Have you ever wondered how to make your own world?
Dunno where to start? Or just need some tips or tricks?
Fear not!
I, Atlas, am here to help! And also to answer fun questions!
Long-term nuclear waste warning messages, but with images of abandoned mines.
Very cryptic warnings…
It is said that, once a decade an angry dragon will destroy a castle, once a century a furious dragon will burn down a city and once a millenia an outraged dragon will use it’s gold to collapse an empire.
It is said that, once a decade an angry dragon will destroy a castle, once a century a furious dragon will burn down a city, and once a millennia an outraged dragon will use it’s gold to collapse an empire.
Long ago, it is said, this was literal. Dragons, the true creatures, massive and fearsome, destroyed castles, burned down cities, and, in moments of unrelenting rage, destroyed entire empires. And that is why, as lords arose and empires began to build again, the first thing they did was hunt dragons. Thousands, hundreds of thousands, all the world had, slaughtered in a desperate attempt to hold power eternal, no longer bound by fear of enraging the wrong great beast. Stories were spread of the cities and castles burned, the beasts made to seem as winged terrors in the stead of the caring kind they truly were. And knights, so devoted to their lords, brook no argument on it- the dragons were dark and vile things to them, and they would never be convinced otherwise. And that is how the dragons of the world died- at the hands of knights too lost in worship of their mighty lords to see the truth.
But the process continued regardless.
It wasn’t obvious at first. With an entire decade between destroyed castles, the seemingly disparate causes didn’t line up initially. Here, a lord with a dragon on his banner leads the destruction of a castle. There, a woman scorned caused collapse- her friends, in youth, had called her Draco, a joke on her temper. But it was often hard to tell, and hard to connect. At least, until the first city, one hundred years after the last, burned down, a local crafter, well known for his dramatic sculptures of dragons, who lost his son to the cruelties of the town’s nobles gone mad and taking all of them down with him- and much of the rest of the city, too. It was no longer the great beasts, for they were all dead. But nonetheless, dragons still destroyed castles. Dragons still burned cities. Perhaps the empires would not be safe either… But this was laughed off by many. After all, it was mere coincidence, and so many had no obvious ties to dragons (though always, there was something)- and with such a long time between, how could anyone really track it anyway?
Centuries passed, castles fell, cities burned, and the next millennium loomed near. With no dragons to keep the legend alive, few by then knew of the saying… And the world had changed, anyway. The most recent castle to fall had been the cause of climate change (a climatologist had, just one year prior, warned that they were “waking a sleeping dragon of storms”, though no one made the connection), and the last city that burned had been caused by a knocked-over lantern (a custom one, in the shape of a furious dragon- though with the owner dead and the lantern melted to slag, there was no one who knew).
In a tower, a modern one, made of glass and steel, in a penthouse suite, a man sat, staring at reports. He was one of the wealthiest in the world, a hoarder of wealth, rich beyond even the wildest dreams of the average person. The kind of wealth dragons aspire to. He was recovering from an injury- a concussion, specifically. They say brain damage can change you. They say it can completely change your perspective. Usually, they mean it in a bad way. This time, with this man… Fate had decided otherwise. He felt things he’d never felt before as he looked at the reports. He felt fear, sadness, empathy for the horrors he had inflicted on so many to amass such wealth. But more than anything, he felt undying, unyielding, unrelenting RAGE.
There was a system that had allowed this. A system which had encouraged it, even. Underpayment. Overworking. Abuse. Oppression. Slavery. He had, at one point, even sent out death squads, and it had all simply… Happened. No one ever stopped him. No one ever had the power to. And why not? Because this system, this capitalist world, had simply allowed it, even pushed him on, rewarded him for it. Its world-spanning cultural dominance had encouraged every vile, evil, and violent action he had ever ordered, all leading to this. How? How could he have possibly contributed so much to it?
He brushed it all aside. He knew what he had to do. He wasn’t going to let this go on any longer. And so, his work began. He paused for a brief moment, remembering something he’d heard a long time ago.
It is said that, once a decade an angry dragon will destroy a castle, once a century a furious dragon will burn down a city, and once a millennia an outraged dragon will use it’s gold to collapse an empire.
He rolled the saying around in his mind for a moment. Well, this system wasn’t exactly an ‘empire’- it had no emperor to speak of, after all. But then, he wasn’t exactly a 'dragon’.
“Close enough.” He said to himself, grabbed his phone, and started making calls.
A tribe we call the Calusa lived in southern Florida since at least 100 CE. They grew into a local power, getting tribute from nearby tribes and building monuments that remain today as testaments to their might.
The end came when British slavers in the region offered other native groups, such as the Creek and Yamasee people, a musket for every captive they brought in, they frequently turned up with Calusa men and women. The cities which had survived the past two centuries of intermittent warfare were wiped out within one or two generations.
further reading from the authors quoted in the article:
bc you can never have too much help worldbuilding
You can never have too much wordbuilding @w@
My bros I have been doing a lot of reading about Wacky WWII Hijinks lately and I want to tell you a story because I love it okay
once upon a time there was a dude in Spain named Juan Pujol Garcia. Pujol was a chicken farmer. Pujol hated him some goddamn fascists.
See Spain had recently ended its civil war, with the fascists taking power. So when WWII broke out in Europe, Spain technically remained neutral but in practice was buddy buddy with the Nazis. Juan Pujol Garcia thought this was pretty bullshit
so soon after war breaks out Pujol travels to his local British embassy and goes “hey I wanna spy on the Nazis for you”
“who the fuck are you?” say the British, and kick him out
but Pujol is not deterred! He still wants to dunk on some fascists, so now he goes to his local German embassy instead. “hey” he says, “I wanna spy on the British for you, I sure do hate them”
“yeah okay” say the Germans “that seems pretty legit”
and just like that Pujol now officially works for the Abwehr, the German intelligence agency. They hand him some spy gear (invisible ink and such) and instruct him to travel to Lisbon, and from there make his way into the UK. So Pujol heads to Lisbon, and a little while later writes to his German handlers telling them he’s made it to England
Pujol had not made it to England. He had, in fact, made it to the Lisbon public library, where he checked out a number of English guide books and set about just wholesale making shit up
this is slightly complicated by the fact that, for example, he completely did not understand British currency and all his expense reports were basically gibberish. He also reported things like bribing Scotsmen, because the people of Glasgow would “do anything for a litre of wine” (an actual quote) because, hey, people in Spain like wine so that’s probably the same right?
Here is where it starts to get really crazy, because the Abwehr loves this. “wow this dude is a great spy” they say, because apparently none of them had ever been the England either. In fact, they are so pumped about this new awesome spy that the British start to get worried
you see, by this time the British had cracked German’s supposedly unbreakable Enigma code and were totally dunking on the Nazis by reading basically all of their ~super top secret~ radio transmissions. And, crucially, they’d become so good at breaking and reading traffic that there were literally no German spies in England. The Germans would set up a spy drop (usually dropping dudes in by parachute in the middle of the night), the British would intercept the message and then just scoop the dudes up as soon as they landed in a move that must have been SUPER embarrassing to the spies
so there are no German spies in the UK because they’re all sitting in a prison run by MI5 (although some are being run under supervision as double agents, feeding Germany bullshit). But suddenly MI5 is picking up all this traffic from the Germans talking about their super great spy- a spy the British do not have in their jail
“oh shit” says MI5, and starts rereading all the transmissions they have to and from this mysterious super spy.
“hey wait” says MI5, upon actually reading the shit the spy was sending. “someone is playing silly buggers, pip pip cheerio”
At this point, Pujol, still in Lisbon, had actually been approaching the British embassy again, repeatedly, but apparently “I am literally an Abwehr agent and would like to offer you my services” wasn’t interesting enough, because he was repeatedly turned away, again. It wasn’t until MI5 started asking around that one of the embassy staff was like “oh yeah we know that guy”
so in 1942 the British finally make contact with Pujol and he officially becomes a spy for MI5. They move him to London and assign him a case officer so he can start making up even better bullshit
and he does. Once actually in London, Pujol reports to the Abwehr that he’d recruited a whole slew of informants- from a bunch of Welsh Aryans to disaffected army officers. He ends up with a network of 20+ sub-spies, all feeding him information from around the UK
none of these people actually exist
Pujol just straight up invented like 20 people, keeping careful track of their fake personalities, names, and activities. With the help of MI5, the information he sends becomes even better- a mix of true but ultimately useless facts and actually important intel timed to arrive in Germany just slightly too late to be of any use. He and his “spy network” become the Abwehr’s most trusted agents
Pujol, now codenamed Agent Garbo (for his acting skills), ends up playing a huge role in the run-up to D-Day, where the Allies mounted a huge intelligence campaign to convince Hitler that the planned site of attack was going to be Calais and not Normandy (this was Operation Fortitude and you should absolutely look it up for more Wacky WWII Adventures). Obviously you know how this ended
crazily enough, the Abwehr never figured out that Pujol was a double agent. After the war he received both the Iron Cross Second Class (which require personal authorization from Hitler), and a Member of the Order of the British Empire (from King George VI)
unable to resist being totally fucking ridiculous, Pujol turned down MI5’s post-war offer to continue spying, but this time against the USSR. “no,” he said “just help me fake my own death and then I’m moving to Venezuela”
and that’s exactly what he did. Juan Garcia Pujol died in 1988, at the age of 76
Okay I’m just editing my reblog to add this picture of Juan Pujol Garcia because I feel that it adds so much to the story to picture him doing ALL THE ABOVE with this expression:
What a legend.
Thank you Jess for this extremely important addendum.
he’s my hero and also adorable
This is…holy fucking shit, I have no words for how much glee this story brings me. It’s like Mother Night but not soul-crushing
He was Catalan and his real name was Joan (not Juan) Pujol i Garcia.
After the fascists won the Spanish Civil War, Spanish names were mandatory, since the Catalan language and culture were completely banned by the fascist regime, but he referred to himself as Joan. So let’s refer to him as Joan as he would have wanted, and not use the name that the Spanish fascists imposed.
Here’s an interesting interview with him from the year 1984 (in Catalan)
There have been two movies about Operation Mincemeat; the first was ”The Man Who Never Was” in 1956, and more recently “Operation Mincemeat” in 2021.
There’s also been one about double agent Eddie Chapman (”Triple Cross” in 1966) who like Garcia was awarded an Iron Cross.
So far there have been none about Agent Garbo, which is a shame, because there’s an appealing thread of genuine comedy running through the whole thing.
(Wikipedia entry here,)
There’s a documentary movie about Joan Pujol https://youtu.be/Iev8CNAS8uE
“Jurassic park” except it’s realistic and they can’t clone anything older than 1 million years because dna degradation so it’s a bunch of recently extinct birds brought back to life and yet the same amount of chaos carnage and destruction occurs as well as the same amount of wonder because Irony
Remember this park would have, among other things:
- moas
- elephant birds
- dodos & Rodrigues solitaire
- terror birds
- mihirungs
- adzebills
- Sylviornithidae
- great auk
- mobs of passenger pigeons
- moa-nalo
- mole ducks (reverse platypus)
- giant swan
- giant marabou-style storks
- club-winged ibises
- teratorns
- giant Caribbean hawks
- stilt owls, including giant ones
- and so many many passerines
Ok but for real? Phorusrachids would be just as if not scarier than the raptors.
Imagine two of these things hunting the kids in the kitchen.
I am always a sucker for this trope of “Innocent human and their friend The Beast”.
You were happy with getting an A+ on your “vampire myths” essay, with a comment about how you did excellent research, but you thought that was the end of it. A few days later, though, you open your door to find a vampire and a vampire hunter on your porch.
You were happy with getting an A+ on your “vampire myths” essay, with a comment about how you did excellent research, but you thought that was the end of it. A few days later, though, you open your door to find a vampire and a vampire hunter on your porch.
—–
“Uhh…. hello?”
The two look at my expectantly, shuffling somewhat, while casting nervous glances at each other.
“Can… I help you?”
“Hi I’d like to… ” “Madame, may I”, they both talk over each other.
I sigh, and rub my forehead, “I think you better both come inside, I’ll put a kettle on”. I turn and head towards the kitchen, but call out “Can you close the door after yourself? And make sure to wipe your feet!”
I can hear them both sputtering, trying to argue the other shouldn’t be there, but tune them out while I fill the kettle, and get cups down. “The lounge room is the door on the left, take a seat wherever, I’ll be in shortly”, I call out while putting the kettle on the stove. I check the cabinet and make sure my selection is good and head to talk to the two of them.
I head into the lounge, and the vampire is sitting in the high-backed chair near the fireplace, looking as lordly as one of their kind usually does. Surprisingly though, the vampire hunter is sitting on the lounge, not even paying attention to the vampire at this time, and just looking around the room. I take my usual chair at the bay window and look at them both, “While the kettle boils, I’d appreciate you thinking of what you’d like to drink. And also, tell me what you both want. But one at a time please”.
The hunter turns to the vampire, and just gestures for them to go first, at which the vampire raises an eyebrow, and starts to talk “Madame, may I introduce myself, I’m the former Earl Fortescue, and it has come to my attention that you provided an extremely detailed accounting of my kind as part of a university paper. I have come to offer you a chance to join with our people. I was not expecting one of… them… here however.”
Both I, and the hunter chuckle a little at that. I pause for a moment, focused on the Earl, “I see, I find the offer most interesting and I “… I pause as the hunter starts coughing, but they wave their hand in a gesture to dissuade from us assisting them. “I do hope you’re alright dear”, I say looking at the hunter, and return my gaze to the Earl, “I was saying, I do find your offer most interesting. What would this entail?” I glance towards the hunter who has relaxed once again, and seems to be watching with a carefully blank expression.
“Well, most importantly you would need to be presented to the local conclave, and they’d be making the decision as to who would turn you. But given your level of knowledge, I can’t help but think it would be myself who would be given the honor. Also, given your knowledge of the subject it seems you would quite understand the process itself, which makes this much easier. Other than the determination, I cannot see any reason they would turn you down, unless they felt you to be a threat somehow“, the Earl glances in the direction of the hunter, “ I do not see any reason that it would not end amicably”.
At this point, I hear the kettle start to whistle in the kitchen. “Ah, thank you, while I’m up, what would you like?”, I gesture to the kitchen. The Earl looks surprised, “Oh… I would not object to an Earl Grey, with a spot of honey”. I start to stand, and look to the hunter, “And yourself?”. The hunter looks, with a faint smile on their face, “plain black tea, whatever you have”.
I chuckle to myself and head into the kitchen, humming as I prepare the teas. A few minutes later I return to the lounge with a tray, and pass around the cups. I take a sip, just as the Earl does, while the hunter carefully positions themselves to look at me, and starts talking.
“Thank you for the tea, your hospitality is most kind. I have been called many things, but you may call me Rowan. I too heard of your university paper, and came to see if I might need to end a threat to the college, but I see my fears were unfounded.” They glance at the Earl. “Even more so when I saw the Earl here.” They place down their cup, and lean forward. “I am glad that it seems the vampires are still as lacking in knowledge about the wider world as they have always been however. And I do hope things go well for your degree.” They stand carefully. “I believe you are aiming for a doctorate in western mythological studies, I cannot wait to hear of your progress. It shall be most… enlightening. I wish you the best, and perhaps we shall meet again?”. They hold out their hand, I shake it. “Ah, very well”, I say, and stand to let them out, turning to the Earl before I leave, “I’ll be right back, I am sure we have much to discuss”.
I walk Rowan to the door. “It’s a pity you didn’t touch your Tea, Rowan, but perhaps, we can share refreshments another time”. On the doorstep, Rowan turns, “I would love to, but do let me provide the refreshments next time, and I would be happy to sit and chat. I hope they don’t give you too much trouble.”
I smile, as the door closes, seemingly by itself as I walk back to the lounge. I do have a snack waiting for me after all.
