Summer Camp 2025 Pledge
Nourishment
The Mevhan consider food a nourishment for the soul, not just for a body, in all aspects of life and culture. I want to explore the intersection of faith and cuisine, and spiritual importance of good food, how the working class make their simple fare nourishing to the spirit within their means and without the sacrifices of nutrition made by the rich.
Roots
The Mevhan migrated to the New World escaping a climate cataclysm, their faith and culture changing significantly both by intent and conscious choice to do better. The Old World was a different place, less cosmopolitan and more divided between other cultures where the Mevhan were not actually a majority of the continent, merely the majority of the survivors. I want to explore the guilt, and need for atonement they feel for destroying the Old World and those left behind, and how it's deeply integrated into their cultural mindsets and practices. I haven't yet worked on my setting's homepage, but I want to make up something presentable with an out-of-universe abstract describing the setting, and leading into both in-universe and factual articles explaining the Mevhan and their world, actually explaining and presenting what my world is and will be. This is my first formalised, written and codified worldbuilding project, prior attempts have all been less cohesive and more generic settings for tabletop roleplay without a clear vision or written details. I want to do better than that, and create something more immersive.
Metamorphosis
The Mevhan have changed before, significantly, the Great Migration centuries past in particular, but change is a constant and Mevhan society is coming to inflection points, their golden age potentially becoming merely gilded, the population growing and beginning to outstrip the previous availabilty of 'virgin' land. Mercantile capitalism is developing organically into an avaricious, self-consuming cycle of plunder, culture is changing, renewals and revolution starting to brew. I want to explore how things are beginning to change, or inevitably will soon, and how some with foresight or structural desires try to direct that change with or against the tide of cultural zeitgeist, where the changes will go as they set in and the conflicts they will create. For comparison and inspiration I looked to Vyrvania by Kat Chiron, particularly impressed by their use of separated boxes for different quarters of the city, something I would like to start using on many pages of my world to create a framework to fill out, defining regions, cities, districts etc to give myself structure to build around, and clear, readable presentation for my readers. I think I'll do it a little differently, more horizontally, and as either a header with abstract linking to a child article, or with a dropdown for a full sub-article box, but I like how it's presented and contextualised.
Tomorrow
The merchant classes consolidate wealth and power, the material desires of their systems leading to change without conscious intent to create that, beyond personal enrichment and the means of their acquiring that. Political questions are becoming more divided, as prospects for the future without reforms grow dimmer, competing desires of what those reforms will be, social movements for renewal of faith versus recent acceptance of wealth for wealth's sake, previously impious displays of wealth no longer thought as crass and tasteless as they once were. Not all is pessimistic however, there are troubles ahead but there is yet potential for positive changes, reinforcing the cultural attitudes that created and prolonged their golden age for so long after the Migration. A better world can still be made, or the avarice and decay kept at bay, but it remains to be seen, and the struggles will not be quiet. My writing schedule will vary unfortunately, dependent on energy after work and between other events, but I'm confident in my ability to start and finish a prompt in one writing session once my focus for it is decided. Hopefully I'll achieve more than two a week, with more consistency than just writing out multiple on a weekend spree when the energy and focus is available to me, and I may even manage one per day for some sprees! For sharing my assignments I'm really only going to be talking through them, and presenting articles to, with my friends and worldbuilding circle, perhaps later I'll market it to others but I have much more to do before my work is ready for that.
