The flow of time in fantasy worlds.
Fantasy is a huge genre, but with few exceptions (“The Iron Dragon’s Daughter” comes to mind) there are very few fantasy worlds that have any sort of modern setting, and even less of these feature a world that develops over time. However, the world of Arathria will evolve over time; the mythos of the world will expand from a primitive state all the way into a futuristic setting. However, the bulk of the stories about the world will be about a clichéd medieval period. It will be done this way to allow a complete universe to form. There must be a beginning, middle and end to create a full mythos.
Most other fantasy worlds focus on a single time period (plus or minus a few generations) and are sprinkled heavily with references to the ancient past where things more fantastic and mythical happened. However, I hate how this is done. Why say that this and that happened but not show its repercussions? By allowing the world to evolve over time you can jump in your story from one point to another, and in doing so, you not only show what happened but also show how it evolved. Similarly if you wanted to know about the origins of Western culture, you would have to examine Roman and Greek cultures because the personalities of the Greek and Roman periods have as much effect on the creation of Western Culture as the personalities of the 1400’s.
Furthermore, this must be done to create a world that does not just display itself to the reader but also entwines them so much that after putting the book down and walking away they have to remind themselves that the events were all fiction. Just as one tends to be a little more cautious after watching a convincing horror movie.
As it is the Arathria world will be based on both science and fantasy. I, personally, can’t completely ignore science when creating a world. Yes, there will be magic and such, but the world does not just magically appear one day. There must be a beginning. As such the world will start with a bang. Something (revealed later) will jar the world from an animalistic balance and force the intelligent denizens to suddenly cope with changes that will fuel the world’s progression into the future beginning with the creation of towns, cities, nations and empires. The world will form into empires extremely quickly to demonstrate the shear force of the change, but will slow down to create a “dark” age that will last far longer than the real dark age. In doing so, we will be able to show both the power of change and then the stagnation of a society that has come too far too quickly. Giving us the ability to ask: What happens when everything that has been created is the product of a hundred generations ago?
Of course there will be some changes and the society will progress into the technological stage. The differences here between this world and the real world is that science is blended with fantasy so many things that are not possible in the real world are possible and vise versa. Time will continue to progress through a “space age” where the petty conflicts of the world become petty conflicts across the stars. This will allow us to demonstrate the inbred racial conflicts that can occur and how prejudices hang on long after they make little to no sense.
Over these periods we will see snapshots of individuals and events. In doing so we can get a glimpse into the group mind that will allow us to know the very thought processes that are used to decide the future.