Lore Secrets, Part 1
Hey everyone, I'm Redbeard/Brendan, the writer and the loremaster on Inkbound, and I wanted to give you all a bit of an inside peek at the process of creating our world as we get really close to the launch of our new Season, "The Starship of Terrors"!
[h3]Creating the World[/h3]
As you've no doubt noticed by now, Inkbound has a lot of books. Too many? Nah, not enough! Books are kind of an (unhealthy?) obsession of mine, so creating a world that contains all the books ever written was a natural starting point. The idea of books as new worlds isn't novel (heh, get it?) by any means, still something about books being literal portals to new worlds was fascinating to me if a little bit of wishful thinking. So, the Atheneum was created from the very start—a solid foundation we could start with and build on top of for a long time. If any world can be written, there’s a wide variety of ground to cover!
But if anything can be created by writing, then every problem is instantly solved by just writing the solution, and that makes for pretty boring storytelling. So the first rule that informed everything else became: “once something is written, it cannot be unwritten.” No undos, no take backs. Once it’s written with Ink and Kwill, it’s bound to the world just like a Binder is bound to their Kwill. Everyone makes their own decisions and has to live with the consequences, no matter what. And that, more or less, became the crux of every character’s backstory.
Since everyone can create what they want, it felt natural that all characters would view their problems as trivial or, at least, easily solvable. In many ways, they’re all just small gods that can make anything out of nothing, so why wouldn’t they think their problems are insignificant? Even if the world tells them they can’t undo anything, they can find a ‘creative workaround,’ right? Well, it’s just that kind of latent hubristic attitude that leads to the mess they’re in now. All the characters that inhabit the world of Inkbound are dealing with the fallout of their own choices, more specifically, the fallout of the choices they made to try and undo the consequences of their previous choices because even small gods make mistakes.
This left the most important part—the player, you! You play as one of the Needless: a silent construct made by the Binders of the Atheneum to solve their problems for them. How’s that going for ya? You might not be able to speak or make any ‘real’ choices for yourself, but you can bind with a Kwill of your own and that’s a rare thing in these times. Here’s hoping things start looking up for you soon, Needless.
[h3]Building out the Lore[/h3]
Writing lore can be a slippery slope. There can be, and very often is, too much of it and it’s usually so irrelevant to the story that it becomes like some middle-school history fact that you don’t ever want or need to remember. You have to be smart about where to include lore, when it’s relevant, and when it furthers the story or scene you’re trying to write.
All that said…
I love writing lore, I have written way too much of it, and most of it is very irrelevant. Most of it is information that is so plain that it won’t likely ever become relevant (i.e. the Atheneum is built on top of a mile-high stone sewage complex) or it’s so mundane that it doesn’t even dignify being so (i.e. Atheneum currency is made of quarter-inch cubes of graphite tied with different colored strings to denote amount), but it’s still necessary to make a believable world full of all the mundane details that fill it up.
But just because it’s irrelevant to the immediate story doesn’t mean it’s not critically important for answering questions about that world for everyone else who is building and creating within it. The more mundane details there are, the more believable and cohesive the world, and the easier it will be to answer random questions that come up about the world (e.g. I have to dig a hole in the Atheneum 300 ft. deep, what’s going to be under there? Stone.)
For me, the lore-writing process is about constantly channeling my inner toddler: ask “why” all the way down until you’re explaining the building blocks of the universe.
Binders can create anything. Why? Because using Ink and a Kwill they can create new matter. Why? Because Each of those three pieces is a sliver of creation. Why? Because [SPOILERS]. Why?... You get the idea.
[h3]Season 2[/h3]
At the end of last Season, we saw the Gatekeeper send you on a quest for some mysterious artifact, the Opal Slab, in the hopes that it would help the broken Atheneum. Shocker, it didn’t. Instead, you found a new book, one the Gardener was hiding and one the Gatekeeper really doesn’t want you to open.
Well, surprise! You opened the book, and all hell broke loose. It turns out this new book is a new world with a spaceship called the DARVe (cool!) that was sealed to imprison the monsters inside (not cool!), and, now that you’ve opened it, they’ve broken free and need to be placed back where they came from before the book gets out of hand and takes over the Atheneum entirely (really not cool!).
This new Season also introduces a new character named the Captive. He’s a pretty quiet guy when you meet him, but if you give him a hand (heh), he’ll start to warm up to you.
Inkbound has been a deeply personal story for me to write. Every character in the game is a reflection of myself in one way or another—my doubts, my fears, my insecurities—but it’s also been a very cathartic story to write, allowing me to work through some of these issues and explore how I might react in these situations (even if they are highly improbable situations). I don’t say this as any claim that this writing is good (it often isn’t!) or even that I know what I’m doing (I don’t!), but that if any small thing about this story speaks to you, then know it comes from a place of immense care from me and I’m glad I was able to connect with you in some small way.
So, if you’ve made it this far, thanks for sticking around, and thanks for playing Inkbound! We’re all extremely proud of what we’ve built and are excited to continue sharing this world with you.
[h3]Creating the World[/h3]
As you've no doubt noticed by now, Inkbound has a lot of books. Too many? Nah, not enough! Books are kind of an (unhealthy?) obsession of mine, so creating a world that contains all the books ever written was a natural starting point. The idea of books as new worlds isn't novel (heh, get it?) by any means, still something about books being literal portals to new worlds was fascinating to me if a little bit of wishful thinking. So, the Atheneum was created from the very start—a solid foundation we could start with and build on top of for a long time. If any world can be written, there’s a wide variety of ground to cover!
But if anything can be created by writing, then every problem is instantly solved by just writing the solution, and that makes for pretty boring storytelling. So the first rule that informed everything else became: “once something is written, it cannot be unwritten.” No undos, no take backs. Once it’s written with Ink and Kwill, it’s bound to the world just like a Binder is bound to their Kwill. Everyone makes their own decisions and has to live with the consequences, no matter what. And that, more or less, became the crux of every character’s backstory.
Since everyone can create what they want, it felt natural that all characters would view their problems as trivial or, at least, easily solvable. In many ways, they’re all just small gods that can make anything out of nothing, so why wouldn’t they think their problems are insignificant? Even if the world tells them they can’t undo anything, they can find a ‘creative workaround,’ right? Well, it’s just that kind of latent hubristic attitude that leads to the mess they’re in now. All the characters that inhabit the world of Inkbound are dealing with the fallout of their own choices, more specifically, the fallout of the choices they made to try and undo the consequences of their previous choices because even small gods make mistakes.
This left the most important part—the player, you! You play as one of the Needless: a silent construct made by the Binders of the Atheneum to solve their problems for them. How’s that going for ya? You might not be able to speak or make any ‘real’ choices for yourself, but you can bind with a Kwill of your own and that’s a rare thing in these times. Here’s hoping things start looking up for you soon, Needless.
[h3]Building out the Lore[/h3]
Writing lore can be a slippery slope. There can be, and very often is, too much of it and it’s usually so irrelevant to the story that it becomes like some middle-school history fact that you don’t ever want or need to remember. You have to be smart about where to include lore, when it’s relevant, and when it furthers the story or scene you’re trying to write.
All that said…
I love writing lore, I have written way too much of it, and most of it is very irrelevant. Most of it is information that is so plain that it won’t likely ever become relevant (i.e. the Atheneum is built on top of a mile-high stone sewage complex) or it’s so mundane that it doesn’t even dignify being so (i.e. Atheneum currency is made of quarter-inch cubes of graphite tied with different colored strings to denote amount), but it’s still necessary to make a believable world full of all the mundane details that fill it up.
But just because it’s irrelevant to the immediate story doesn’t mean it’s not critically important for answering questions about that world for everyone else who is building and creating within it. The more mundane details there are, the more believable and cohesive the world, and the easier it will be to answer random questions that come up about the world (e.g. I have to dig a hole in the Atheneum 300 ft. deep, what’s going to be under there? Stone.)
For me, the lore-writing process is about constantly channeling my inner toddler: ask “why” all the way down until you’re explaining the building blocks of the universe.
Binders can create anything. Why? Because using Ink and a Kwill they can create new matter. Why? Because Each of those three pieces is a sliver of creation. Why? Because [SPOILERS]. Why?... You get the idea.
[h3]Season 2[/h3]
At the end of last Season, we saw the Gatekeeper send you on a quest for some mysterious artifact, the Opal Slab, in the hopes that it would help the broken Atheneum. Shocker, it didn’t. Instead, you found a new book, one the Gardener was hiding and one the Gatekeeper really doesn’t want you to open.
Well, surprise! You opened the book, and all hell broke loose. It turns out this new book is a new world with a spaceship called the DARVe (cool!) that was sealed to imprison the monsters inside (not cool!), and, now that you’ve opened it, they’ve broken free and need to be placed back where they came from before the book gets out of hand and takes over the Atheneum entirely (really not cool!).
This new Season also introduces a new character named the Captive. He’s a pretty quiet guy when you meet him, but if you give him a hand (heh), he’ll start to warm up to you.
Inkbound has been a deeply personal story for me to write. Every character in the game is a reflection of myself in one way or another—my doubts, my fears, my insecurities—but it’s also been a very cathartic story to write, allowing me to work through some of these issues and explore how I might react in these situations (even if they are highly improbable situations). I don’t say this as any claim that this writing is good (it often isn’t!) or even that I know what I’m doing (I don’t!), but that if any small thing about this story speaks to you, then know it comes from a place of immense care from me and I’m glad I was able to connect with you in some small way.
So, if you’ve made it this far, thanks for sticking around, and thanks for playing Inkbound! We’re all extremely proud of what we’ve built and are excited to continue sharing this world with you.