Summer Camp Prep 2025

Once again, it is time to prepare for the wonderful World Anvil Summer Camp, and once again, I'm excited to get back into the depths of worldbuilding. Last year, the Kingdom of Keider was so new that I barely knew anything about it, so I only just made it to the copper badge. Now that the world has lived and developed in my head for another year, I hope it will be easier for me to find things to write about.

Therefore, this year I'm aiming to complete at least 16 prompts. With July being a fairly busy month for me outside of worldbuilding, I'll see how far I'll get, but I do think that silver is a realistic goal. Anything beyond that is extra credit that I'd be very happy to achieve, but I won't be too disappointed if I don't. That being said, let's prepare for a successful Summer Camp.

Preparations

Week 1

This week is all about setting a goal for Summer Camp as well as the most basic preparation of the world. This includes updating outdated articles, which, as it happens, I did recently for Keider. It also includes updating the world meta. That part is somewhat harder for me. Keider does have one, but I don't really use my meta. I find that writing down the whats and whys of my worldbuilding gets me stuck in a particular mindset and doesn't allow my creativity to flow as freely as it wants to.

Theme: Nourishment

Nourishment can mean many things. On a basic level, it can mean a source of energy, such as food and water, but it can be much more than that. It could be knowledge or education or medicine, or any number of things that turn existing into living. In a broader sense, nourishment might also mean a source of new members for any sort of organization, be it a government, military unit or underground rebellion.

In the Kingdom of Keider, most people can afford to have what they need to exist. However, access to for example education and knowledge beyond what one needs to do ones job is something the rich elites are often attempting to capitalise on and even monopolise. Particularly women are often barred from nourishing their minds and from doing anything their fathers or husbands don't approve of. To a patriarchal system created by powerful men, few things are more threatening than an intellegent, independent woman.

Week 2

This week, it's back to the roots, not only the roots of the world built, but also the roots of a worldbuilder's work. For me, my worldbuilding journey began about twenty years ago as a five, maybe six-year-old girl with a favourite book. The first character I ever created was heavily based on one of the characters in that book. Now, the main character of the story set in my other world, Leanor, is based on that character, though he's a very different person now, just like me.

I also used to write short stories and draw silly little comics all the time in primary school. Those stories are not particularly well written, none of the worlds are explained in any way and the illustrations are kind of terrible, but there always was that creativity and passion for inventing characters and stories. Then, with my discovery of symphonic metal as a genre a few years, things clicked into place as I switched from a vaguely modern day high-school setting that felt somewhat disjointed and made little to no sense to full-blown historical fantasy. Now, I couldn't imagine Leanor any other way.

So much for my worldbuilding roots, but now for the other assignments: The Kingdom of Keider's homepage is a bit of a mess, though it has improved over the past year of developing the world. Thanks to the unofficial Adventure MAPril, hosted by the wonderful Tillerz, there are maps now, eagerly waiting for more places to be given a name and a story. The blurb on the homepage is more of a teaser for the story I'm developing than a description of the world, but as I'm mostly a writer and worldbuild to facilitate my writing, that's fine with me for now. A few more images wouldn't hurt though.

Theme: Roots

It can be helpful to focus on one area of the world for something like Summer Camp. Since it is where most of the story takes place, the root of the story if you will, I'll be focusing mainly on the city of Lenen, the capital of Keider, and the places, organizations and characters in it. I'm very interested in exploring the city and its people and history. Staying there entirely most likely won't be possible, but I'll do my best.

While Keider is culturally diverse, I'm not necessarily going to go into different cultures within Keider or the continent the kingdomis located on, but rather want to focus more on the differences between different groups of society, e.g. at nobility versus commoner, rich versus poor, city society versus a certain secret guild of assasins, etc., as those kinds of backgrounds have a more immediate impact on how people think and act.

Week 3

Inspiration time! No, seriously, this week's assignments are all about inspiration. For me, this started with me being able to join the live stream for the first time in a while, because unfortunately, I'm usually very busy on saturdays. Other people from this amazing community definitely gave me a bunch of new ideas. (yay!) Few things get your ideas cooking like other people's ideas just chilling in your head rent-free.

Also, real life. Don't forget about that. Sometimes, cool ideas come from unexpected places like a random street name or being really, really bad at typing words correctly. Serioulsy, note down your typos if you can be bothered to do so, people, they can become pretty cool fantasy names if you let them. Quite befitting this weeks theme, come to think of it. My newest collection includes gems such as Everey, Abotu or Scoddef (my current favourite). Recently, I was trying to type Temple of the Seven, which turned into Temple of Teh Sven on me, like, interesting, but who or what is Teh Sven?

As for looking for inspiration where I might not have looked on my own, my parents gave me a book for my birthday in march that I really liked, even though I might not have picked it up by myself. The writing style wasn't the greatest in my opinion, but the worldbuilding?! It was so creative and unique. Will I pick up the next book in the series? Probably not, but I'm absolutely glad I read this one. Also, a friend lent me an amazing comic this week which I may or may not have barreled through in just one hour because it was so fun. Again, nothing I would have picked up myself, but a great, inspiring read.

Theme: Metamorphosis

At the time my story in Keider takes place, many things are currently changing. The story begins at a point where the status quo looks just like it did for decades, if not centuries, but it has been undermined by a secret organization known as the Guild, if at all. Now, members of the Guild are preparing to take down the system as we knew it. This kind of structural change also causes a lot of change in the people living through it. It makes people shift their perspectives, beliefs and behaviours to adapt to the new world order.

Given that, I'm hoping to be able to use the prompts of this week in order to explore in what specific way this kind of metamorphosis of a society and government order would affect Keider as a whole, particularly the people who live in the kingdom. Especially the organizations and individuals who were instrumental to the previous order and those responsible for its destruction.

Week 4

This week, it's time for the final, very practical steps of preparation for a successful Summer Camp, the when and where to write. For me, the when will have to be somewhat flexible. Between studying for exams and writing essays for uni during the first half of July, worldbuilding will likely be my way of taking a mental break from working and thus will have to happen whenever I need one.

My desk setup, complete with post-it notes for spontaneous ideas and fun typos with potential, headphones to immerse myself in some great music and a lovely WorldEmber mug for all the tea I could wish for, has worked great for writing my stories these past few months. Unfortunately, I'll have to leave that setup behind for the last seven days of July, as I will be on a musical vacation, but I will be able to worldbuild there as well. It has worked for me reasonably well last year, so why not do even better this year?

As for sharing, I'm not huge on sharing my work online beyond submitting articles for Summer Camp. I do talk to other people about my work, but that's mostly a few very close irl friends who are willing listen to me ramble on about my characters and worlds, and who will sometimes also give me feedback or new ideas. I do have a bunch of stubs just waiting to be filled with life, and even though most of those are characters or places, I think they're a good starting point.

Theme: Tomorrow

Tomorrow is an interesting concept to think about. Keider as a kingdom at its current point in time looks at the future with great uncertainty. Many things are in motion, organizations are in conflict with one another, and characters are forced out of their comfort zone as the status quo is being questioned, dismantled and reassembled in a different way. Looking back to the theme of week three, Metamorphosis, I'm interested in exploring how all of those changes that are happening affect people's outlook on the future.