a balmy day), and essence (see my article on that). One of our favorites, though, is fractalling (or fractallating as one of our friends called it). It is a principle that we first saw applied to writing a novel, but then we recognized in it a fundamental and universal principle (of course), and so we changed the name and adapted it to practically everything. (When can us Lausers ever leave anything the way we found it? We always have to make it better. )

Fractalling is based off of a mathematical phenomenon known as a fractal (go figure). You can read an amazing article about them from this article here by Jason Lisle from Answers in Genesis. Basically a fractal is a pattern created by an endlessly repeating equation. They are found all over nature, and are programmed directly into mathematics by God at the creation of existence (at Day 1!). They are impossible to evolve at all, and yet show beauty and design that are infinite. Hmmm…..

Anyways, we took the noun ‘fractal’ and used it as a verb to describe the process of taking a simple idea and systematically expanding and complexifying it using simple, repeated actions until it is not only bigger and deeper, but also more organized and more detailed. This is something that you can apply to anything that you are developing, be it a program, an article, a world, a story, a scene, an essence, a website, whatever. Of course, the system will change, but the principle remains. So what you need to do is take that principle, apply it to whatever you are doing, and then systematically expand and complexify that application using simple, repeated steps until it is a big, deep, detailed, and organized method for fractalling things!

I will give an example now, since I have found that our ideas generally take a lot of explaining for you poor non-Lausers to grasp. I will do an easy one here for you to watch, one that illustrates the principle well. I will make an island.

Alright, first I need to think abstractly of what kind of island it is. Think very abstractly, very nebulously, if you please. Now I sit down with some paper and draw a very very simple shape that fits roughly with my nebulous idea. A square.

Now, I take that square and make it fit a little more with my idea (which is not a shape by the way) by warping and shifting it a bit. I try to keep all my straight lines, but I lengthen and shorten them to make them less like the sides of a square, and more like the sides of an island. This is very rough.

Now, I bend a few of those lines artistically (or not very artistically as the case may be). It is getting more complex, which is good. I leave a side or so untouched with this step to leave it a bit lopsided (because islands are anything but regular).

Now I swaver (I had to get that word in) a few of them. I add a few promontories here and there. By now I have pretty much forgotten the original idea, and I simply take each step and add a bit more detail to it until it is not that step any more.

Now I stretch a few places and rough up a few more places.

Again. Add some littler islands too, or else our big one will be lonely.

Now I have a nice little island, or at least the outline of one. Now what I would do is add mountains in the same way, then run rivers off the mountains, then send forests chasing after the rivers, then have fields and hills around the forests, then put in a few crags and beaches, and then put in a few roads and cities. But I won’t belabor my post with all that, and just leave that for you to experiment with. (By the way, it turns out a lot better on paper.)

In my mind, fractalling an island is an expression of a beautiful and amazing gift that God has given to man alone (as opposed to animals): creativity. It is also a time to reflect on how He created our world in majesty and glory, and how He programmed such beautiful and intricate designs into boring, hum-drum math of all things.

With joy and peace in Christ,

Jay Lauser

High Deeps

Greetings, here is an essence map I made for illustration purposes mostly.

Difficulty: 3/10

< Rwëmün legend >
The Height {
  Darkness [
    Density (
      < Flowing cloud >
      < 97%⁹⁷ >)
    Depth (
      < Inside a black rider's hood >)
    < A claymore >]
  < The high glittering of a purple cloud of stars >
  Sharpnness [
    < An assassin's knife, gilt and hung up on a wall >]}
The Deeps {
  < Pale weariness >
  < Forever trickle >
  < 96% >
  The Top [
    Luminescence (
      < 49% >
      < Shade >
      < Charcoal rubbed on paper >
      < Slate grey/Raven black >)
    Detail (
      < Adobe walls >)]
  Next Down [
    < One star in the night >
    < The night owl >
    < 63% >]
  Still lower [
    < An octopus eye >
    < 81% >
    Complexity (
      < A caving maze >
      < A skeleton >)
    < Purple midnight/A wheel's troth >]}
The Mystic {
  < A scarab > }

Enjoy!

Lady Rwebhu Kidh

ECSSbasic Introduction

Felicitations,

Essence is not a system of attributes, metaphors, classes, and elements. Neither is it a classification for anything. We did not make it up. It is ancient, originating from the beginning of the creation. You see, there is essence, and there is ECSS (Essence Cascading Style Sheets). And when one does not understand what essence is, it is hard for one to understand what ECSS is.

Patrick (Tsahraf) says that essence is “The unique impression upon one’s emotions by a set of sensations.” To quote Jay (Sir Emeth) it is “… an artistic impression or idea, no matter how nebulous or exact…” And Noah Webster wrote “Mr. Locke makes a distinction between ‘nominal’ essence and ‘real’ essence. The ‘nominal’ essence of gold is that complex idea expressed by God; the ‘real’ essence is the constitution of its insensible parts, …” all of these quotes reflect facets of what essence is.

There are many different ways of portraying or articulating essence. Poetry, music, drawing, sculpting are some examples. Making essence pages with Gimp is another (see the avatar gallery). And we (my two brothers and I) made one up ourselves. At first we called it essence, but that was very confusing, so we put our heads together (over the Webster’s 1828 dictionary) and came up with ECSS, a type of Essence Mapping. So that is what it is called now, and this is how it works.

I will here outline ECSSbasic, which is a corrected version of our earlier form of essence mapping. We have recently improved and expanded ECSSbasic to become ECSS++, which we will introduce you to in future posts. For now, be satisfied with ECSSbasic.

The ECSS system is a system to organize separate metaphors in an attempt to describe, present, or create an essence in the mind of the reader. This is done by establishing a hierarchy of Topic, Aspects, Classes, Characteristics, and Elements which is then used to group the metaphors into different focuses.

An example, you may wish to use the metaphor of a budding flower for a girl, named Lucy for convenience sake. This metaphor of a budding flower is first restricted within the topic, Lucy. Then, since you only mean that the budding flower applies to her spirit, the metaphor is placed under the aspect Spirit. The budding flower represents the freshness of the spirit of Lucy, and so it is placed within the class, Freshness. Then, the budding flower is only meant to be the light of the freshness, so it is placed within the characteristic Light. And the Element is the metaphor itself: budding flower.

Lucy

Spirit {

Freshness [

Light (

<budding flower> ) ] }

But the metaphor of ‘budding flower’ is still imprecise, though focused, though the hierarchy, to a certain point. The metaphor’s essence has a range of meanings, which can be represented by a circle. We want to make it smaller, lessening the possibility of confusion in the reader. But you cannot do this very easily, so we have devised a way to do this in ECSS.

You take the circle (the range of possible essence meanings of a metaphor) of another metaphor, and state that where those two circles intersect is the essence that you are trying to describe in the ECSS.

So we can add another metaphor as a sibling of the budding flower: a sunrise.

Lucy

Spirit {

Freshness [

Light (

<budding flower>

<a sunrise> ) ] }

Alright a little explanation about that {](>bleah stuff.

Each attribute (Aspect, Class, Characteristic, or Element) has its own delimiter. This is what encloses an attribute’s content, enabling the powerful nesting ability to function. Aspects use { curly braces/brackets.} Classes use [ square brackets.] Characteristics use ( parenthesis.) Elements use < angle brackets.>

The delimiters always follow the title of the attribute, and enclose all of its contents. Easy ’nuff.

You can put any attribute in any attribute that is a higher level than itself. Elements can go directly under Aspects. Classes can go inside Classes. Characteristics cannot go inside Elements.

You can have as many sibling attributes as you want, regardless of the type of attribute. You can have several Aspects, several Classes, whatever.

Any questions are very welcome.

Cordially,

Lady Rwebhu Kidh (with collaboration)

Essence Explained

Greetings,

This is a simple, basic outline of what essence is. The purpose is to help you to better understand what is going on so that you can dig further into the power of essence mapping. This is only a bird’s eye view of the subject, so it should be easy to follow.

Everything has an essence. Everything has always had an essence. Everything has its own essence. And everyone perceives that essence in a different way from everyone else.

Whenever we see, hear of, or read about something, we immediately attach to it a load of connotations that we normally associate with that thing. That load is its essence as perceived by us. Everything has a range of different essences that different people might apply to it.

If we wanted to make sure that someone is perceiving the same essence that we are, we run into difficulties. The different things that people have done to overcome these difficulties have a very wide and diverse range of variety.

We have added one. And we like it.

Remember, everything has an essence. We have not invented essence. We have merely invented a new way of telling other people about what we perceive a thing’s essence to be like.

The basic principle underlying most, if not all, of the ways of articulating essence that are out there, is simple.

You list several things, hoping that in their conjunction people will see what you are getting at.

So if I have a red background, and then I put a knife on it, most people will probably think of murder. If I put a rose on it, however, most people will probably think of love.

Now, if I put that same knife on a fish, people will think either of dinner, or of endangered species. Hopefully not the latter.

If I put the rose on a piano, people might think of a concert, if on a coffin, they will think of death or a funeral. Etc.

Movies, pictures, poetry, and books all try to use many different things put together to convey an emotion or an idea into you without actually spelling it out. Sometimes it would be easier to just spell it out, but they want to hide it and be more artistic. Other times it is just plain impossible to spell it out.

Our system of essence mapping (ECSS or X) that has so befuddled so many people is very simple in principle: we are merely listing different things in a tidy way to help them all tell you an idea of the essence of something in a very efficient way.

Just a list.

That is all.

Just an essence.

Does that help?

With joy and peace in Christ,
Sir Emeth Mimetes