September… This year is going by too fast.

What About Worldbuilding?

Okay, slow your roll. We’re not talking about actual dragons, at least not today.

Instead, we’re going to examine a concept from medieval mapmaking and how it can be applied to your story and lore. Fun, right?

(It’s okay if you said no, that isn’t going to stop me)

Here Be Dragons

Right then, what the hell am I going on about?

It’s simple, and it starts like this. You’ve got a story, it has a setting of some sort, and that place is part of a larger world. You can tell stories within that single place and its neighbors, while still paying the occasional reference to far off places and forgotten peoples. You can have the best of both worlds without delving into the intricacies of every point along the edge of the map.

You can do that, but what else can you do?

So here’s the thing about the edge of the map, it’s a great place for monsters. Historically, the idea of “Here Be Dragons” referred to the way cartographers had of marking off unexplored or dangerous territories on the maps they made. Putting a dragon or a sea monster or a demon at those edges was their way of denoting uncharted seas or places that, to them, were fraught with danger for the ill-fated explorers of their time.

Now, you can go about this however you want, but as I see it there are three different types of threats present at the edge of a fantasy map: Physical, Biological, or Supernatural.

Physical Barriers

Okay, so this is probably the most realistic in terms of barriers you can apply to a world. If there are finite edges to the explored world, you can easily blame them on things like the limits of technology at the time or political barriers which simply prevent safe exploration in any form.

Hell, much of human exploration was limited severely by our simple inability to navigate the open seas over long voyages, leaving much of the world unexplored or shrouded in simple mystery.

These physical can also add a sense of scope to the world, especially when you venture off to the natural variety. Things like mountain ranges, deserts, and oceans are excellent ways to imply a larger world is out there, but accessing is beyond modern means.

Biological Barriers

Basically… disease.

Illness, some vague thing out there that can be contracted and, more alarmingly, brought back to play havoc on your main setting is a perfect reason NOT to venture beyond what is known. Quarantined areas are not unheard of, and there are strict barriers the world over to prevent the introduction of disease into areas where it hasn’t been previously.

I don’t think we need to discuss the tragedy that arose from the smallpox blankets brought to the Americas, but that is the main idea here, and if it can happen in one direction it can happen in the other.

Supernatural Barriers

Here Be Dragons.

This is where we venture more into the barriers you expect, the sort you want to see in a fantastic or extraordinary setting. When supernatural barriers are introduced, you can branch out and have some fun with why there are large swathes of the world that are unexplored or abandoned.

One instance of this requires the use of a horde of mooks being saturated across an environment. There are a few examples of this, but my favorites occur in two series with a similar approach to their execution of this concept. The first is the First Law series, which introduces the Shanka on its first few pages, paint a picture of the North which besieged by these monstrous mooks that seemingly slaughter at random and attack absent provocation. They further appear in other uninhabited locales within the Circle of the World and

Similarly, the Prince of Nothing introduces the Sranc to explain the abandoned and lost parts of the world that have a role to play in the lore but won’t appear beyond a few scenes. This sort of existential threat living on the periphery of a story can be a fun element to toy with, and the thought of the threat encroaching inward can be a great way to set up some early tension and explain why wandering beyond the edges of the map is discouraged.

You see something to that effect in the Kingkiller Chronicle, with the original introduction of Scrael and the fact they are crossing over the mountains and into the story world. And it doesn’t even need to be something like a horde of mooks, you can give it your own spin and explore the implications it would have on the world.

The further you get from the center of the story, the more that fact is mixed with myth and there’s a great deal of fun to be had there. You could have a haunted forest out there, or do something vague like what happens when you approach the edge of the world map in the Witcher 3. Maybe add something curse-like or outright throw invisible walls around the story...up to you, really.

"You have reached the world's edge, none but devils play past here..." It’s just fun to consider, and a great way to make something your own. So… please, do whatever makes you happy at the edges of your map, but remember that vagueness and mystery are your friends.

Flash Fiction Results!

Okay, we all know why you’re here, so without any more delay…

1. /u/ArchipelagoMind - First place

2. /u/TheMultiuniverse - Second place

3. /u/DoppelgangerDelux - Third place

Honorable Mentions:

/u/psalmoflament for life in a bottle

/u/ pyronar for reminding us that the god of wisdom and victory is also the god of death and the gallows

/u/Nexhawk for Sacrifices Necessary

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