Setting Overview

Legends say the ancient residents of what's now Su-mehr Qiamp betrayed an agreement they had with their patron deity. For their transgression, their city was cursed to forever be haunted. Whether or not the legend is true, spirits of the dead and the living haunt the city to this day. Residents have had to adjust, and the result in a close society built off community support. They've learned that if they're going to make anything better, they'll have to work together to do so.

What is this place?

This is a short-term worldbuilding project developed during Summer Camp 2025. Every article is a response to one of those official prompts, with 16 completed and submitted and 8 more unfinished stubs. With the exception of the global copyright footer, everything here was done with tools available to free World Anvil users. The themes of this setting include loss, grief, and community. Facing our pain is the best way to work through it, but we're never alone in our struggles. Even in our darkest times, we can find hope in the support of those around us. It's a setting full of love and compassion.

Where to start?

You can start reading from any article that piques your interest. It's a compact setting, so not much prior knowledge is needed to follow what's happening. That said, the article on Su-mehr Qiamp is my recommended starting point, since it gives an overview of the city and many concepts you'll find in other places. All articles have a "Read More" section on the bottom that lists three articles and how they relate to the current one.

Su-mehr Qiamp

Settlement | Aug 2, 2025

This trade city sits on the Mehr River, and is the only known place where ghosts are real.

What inspired it?

The Blank Slate

I wanted to participate in Summer Camp, but I don't like using prompts to develop my larger projects. A blank slate gave me the freedom to have fun with the event, and the short-term nature made it a great break from my other work. Restricting myself to free features helped me focus purely on the writing instead of coding. I also hope the end result can be an example of what's possible with a free account. Paid features and CSS knowledge are nice, but aren't needed for good worldbuilding or well-designed articles. I'll let you decide if I reached this goal.

The Ghosts

Most humans don't like dealing with unpleasant emotions. When we're sad, we're told to cheer up. When our friends are sad, we find ways to make them forget about what's upsetting them. We shut out, ignore, brush aside, and avoid the things that make us uncomfortable, and we rarely talk about it. If we constantly avoid things, we never get better at dealing with them, leaving us poorly-equipped to handle situations we can't avoid. We end up isolated, not knowing how to healthily express our struggles and get support. This inspired the ghosts of Su-mehr Qiamp. The core ideas of facing hard feelings and relying on others for support feature in all worldbuilding for this setting. It's a society developing social frameworks to deal with being literally haunted by the difficult problems they can't - or won't - face.

The Personal

by Rin Garnett

Right before SC started, my cat's health took a sudden and unexpected turn for the worst. Two weeks later, on July 7, she passed away peacefully at home. Writing about ghosts and grief became a lot more personal than I'd expected. Developing this setting became harder and more emotional, but also therapeutic and cathartic. Writing is how I express myself and work through things. There could be no better way for me to cope with my own grief than to write about it.

The Sources

I'm not always great at noting exactly what inspires the things I create, but there are a handful of sources I thought of a lot while working on this world:

The Mehr River and its cycles was based on the differences between how Sumerians dealt with the Tigris and Euphrates, and Ancient Egyptians with the Nile. Egypt and the Nile ended up being my real-world counterpart for much of my research.
Games like The Rewinder, Spiritfarer, and Cozy Grove inspired my approach to helping people through grief and learning from spirits to improve the world.
The Japanese horror film Pulse (回路) deals with similar concepts of isolation and loneliness that inspired me to make a society that went in the opposite direction.
The general vibes of the city of Su-mehr Qiamp were inspired by the main setting in the book Swordcrossed by Freya Markse.

What's Next?

For me, I'm back to my big, long-term projects: worldbuilding wow that's a lot of stars, running more campaigns, and drafting a novel. For you, if you've read this far, it seems I have your interest. Perhaps you'd like to pick an article or two from the sidebar to read? You can also check out my author page for news of what I'm up to. There's a good chance I'll do something like this again next year.