Nation Elemental Themes

So, I'm trying to write a sci-fantasy setting where there are nations themed around elemental forces. Namely, there's Light, Darkness, Fire, Water, Earth, Ice, and Plant.

I'm trying to think of "themes" for them. So far:

Light: The state religion is a benevolent Machine Cult, to which they owe their technological advancement. They worship the sun-god, who's rays power their machinery.

Darkness: Gothic Horror-themed nation (lots of uberwald castles and such). They're run by a cult of necromancers who work for the God of Evil.

Earth: A Fantasy Counterpart Culture to Egypt. They love building monuments. They worship the death goddess, though they seek immortality (as the death goddess occasionally grants people immortality).

Plant: Generically Asiatic culture (a little bit Japanese, a little bit Chinese) that follows a sort of Taoist idea of "balance" and "harmony". Their cities are tree houses, creating tree-cities of sorts.

I'm still thinking about where to go with Fire, Water, and Ice. Would anyone be willing to help me?

edited 2nd Jun '15 12:03:46 AM by Protagonist506

Fire would most likely be a desert-dwelling nation due to the heat, perhaps with a lot of smoke-belching factories processing gallons of desert oil. Water could be a nation of Wooden Ships and Iron Men. I'm not sure about Ice, but maybe something almost Russian in its trappings?

edited 28th May '15 9:41:44 PM by AllHailThrall

I could also see a fire theme working for a classic mongol-style horse nomad culture. Fire sweeps across the land, leaving ashes in its wake, but it can't sustain itself forever, it must move on or die out.

For Water, you could go with a somewhat-unsubtle Pacific Islands theme. Alternatively you could look at India, which has the whole "monsoon season" thing along with some seafaring-ness to it.

Fire could also have an analog with "volcanoes" (which, of course, has been done before) but you could also try the Persian Empire. Or do what Avatar: The Last Airbender did and go with a Japanese theme.

Water could be an ocean world with no natural land and all the residence live on really big ships. Standard size ships are used by Soldiers, Pirates, and travelers while really big, like, continental-sized ships are used for civilians to live on with artificial plants.

I agree with Ice being a Russia analouge; lots of grumpy people trying to stay warm and not get eaten by polar bears-and reverse engineering stolen Light country machines into ramshackle knockoffs, like the USSR.

edited 29th May '15 11:51:13 AM by dvorak

Why does darkness always have to be evil?

The Darkness nation could have very chthonic deities and do rituals in caves deep underground. Maybe they're extremely rich in gemstones, which they see as a sign that their deities must live underground and produce such gemstones for them. Maybe they have a moon/star cult and important rituals always take place at night—not because they're OMG EVIL, but because they believe the moon and stars are their gods (or represent them).

I find The Sacred Darkness much more interesting than plain old necromancy.

edited 29th May '15 11:46:00 AM by Sharysa

From a Doylist perspective, it probably has to do with the fact that I'm rather nyctophobic and want to play off that primal fear. I kind of want there to be a sort of dualism where the world at night is basically the daytime's evil counterpart (the undead, for example, only come out at night and are weakened by sunlight).

From a Watson perspective, Darkness isn't inheretly evil, but the lunar deity (the dark god) very much is. The dark element tends to corrupt the soul of people who misuse it. However, a person who's very careful and understands that Evil Is Not a Toy can use darkness for good.

The subterranean culture is similar to the desert/earth nation I described, though. And the deity they worship is a death goddess (who's fairly kind). They could be argued to be the sacred darkness in that sense.

Fire could be based in an area with a strong fire ecology. The land literally needs to burn every few years. That's doesn't come with such a prepackaged culture though.

Water could be a nation on a massive delta like Bangladesh. Huge rivers, seasonal flooding from melt-water upstream, from monsoons, and the occasional tsunami.

For fire, I'm thinking I like the Mongol Horde idea. Perhaps they live near a rather volcanic region?

Re: Mongols for the fire people. Do they also kill people with liquefied precious metals? ;)

Sure, why not?

Fair enough. Being a desert culture, they'd see sunlight/heat as VERY double-edged, so maybe their particular sun-god is good/neutral, but extremely temperamental and dangerous.

It's the Light culture (which is heavily urbanized and sciencey) that worships the Sun God, actually (as many of their machines run on solar power, which he provides). Your description of the sun god is kind of what I'm going for. Think "Old Testament YHWH, combined with God Is Flawed". A great sense of justice, but Good Is Not Nice.

the light god can be true-neutral: a god that have a big book with strange rules that everyone must follow but if they do their soul will be guied to a afterlight, and of course all the benefits he give to all his people.

With water, I imagine a nomadic nation who move with the tides and said they first king marry with a mermaid or something, just because

Since the Big Bad of the setting being the Dark god, I figured it would be logical to make the Big Good be the Light one. (Well, actually, there's a Top God who's even more righteous and more powerful than the Sun-god, but he's rarely seen).

There is some element of that, too. The setting has reincarnation, which is the fate of most people in this world. The Sun-god has the ability to make souls "ascend" to a heaven-like afterlife. He ascends souls who follow his rules, some of which may seem arbitrary. The Dark god gives the opposite promise, people who follow his rules get to have Eternal Rest, which they consider to be a good thing since Who Wants to Live Forever?.

edited 29th May '15 9:27:28 PM by Protagonist506

Oh, another idea: The Dark Nation's civilians are mostly psudeo-goths (perky or otherwise, depending on how good or bad things are where they live).

Also a culture clash between the earth and fire nation: the earth one belive that human bodies comes from earth itself as give to the death goddess, so for them bulding tombs is a important thing, even to the point they dont defield or loot enemy bodys since they would suffer a fate worst than death.

Instead the fire nation burn their dead so they soul have run free into the world so a tomb is just a prision for them.

As you can see, they dont understand each other very much

Brilliant!

since reincarnation exist in this world, then all nation should belief that:

The sun/light god said that as long you follow his rule, you would aseind to a better state of being, become "pure" only his rules can save everyone from the darkness

the earth nation said that one day death was tired, saying to the earth how human soul never stop crying for wasting their life in vain, earth itself made a deal with Death: it will take the soul with them and covering in flesh in a new life, after that they will learn to be good people to return to the next world as they should be, so remenbering is important, because if you dont you are disreaspecting the very things it give you life

About plant nation is more easier: each in harmony with everything, when they dont wildness will destroy it all, I imagine twin gods: the wild king and the mother tree

And about Darkness, I imagine they are like a cult in which you have to take step each deeper into the darkness below...what happens?....nobody nows.

The Dark Nation is controlled by a cult, yes. One of the main themes of the setting is The Dark Side Will Make You Forget. The Dragon, for example, is a guy who kept going to the Dark god to make deals with him (initially, for sympathetic reasons, but he kept sliding down the slippery slope). By the time the story begins, he's a Humanoid Abomination that's little more than an arm of the Dark One.

Their political philosophy is something of a mind screw (and implied to shift often). Basically, they're a totalitarian government that intentionally creates a state of disorder to distract the public (you can't rebel against The Empire when you're constantly fending off thugs and ruffians). They also preform human sacrifice on an industrial scale to help build their undead army (people sacrificed to the dark one come back as zombies, under the control of the people who sacrifice them).

edited 31st May '15 12:25:16 AM by Protagonist506

Problem I'm seeing with the Darkness lads; if they're just atriahgt-up terrible, evil, horrible, nobody wants to live there, and everybody and their dog will be trying to get out.

So, it won't really function; even thugs and ruffians will drop their criminal thing and execute a tactical GTFO when stuff starts getting to the level of "industrial mass sacrifices".

It's your story, but I reccommend toning them down a little; maybe using the bodies of the already-dead for the army building, and instead of promoting disorder, just making a half-assed attemot at maintaining it (without putting any real effort or resources in).

Conversely, they could be the evil buggers they are now, but with a side order of indoctrination; their people still live there because of some form of magical/elemental/godly field that warps their way of thinking towards evil.

Just some thoughts.

Seconding

Also, I don't see why you can't double up on the gods. The Light and Fire people could both worship the Sun God without any problems because the Sun gives both light and warmth. They'd just worship the Sun God in different ways: "Illuminate the way for us" for the Light people vs the Fire peoples' "Wrap us in your warmth" or something like that.

Yeah, you might actually have a point there. One of the main problems I've been having with writing their organization is "if they're so blatantly evil, why do people support them?". I think I'll tone them down a bit.

Some of the things though, that I'm having them do:

1. Their culture believes heavily that Dark Is Not Evil, and considers the black robes and skull motifs to be holy. (It's not too hard to imagine such a culture. White is the mourning color in some places, for example)

2. Despite being a very authoritarian nation, they insist that they're actually liberators, here to save the world from the oppression of the other nations. They even call their military "the Revolutionary Army".

3. The human sacrifice thing is kept under wraps. Officially, they're just "resettling them elsewhere, to do labor for the Dark Nation". There are rumors of it, but it's usually dismissed as enemy propaganda.

4. Much of their military is conscripted, and shown not to be excessively evil.

You don't even have to "tone down" the negative stuff about Darkness. Like it was suggested before, you can do positive things by using The Sacred Darkness.

Also, about the "authoritarian" point: As was discussed in this thread, it's unhealthy to say "authoritarian is always bad." It goes against Western ideology, sure, but there have been autocratic systems that work where the people actually like their system. The government doesn't have to "insist" that they're doing good things if they actually are.

There are cultures where human sacrifice was seen as a good thing, or at least tolerated. Aztec Mythology justified their human sacrifices by saying "This will keep the world turning." I don't know how "real" your setting's mythology is, but maybe the "Dark" nation is the one that maintains the inner workings of the world?

And if you run with that, it could justify the "forced service." But you can also go an extra step: What if "helping the cause" is part of the Dark nation's culture? Everyone helps maintain the hidden "machinery" because they all know what's at stake if the world stops turning. Which means people are assigned to the different areas where their skills are most helpful. The ones who don't have any skills are sent to power the world-machine-metaphor-thing. And no, the Dark people don't have to like that fact. Maybe they just accept it as a Necessary Evil.

Sure, the other nations won't understand the Dark culture. They'll probably say "The Dark nation evil! We must shun them!" But the Dark nation would ignore that, because they know that "we're doing good things for the world, whether the other nations like it or not."

Plus, I personally am fed up with how "darkness" always equals "goth" and "skulls" and "evil." Any deviation from that is immediately a good thing, in my book. Bonus points to whoever makes it work.

^PS Crap. Now I have another culture idea for my own Fantasy world.

edited 31st May '15 12:46:05 PM by AwSamWeston