Summercamp 2026 prep

This SummerCamp, I've decided to focus on a new world-building project. Set in our own world, connecting the witch trials of the 15th Century and the dawn of the internet at the turn of the millenium.

My existing world of Shadowfire is still active, but I have turned most of my attention there to RPG games and writing projects, so the world-building is far less active than it was.

This new idea has been brewing in the back of my head for a little while, but I haven't really done much to flesh it out. I thought this Summer Camp would be fun to try something different - a bit more focussed and smaller scale than my usual.

In a Europe scarred by plague, dynastic corruption and religious conflicts, a woman is accused of witchcraft and her spirit imprisoned within a stone gargoyle atop a church. She remains trapped for hundreds of years, quietly fuming against her enemies and their descendants.

She quietly observes the world around her, but can only influence those who happen to look directly upon her face.

With the invention of photography her influence grows. Finally, at the turn of the new millenium, the online travel sites and blogs of the burgeoning internet give her a new found power and a reach that spans the globe.

Her revenge against the forces that imprisoned her is set to be unleashed.

The core questions for worldbuilding:

• Why was she imprisoned? Who imprisoned her?
• What is the nature of her influence on those who observe her?
• What were her goals before imprisonment, what are they now?
• How does this magic work?
• How does this co-exist withon our own world?
• What happens to her when photography was invented, and the internet, where images of her can now be seen by millions?

Week 1: Pledge and goals

My worldbuilding pledge

Review and update your homepage and world primer.

I'm keeping my home-page as simple as I can, with entry points for the two times, and a focus on recent articles. I may include a couple of timelines as the world, characters and events get fleshed out.

Review and update your world CSS and layout

I've used the white-out theme, and created my own custom CSS on top. So far I've kept this pretty simple, but have aimed for a style that sits somewhere in the early 2000s aesthetics of the internet, with simple background, and a pixelated font that aluddes to both medieval times and turn of the 20th Centrury.

For the moment I have hidden header images for articles until I've decided on style and effort I want to put into them. I feel like I might want to forgo them altogether so I can focus on writing rather than visuals.

Create or update your world's meta document.

Please have a look at my World meta where i have outlined a number of themes and initial ideas for this world.

Create some articles to get a feel for your world.

My mian focus is to use the prompts during Summer Camp to do these. I may seed a few stubs before the real action kicks off, but Its not that critical to do so just yet.

Week 2: Area of focus

I need to divide my attention into three broad camps. There will be two areas of focus for my new world, the modern day and the historical timeframe. Bridging and linking both will be foundational elements, like the magic system and the opposing forces of the core conflict.

Foundational elements

The core opposing forces within this world are Witnesses and the Custodians, both with distinct world views (as touched on in my World meta).

The forces will manifest through specific organisations that operated down through the ages - what they look like at each stage, how they operate throughput history.

This will touch on Custodian tech such as printing presses, propoganda, religious and legal codes. While Witness powers operate through performance, oral traditions, rumour and word of mouth.

As part of this, there is the central force of magic that holds this story together, and how both Custodians and Witnesses emplpoy it differently. I need to work out how this magic manifests, how it was used to trap the witch, and how the witch uses it to connect through technolgies like photography and the internet.

• Magic system
• How the Witch leant it, how she uses it
• How the Cutodians learnt it, how they use it
• How the magic interacts with technology at various times in history

Focus area 1: 1487

Somewhere in central Europe, probably near the Black Forest in the upper Rhine Valley, near the modern day border of Switzerland and Germany.

The area has a good witchy vibe about it, and was also the focus of a lot of political turmoil around this time, with Papal power being devolved to local rulers, and conflicts and alliances between them were common.

There were also instances of peasant revolts and oppression by Robber Barrens, and the brewing war between the Hapsburgs and the Old Swiss Confederacy which drew in allegiences from across Europe.

The Gutenberg printing press had recently been invented, and in part helped spread the newly written Malleus Maleficarum. This was a tome that became the second most popular book after the Bible, and supported two centuries of persecution and trials against supposed witches.

This area will focus on the main character - the witch - her biography, relationships, attitutudes annd how she gets embroiled in the conflicts. I will need to define her oppisitons - the specific people who she comes in conflict with, and who ultimately imprison her.

• main character: the witch
• adversaries: the Custodians, church bureaucrats, locals
• allies: other Witnesses, locals, family, friends
• Organisations: local church, local ruler, regional royalty, secret societies, political agitators, robber barons, Inquisitors
• Locations: home village, forest and envrionment, the church building

Focus area 2: 2001

Hopefully i can draw a bit from personal experience here, but I've chosen this timeframe because it sits in a nice part of recent history. the dramas of Y2K had just past and the dot com crash was beginning, but the world hadn't yet seen the upheaval caused by 9/11 later that year.

Social media and smart phones were still a few years away, with the old Nokia 3310 being the mainstay. We struggled with dial-up to visit websites like Yahoo, AOL and travel sites were primarily personal blogs, and the bulletin boards on Lonely Planet.

With my central 'what if' being based on the dissemination of my witch's image - this context feels rife for mystery and conspiracy.

I'll also set this in Australia, as I know it best, but saving up for a European gap year has been something of a rite of passage for many young Aussies for generations, so that'll work. I will need to define the main character in this time - his background, relationships and personal goals. How he discovers the witch and uncovers the conflict around her. Is he incoflict with her or an ally?

How have the Custodians changed over the centuries, who are they specifically, and what are their goals now that the long imprisoned with is active once more. How has the Witness tradition that the witch was allied with survived in the modern age?

• Main character: job, goals, background
• Adversaries: mundane and mysterious, modern day Custodians
• Allies: friends, band, family
• Organisations: the company he works for, the modern front for the Custodians, Modern Witnesses
• Locations: witch's village in modern day, hometown in Australia, place of work, place of socialising, the internet - websites, boards, lists

I will definitely need to be doing some research into both of these contexts, but I hope to keep the world bulding I do grounded in something more personal and immediate to the characters involved. I will keep myself from rewriting history, or at least keep any changes plausible to have remained 'hidden'.