On Building Universes Again
A long time ago (literally nearly two years ago actually!), I wrote about building universes. In that article, I went on about how I had a MK3 universe and all that sort of thing, about some of the characters, things like that. It’s been a while though, so maybe it’s worth talking about what happened in those two years.
Well, in those two years, I kinda… I changed my mind.
Basically, the more depressed I got (and I was REALLY depressed in February of 2018), the more I was writing about Kinisis wanting to break and change everything. I was writing about a universal avatar who simply wanted to die, with everything becoming more and more complicated around her. In fact, the only beings who were having a good time were Gath and Retvik, who were expecting a child.
I didn’t kill the MK3 universe though. And all the stories for it are still there. But as I wrote about the MK3 Phoviverse, I realised I was more interested in writing about gods than I was when it came to writing about everyday life in the universe.
The last couple of series were split between following the life of Psiksi, a young Threan-type Rethan who suddenly shoots into stardom as a gladiator fighter; and the troubles between Kinisis and her Vethic servants, and huge desires to change. The last series, Rumbles of Change, followed the three most powerful Veth as they desperately tried to hold the universe together, following Kinisis’s disappearance. The very last story featured a confused and defeated Elkay Theanon, watching as the universe changed around him, realising that this universe was about to become something else.
Kinisis wanted to kill her own universe. The feelings of Arkay and Continuity, two of the three elder Veth, and the feelings of most other characters, were more important than those of Kinisis. So I didn’t kill the MK3 universe as she requested. I gave it a reboot.
The premise this time is slightly wider. Rather than the three deities of the MK3 universe and their huge legions of underlings, demi-gods and god-killers, there’s six gods and that’s it. Some of the events of the MK3 Phoviverse are still there, but I created an actual timeline of the universe, as well as creating some key events.
The premise is simple. Six Gods. A handful of mortal races in their own little empires and a much smaller universe. The universe itself is physically smaller, only about the size of the local galactic neighborhood of our own universe, meaning that things like space travel and the spread of life are nowhere near as complicated.
There were casualties though. While a bunch of races did survive and were recreated in MK4, the main races did suffer some heavy blows. The Temthans became a large category of reptilian beings with their own love-fueled empire, the Vohra became one of the few Panvok races left, and the majority of races with sub-types either had them removed or were split into separate races – most notably, the Rethavok and its sub-types were split into two races, the Rethavok themselves and the smaller Threavok, now rebranded as Skyavok. Which is probably for the best because the whole “four sub-types but one is completely different” thing WAS kinda weird. The Kronospasts and fellow god-like races have been de-powered significantly, and really the Kronospasts are the only ones left, so-named not because they mess with time but because they worship the Whenvern, the God of Time.
The biggest difference is the removal of the whole Deitic/God-Killer thing. You can’t kill gods in this universe just because you have some metal in your blood, and there’s only six gods anyway. Which kinda meant I had to rework the whole premise of the Dessaron (which are still a thing because I like them). They went from four Rethavok of different sizes going back in time to stop gods from killing everything, to a Rethavok, a Kronospast, a Vrekan (Elksia got turned into a Vrekan because Trehan-Type Rethavok really were just Vrekans with Rethavok features) becoming the luckiest beings ever and helping a strange Skyavok stop one God from hurting two other Gods. So Retvik, Tenuk, Elksia and the cryptic (and deceased) being known as Arkay are still hugely famous, just for a slightly different reason and across a bigger part of the Phoviverse.
But this is where the stories change. The threats to this universe are both smaller and larger. On the one hand, you have our six gods all making little schemes against each other and using mortals to do their bidding. On the other hand you have extra-universal threats like the Corruption, a horrific entity known to slowly and painfully consume all universes, that constantly tries to break in.
The problems with the MK3 universe were that I had too much going on, and there was never a constant, singular threat, just huge amounts of tiny problems, with too many characters. Sure, MK4 will probably start to make those mistakes, but with each God or Goddess having their own domain, not having any of that afterlife stuff any more and toning down how races relate to each other, it’s better for me at least.
Okay yeah, I haven’t started any major plot lines yet and I need to redo my maps of various planets and stuff, but I like this new universe.