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A Warm Welcome
Hello Wordsmiths and Worldcrafters, and welcome to the Forging Worlds Competition!
My name is Benji, and with my teammate Chloe, I run the youtube channel Tale Foundry. If you haven’t heard of us, that’s perfectly fine—you can
check us out here! Tale Foundry is essentially a literary analysis show where we dig into how fiction works, and then use what we learn to write our own short stories. We’re excited to be teaming up with Janet, Dimitris, and World Anvil to create something really unique with this competition, but we’re going to need your help to do it!
The Brief
So, what exactly are we doing here? Well, as anyone who makes a hobby out of worldbuilding will tell you, stories have a habit of emerging from worlds you make. But it can also happen in the opposite way. Sometimes you need to build a world for a pre-determined story. This is very common for us when we’re working on content for the show and, in fact, it’s going to form the bedrock of the competition.
We’ve provided you with the “seed” for the story we’re going to write below—now it’s your job to create the world in which it’s going to happen!
The Seed
There have been creatures hiding in plain sight among the populace for centuries, but only now are the people becoming aware. They must race over the course of the next week to prevent the catastrophe that will result from their discovery.
What we ask of you
The seed provided above is half of a setting (conflict and duration). In this contest, your job is to create the place (location and time period) when the event described in the seed takes place. By answering at least the first five prompts in
under 6,000 words, detail the where, who and how of this event. Tale Foundry will pick a winner, and write and broadcast a story set in the winner's entry!
MAKE SURE YOU HAVE CREATED A WORLD BEFORE YOU START WRITING YOUR PROMPTS!
The Prompts
Click on a prompt to write your response.
Let the games begin!
Location
Describe where this conflict unfolds.
Settlement
Describe the settlement they inhabit and its unique characteristics.
Species
Describe the predominant species of the location.
Species
Describe the creature(s) who are hiding amongst the inhabitants.
Technology
Describe the most significant technological advancement within this location
Item
Describe an item with particular significance in the conflict. (optional)
Condition
If the conflict is caused by a condition, describe that condition and how it's related. (optional)
Ethnicity
Describe the ethnicity of the inhabitants of the location. (optional)
Myth
Describe a myth/legend that plays a role in the conflict and explain how they're related. (optional)
Organization
Describe a significant organization that is involved in the conflict and explain its involvement. (optional)
Article
Create a brief outline of your world (elevator pitch) detailing any other information relevant to the story. (optional)
Article
Worldbuilder's pad. write any other notes, thoughts and ideas you had. (optional)
PRIZES!
The Grand Prize
The story in your world heard by thousands!
The work that you have done will be translated into a story by Tale Foundry which will be narrated by the Talebot on the 3rd and final video of the series!
Additional Prizes
- All entries receive the awesome and shiny 'Forging Worlds' badge to show off on their profiles!
- The Winner will get the fabulous Forging Worlds Winner's badge, with extra gold laurels, and supreme bragging rights for the month.
- The Winner will also receive World Anvil goodies, sent to them by the World Anvil team.
CHALLENGE RULES
- Everyone can take part in this challenge as long as they have a World Anvil account.
- You can use your preexisting world or create a new one. Just remember that Benji and Chloe will only be reading through the prompts above. If you have a world introduction try to fit it under the Generic Article OR write a sidebar to give them the most basic points about your world.
- The total of the work submitted for this competition should not be higher than 6000 words.
- Do you have a question about the criteria or rules? Ask us in the World Anvil Discord.
Important Notice
You may build your seed within an existing world you have built, however all Story Seed Settings will be evaluated purely on the articles submitted—we will not be clicking to read other articles within that world—so make for certain that your articles give all the context necessary for our resulting story to make sense.
Submission Timescale
Start Date : 12th August 2018 00:00 (BST)
End Date : 13th October 2018 18:00 (BST)
Winner Announcement
The winner of the competition will be announced on a World Anvil Saturday stream after is selected by the Tale Foundry team. More to come on that soon!