A Lost Junkyard

I seem to have become lost,
In some kind of alien junkyard,
A menagerie of past industries,
Oxidation permeates this place,
Many dreams died here,

I find a pocketwatch,
It tells no time,
Every digit is thirteen,

I come across an automobile engine,
But it no longer combusts,
It only breathes vacuous rot and decay,

I find a thermometer,
But it remains cold,
The mercury has fled,

I pick up a toy soldier,
No longer among the honour guard,
His legs were eaten by a foe of rust,

I spy an old mirror,
It displays no human form,
The cracks generate glass monsters,

I may be very lost,
But i’m quite alright,
I’ll be fine,
My dreams are dead,
I too shall rust away.

Obliteration

There shall be a day,
When the sun perishes,
Even gods can die after all,
Apollo and Ra and Amaterasu,
All things come to an end,

Earth shall be awash,
With cleansing fire,
A supernova song,
A death rattle of a star,
A galactic graveyard chime,

Everything and everyone you know,
Shall be burned away,
Ash is the only future,
Hiroshima shadows,
No escape,

There is no malice in this apocalypse,
It’s just a funeral pyre,
An indifferent obliteration,
A simple natural metamorphosis,
Of light to dark.

Black And Gold

I walk this black and gold city,
Streets lined with circuits and voltage,
Chapels and shrines to chrome,
Midas kingdoms,
I’m a cyberpunk,
A loathsome hacker,

The disquiet is choking,
It entwines with the smokestacks,
Faces become metal plates,
Emotions reduced to lucrative algorithms,
Human no more,
Flesh has become a sin,

Corporate gods,
Mechanical preaching,
The world underwent body modification,
Its soul sold to the highest bidder,
All of its life has become mineral,
All black and gold,

I’m a ghost in the machine,
A former spirit of rebellion,
My heart was coldly dead,
Even before this metallic clone,
A facsimile of a pulse,
A life,

The augmented future is bleak.

Battletech

In a space system far off,
Centuries ahead of Sol,
Blood money is the ultimate income,
Wars are raged daily,
By mechwarriors,
Warlords of steel and uranium,
In their knightly engines,
Man made gods of war,
Piloted by saints and killers alike,
Statures of raw scale,
Towering over the enemy,

Metallic bodies collide,
Showering the land with ore and limbs,
Component guts are beaten and torn,
Lazers sear,
Armour plates and artillery,
Autocannons shatter,
Gore and gears,
Missiles swarm,
Carnage and circuit-boards,
The ground groans under the havoc,
The warlords squabble as the planet cracks,

Within this stout bunker,
With the other bystanders,
The ground quakes,
As do I,
I hear the iron feet coming.

Tenno

While you dream softly,
They watch over your home,
Across the stars,

Gods of combat,
Gods of bullet and blade,
Frames of war,

The Tenno,
A name feared by evil,
Sent forth by a cosmic mother,

Knights of the system,
Stalwart against imperial tyranny,
And ancient horrors,

Her will be done.

Random Idea #2

Hello inmates!

And here’s the second random idea that I’ve had recently. I’m not sure what I think of these ideas right now, but who knows, I may flesh them out.

“The three legendary swords, once thought to be the saviors of the world, have been revealed to be the greatest threats to all life on this planet.

One, Cataclysm, wants to wreath the world in flame and cleave it in twain with the power of the elements.
One, Enigma, wishes to reduce the world to a crystalline void, devoid of life, where only madness survives.
One, Factory, seeks to choke all life with myriad poisons and diseases, darkening the skies with imperceptible death.

The unwitting (and indeed unwilling) wielders of these blades are going to destroy each other, our world and everything we hold dear in a grand conflict!

We cannot let them. We must stop them!”

That’s it for my second idea. Let me know what you think of both of these random ideas. I know they’re pretty bare-bones, but there you go!

Have a very crazy day inmates!

Random Idea #1

Hello inmates!

Ok, so I didn’t get this posted when I intended to at all. Here goes, finally:

“What if I told you there were three groups of beings in this world superior to us. Living and fighting in secrecy.

One to protect us.
One to subjugate us.
One to wipe us out.

We call them the Exarchs, the Autarchs and the God-Machines.”

That’s your first random idea that I mentioned. Took me quite some time to get that done, sorry about that.

Have you all have a very crazy day!

The Clockwork Dragon

All flee in terror when it darkens the skies,
Wrought in iron and chain,
Wings built from aircraft carcasses,
Eye fabricated from red traffic lights,
Spewing petroleum-fueled flames,
Searing all of the peoples homes,
Not to mention their ambitions.

It is mankind’s greatest threat,
But man has only himself to blame,
It was built to destroy the enemies of mankind,
But they made a miscalculation,
They forgot one significant fact,
Mankind is his own worst enemy.

Dark stannic wings approach.
Here comes the man-made monster.
You best hide.

My previous worlds

Greetings inmates!

Worldbuilding.

What exactly is worldbuilding? Why is it that some writers label themselves worldbuilders?

Well, there are two reasons really. Firstly, it is a hobby that many writers enjoy. There’s something truly quite gratifying about writing about characters in a world that you’ve poured your soul into. The worldbuilding itself can also be quite enjoyable. Designing nations, races, locations and the very metaphysical state of a world can almost make one feel like a god. A delightful prospect I’m sure you’ll agree. The second reason is that it can make writing a story easier. Allow me to elaborate on that. Writing a story from scratch, with no defined worldly rules or landscape, can become confusing and frustrating. If you have taken the time to create a vague “outline” of a world, even if its only a very basic idea. Say, you have decided on the geography and society on a specific country in your world. It makes it easier to write about a character in that country simply because you know how that place works, you vaguely know where things are and you can write your character within that. It helps avoid plot holes as well, you can dodge them if you know how your world works.

Worldbuilding is a useful skill for any writer, whether they be a sci-fi writer, a fantasy writer or even a horror writer. Game developers use it, RPG designers use it and the best writers do too. You can design how the world looks, the basic geography. You can dictate how magic is supposed to work in your world. You can design the races that inhabit the world, and how they feel about each other. I know from experience that an idea for a story can reveal itself during worldbuilding, as opposed to building a world because you have an idea for a story already.

Here’s a humble Wikipedia article that can probably explain the process a little bit more concisely than me.

Also, here is a link to a Youtube account called “Write About Dragons“. It offers splendid tips about worldbuilding and creative writing in general.

Now, i too have dabbled in worldbuilding in the past. There have been three “worlds” that i have created to an acceptable (by me) level. I’m going to tell you a tiny bit about each. Just in case anyone was interested. I intend to write more about each of these in the future.

The Damned Dozen

This was the first world i created, way back in high school. It was a strange, messy amalgamation of high fantasy and science fiction, involving a barbaric corporation who effectively ran the world with advanced machinery and weaponry. There were literally dozens of races i created for this universe, from elf-like beings to far more bizarre creatures. The centered around a disparate group of outcasts, each of which phenomenally powerful and talented in various ways. For example a man infected by a demonic virus that caused him to shift into a savage monster,  an exiled prince who hides his face behind hundreds of different masks, a pair of insane twins who were once one man and deity who controls the elements. It was a when i was far less experienced at both worldbuilding and writing in general. I had too many ideas and continued to stuff them into this one world. It felt bloated, but it was enjoyable. This world was more of a hobby, in all honesty.

Daz

I don’t have a whole lot to say about this one. I actually spoke about in a previous post, a few months ago. It was more of a silly, over the top universe that mostly comprised of video game and pop culture references. I’ll link the post where i spoke about it here. You even get a quaint little picture.

Daetrolos

Now, this world is currently ongoing believe it or not. Daetrolos is an unfortunate world, the citizens besieged on a daily basis by creatures created truly out of the Dust. Dust is what powers magic in this world, but it also degenerates and corrupts everything it touches. Minds will snap. Landscapes will die. Monsters will come from the aether. Dust is an enemy of the world, but also central to its existence. The world has an almost Napoleonic era level of technology, with the odd steam punk and Victorian facet thrown in here and there.  I’ve created a few reasonably unique (or what i believe to be so) races to inhabit the world. From the lizard-like Julmurns to the scarecrow-like Mawkins. Nations war with one another. The map has yet to be filled in and there more and bigger wonders and horrors to discover yet I’m sure. This has been my favourite universe to work on, it’s more focused and neater than the world of The Damned Dozen. I’ve even got ideas for two stories in this world, both giving centre stage to a character i created called Michal Von Stromberg. I won’t tell you anything about that right now though, though i likely will in the future.

So there you have it. A very basic overview of the worldbuilding I’ve wrought so far. I intend to continue with my Daetrolos world and i will probably write more about this in the near future so look out for that i suppose.

Create the worlds of your dreams and nightmares, don’t limit yourselves. Turn your personalities into worlds that we would cherish and get lost in!

Farewell for now inmates!

Operation Gravewalker: The Convict

So much for me posting this the other night eh? Sorry about that, i sort of fell asleep and forgot i was writing it up. I seem to keep doing that recently. My bad! This is simply a short monologue by a convict who was made to go through the aetherisation process that was mentioned in the previous Gravewalker post.

 

“Heroes they called us. What a load of bull! Then again, how could they have known any different? The government never told the populace what the operation was about. They had no idea what the State was gonna do to us. I call us human sacrifices! We aren’t all volunteers after all. It’s not like we’re human anymore. We’re Spirits now. We are the real ghosts in the machine.

Operation Gravewalker it was called. The idea was to turn us into walking tanks, the ultimate war machines. I’m guessing it’s to do with that so-called “big discovery” down in Chile. Some old ruin or something. Ya don’t hear all that much about world news in jail. We gave up our humanity to protect our friends and families. Apparently. I ain’t got any family or friends. Some of the others did it out of love, some felt some stupid divine calling and some did it out of guilt. I was forced. A real human sacrifice to the State.

I won’t forget the process itself. I got told to stand in this small white room. Then all of a sudden one of the walls opened up, behind it was this robot looking thing. Almost like out of the old transformers. It just stood there, dead. I didn’t really know what to do, so i just stood there. Suddenly i felt this massive force of cold, like being thrown into an arctic pool. It went on for a few minutes i think, hard to tell. I looked at my hands. They were dissolving! But they were still there, it was like my hands became a gas. A couple more minutes passed and my whole body got turned into this gas. They told me this was exactly what was meant to happen. The bastards took my body and turned me into a damn ghost.

Their plan succeeded. We sure did become unstoppable weapons of war. That robot body was sure no simple Japanese entertainment bot. It was one of them. Our bodies got reduced to fuel to power them: our suits of armour. No, perhaps our homes? Another prison? It’s like sitting inside of a sauna, but you can’t leave. So hot. It was so cold before, why does it have to be hot now? Our spirit bodies burn to bring them to life. Our spirits burn to drive them headlong through gunfire. Our spirits burn to give them the power to smash armies. They call them the Monoliths. And let me tell you this: they are goddamn scary! Now I’m goddamn scary! Haha!  We are the ghosts in the machine.”