The Ides of March

“Across the red drifts and mail-clad forms, two figures glared at each other.  In that utter desolation only they moved.   The frosty sky was over them, the white illimitable plain around them, the dead men at their feet.  Slowly through the corpses they came, as ghosts might come to a tryst through the shambles of a dead world.  In the brooding silence they stood face to face.”

(excerpt from, The Frost Giant’s Daughter, by Robert E. Howard)

The Ides of March

On this date, March 15th, 44 BC, Julius Caesar was assassinated, marking the end of the Roman Republic and cascading Rome into civil war and strife.  Months earlier, Julius Caesar had declared himself “Dictator Perpetuo” (dictator in perpetuity) and sought to consolidate all power to himself.  The Roman Senators, fearing that this new tyrannical king of Rome would ultimately overthrow their senate, all conspired in secret to ambush him on the floor of the Roman Senate.  They sent Senator Brutus, friend and confidant of Julius Caesar, to summon him.  Calpurnia, wife of Julius, having had a vision of the ambush in her dreams the night before, begged him not to go.   Brutus scoffed at Calpurnia’s warning, convincing the Caesar that he should ignore his wife’s silly dreams and attend the awaiting Senate.   Upon his arrival, all the Senators surrounded Julius Caesar and stabbed him to death with their daggers.

Why am I telling you this history here in my blog today?   Well, for one, it has many of the elements that make for a great story; corruption, the lust for power, conspiracy, betrayal, and murder.  Mix these story elements into your own novels and you have the potential for an intriguing thriller.   But mostly, I bring up this history because of the research I have been doing for my world-building project.

Nation Building

I am at a point in my world-building where I need to establish the major nations, empires and cultures first before I can develop the world any further.  These nations will have the most affect on the rest of the world due to their size, power and influence.  How do I go about creating these nations and cultures?  Well, first I need to study the empires of the past (which I’m currently doing now), mash-up and change these empires to fit my story-world, and then set these empires at odds with each other.  In the end, I want to create six or seven major nations, each with vastly different cultures, philosophies, and governmental systems, all vying for control over disputed lands, trade routes, and natural resources.   In other words, if I want to write stories about espionage, usurpation, and global warfare in my fantasy story-world, I need to seed in all that potential for chaos and conflict into my world now.

Which brings me full circle to ancient Rome.  Over the past few days, I’ve been studying the history of the Roman Empire, hoping to emulate its political and military structure into one of my nation-states.  The goal is to find the most intriguing elements of that empire and to combine them with other fantasy elements to create a completely unique, believable civilization.  Hopefully, if done right, it won’t be obvious to the reader that this nation originated from the concepts of ancient Rome, just like most people don’t recognize that the conceptual origins of the Galactic Empire in Star Wars was Nazi Germany.   I plan on doing the same for other historical empires as well.  At this point, I envision a colonial nation, a conquering nation, several tyrannical nations, an enlightened-yet-corrupt nation, and a zealot-controlled slave-nation.  I envision all sorts of governmental and political systems ruled by monarchs, corrupt politicians, tribal warlords, feudal landholders, and a self-professed god-king.   All of these ideas (and research) are in their infancy right now and need a lot of work and development.  Yet, once established, I believe that this portion of my world-building process will produce many characters and plots for my future story-world.

That's all for now.  Please visit some of the other writers in the ROW80 Community…