Blogpost: One year of Worldbuilding

Today is a great day in the history of the project!

TERMINUS NATION TURNED ONE YEAR OLD EXACTLY TODAY!

Let me celebrate it with the first "blog" post of the site's history!

Why today?

I'll never forget the day when it happened. In fact, it's even quite well-documented, as, without any doubt, I can define, what was the true starting point of TN.

This very file:

Yes, Terminus Nation started with a single Word document! Okay, well, it's not the oldest among my files, which I can't even understand, but I'm not going to fuck around with dates! The "official" "birthday" is the 1st of August, but the true date for me keeps the 29th of July.

It's because that whatever the true date actually was, Terminus Nation was started with this doc - and this doc was the one, in which I described Drake and Shiori the very first time. Apart from their age, personality, and equipment, the majority of which hasn't even changed much since.

It was then followed by some minor touches: a general shape, the (at the time unnamed) non-temporal concept, some of the planets, all the major human factions and all the major alien races.

During August, some characters were added and the quite important Planet Monument concept was finalized. I'll never forget the day the latter happened, actually, as I was discussing it with a friend who's also into worldbuilding, and I was visiting him at his hometown the very first time - just a small trivia.

Anyways, the beginning was Drake and Shiori for sure, and the main story (which I started to polish in the recent weeks) is definitely about them and their relationship. It was the initial plan and I'll keep it in the main focus as long as possible.

What can I tell about a year of work?

Huge changes and trivia

Most importantly that worldbuilding is way not so easy if you try to stick to consistency and realism - which, in most cases, you should. It's especially true if your world starts to expand, with more and more potential branches and potentially connecting concepts. In fact, I still have a gigantic to-do list as a doc that is so huge that I didn't even dare to transport into this wiki.

Anyways, because of said principles, a lot ot things has changed since the beginning.

Endline Universe

Before I created this wiki in November, Terminus Nation got an extremely huge update. It's because it was not even called so at the beginning - originally, I named it Endline Universe and it was strongly different in many aspects. It was so prominent, though, that even my initial Reddit introduction in /r/worldbuilding bore that name.

In Endline Universe…

…every single person was non-temporal. I was really obsessed with the concept at the time of its creation so I couldn't realize that the factions I found out rarely work as well as IRL if people never die. In TN, only a very small amount of the human population (<1%) is non-temporal, but I haven't ignored the idea as this is the main motivation behind the entire storyline.

…the Cosmic Disk was literally cosmic . I defined it as a gigantic isolated part of the universe, consisting billion of galaxy superclusters. Because, you know, sci-fi writers have no sense of scale. A Redditor made me bog it down, I think he's even mentioned in the credits with an appropriate link.

…the Gate Hunter Divison (originally called G.H. Fellowship) had 12(!) members. Beyond Drake, Shiori, Jumper, Red, Chris and Hackerboy, there were six additional members: Immortal Albu, Eira the Destroyer, Daniki (inspired by a friend), Energizer, Micah "Ladykiller" Grant and Medusa, an unnamed supernatural alien. I wanted them for diversity but soon I realized most of them had less detailed personality then others and I didn't want to deepen them, so I removed them from the current team. It was at first decreased to 9, but even that felt much, so I'm at 6 currently - but a seventh (female) character is in progress!

These were the main differences, but characters have also changed some here and there. I know, there's only a few articles about characters yet, but it's not that easy to write new articles and I often worry of failure. Which I shouldn't I guess - it might be another thing I've learned about worldbuilding during this one year.

Anyways, I was quite in an inferior mood when I created the initial concepts (2015 July-August), but I think I can be proud of it: this is the world that unites every other world concepts I've had during the last 10 years: Aurosts, Cloudans were existing in my head for this long time, for instance, while the Future Empire, the Church of the Cybergod, the Red Fist and the Justice Empire concepts were from 2013-2014.

Rimworld's importance

Oh, did I mention that I've made some of the names (including Drake and Shiori) with Rimworld's character generator? I even had some copyright issues regarding it, as the names were not exactly randomized - not even talking about the fact that I was unaware that Shiori is a proper Japanese first name…in fact, I thought it's a "randomly made" name so it fits perfectly for a tribe amazon…great.

But it also had good influences, as the whole idea of "superhuman nicknames" like Drifter, Amazon, Jumper, Red, Chris, Immortal, Woe, etc. came from the fact that Rimworld used potential middle names for certain characters.

Not even talking about the fact that the way this game communicates stories, drama, conflicts, and other concepts without actually telling a single world…for me, it was mesmerizing, and contributed a lot for me to start TN.

It's one of the best indie games I've ever ever played.

Helpers

Of course, on my way, a lot of people helped me. By this I mean a lot. All those small tips, details, suggestions and ideas helped me keep on the right track, as the example of Endline Universe proves. Sadly I can't name all of these people but I can highlight the most important ones.

Communities

Reddit's worldbuilding sub. Should I say anything about the best worldbuilding community of the internet? It has 78 thousand followers by reason. Not even talking about related subreddits, such as /r/characterforge, /r/conlangs, /r/DeepWorldbuilding, /r/magicbuilding and so on.

Worldbuilding Stack Exchange. The creators of Stack Overflow have already done a gigantic favor to humanity by releasing the world's ever best programming resource to the public, but expanding that amazing Q&A system to other topics (especially worldbuilding) is something I can't even express in English words. WB.SE has become 8for me at least) the second best source of worldbuilding discussions, and already helped a lot.

People from Reddit

/u/Nikzt - a Hungarian fellow living in Canada. Also a worldbuilder, and a great artist - I can't even pick up a single greatest one.

- a Hungarian fellow living in Canada. Also a worldbuilder, and a great artist - I can't even pick up a single greatest one. /u/Stokia - he helped with the design of [[[Sanne Lund]]'s clothing, and clothing in general. A true expert in this field.

- he helped with the design of [[[Sanne Lund]]'s clothing, and clothing in general. A true expert in this field. /u/Salteez - he was the one who digitalized the Republic logo, a symbol that I generally use for Terminus Nation.

- he was the one who digitalized the Republic logo, a symbol that I generally use for Terminus Nation. /u/Arcturox - his worldbuilding webcomics inspired me not to sit on my ass and start my own.

Honorable mentions: /u/hritter and /u/JayRulo (admins of /r/characterforge), /u/Djoric, /u/Fuzzlewuzzlekins, /u/olirant, /u/HannasAnarion

People from Hungary

Fortunately, some friendships a moderate online presence in my native language could help me gain a small number of active "followers", with who I can and could make extremely useful discussions about the entire world.

"Atis1" is a great artist who has made the current cover art of the worldbuilding project - which is amazing.

is a great artist who has made the current cover art of the worldbuilding project - which is amazing. DANKKrish is despite being a fairly young guy has helped so much times through extensive discussions that I can't really express it. For example, beyond several great suggestions, he "designed" Jumper's outfit, that has been an unresolved issue for 8 months.

is despite being a fairly young guy has helped so much times through extensive discussions that I can't really express it. For example, beyond great suggestions, he "designed" Jumper's outfit, that has been an unresolved issue for 8 months. Máté "Rothens" Dávid is just "simply" supporting me on Patreon with 10 dollars each month. Being the only and yet an absolutely stable supporter, he already deserves mentioning, but his mental support as a friend in the last 5 years is something that is literally priceless.

is just "simply" supporting me on Patreon with 10 dollars each month. Being the only and yet an absolutely stable supporter, he already deserves mentioning, but his mental support as a friend in the last 5 years is something that is literally priceless. Krisztián Geisz is also "just a friend", but his outstanding creativity has also helped me a lot, and the fact that he's really a fantasy expert (and is strongly passionate about it) also provided help for me (a mainly sci-fi oriented creator).

is also "just a friend", but his outstanding creativity has also helped me a lot, and the fact that he's really a fantasy expert (and is strongly passionate about it) also provided help for me (a mainly sci-fi oriented creator). Abigail, like Atis is an artist, hasn't made anything yet so far, but since she's also a friend, she's also someone I can rely on if I need help.

Honorable mentions: Richard "Kinchou" Nagy, Daniel "Daniki" Pintér, Máté Ludnik, Richárd "Ryy" Tari, Bence Kincses, Boldizsár Sirankó, Tamás "Termiborger" Hugyecz - most of them helped me through private chat.

What are my current plans?

I'm trying to bring out the full potential of Terminus Nation: my plans include a pixelart-styled webcomic, a game (or more) about the universe, expanding the wiki by new articles and even through new functionality!

Final words

Thank you very much for being interested in my world! Keep it up, and don't forget to follow me on social media!

I'm always available at Facebook, on Twitter, on Reddit and even here, in the Forums!

If you think I deserve it, support me on Patreon!

Katamori,

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