I had a story/worldbuilding epiphany of sorts this morning whilst musing on the history of a particular city in my home game, and although it’s been said in the DW rulebook and the guide, sometimes you need to come to a realisation in your own words.
Any story I tell, or lore I reveal, as GM of this shared world, is simply that: a story. It’s something I heard about a place or person and maybe I didn’t hear it correctly, remember it right, tell it completely, or learn it from a reliable source. I am relying on the perspectives of each character to correct or augment my tales with stories, experiences or rumours they have heard. Imagine it like this: The GM tells a story about the history of the elves or dwarves, and another player chimes in to explain that although people might think that in some regions, their character knows another piece of the puzzle which clarifies things.
Together, we write the story and create a world with which we are all satisfied, and all ideas represented dramatically, if not harmoniously, to a greater whole.
Anyway, when that clicked in my head, I posted it to our campaign wiki to help the players see inside my noggin.
(The story germ I had from reading about the 13th Age Icons sprang into this:
“They say Setel was a fairly nondescript city before the archmage relocated here; some sources inside the empire regarded it as expendable. He had been in charge of a network of magical wards (of his own design) protecting various key steadings from enemy aggressors, as well as magical enhancements to agriculture and other needs. He had magically preserved his body and brain to extend his lifespan, but many said that the ageing of his mind could not be halted, and that so many years working with dangerous magic had warped it beyond repair.
Then the valley massacre happened, and the empire quietly moved the archmage’s base of operations to the small steading of Setel, which rapidly flourished in response to his many inventions and innovations. The day he arrived, , carried by his faithful gargoyles, he brought no bags or books. Wordlessly, he walked to the very centre of the town, drew a single stone seed from his pocket, and placed it between the cobblestones. A small structure grew out of the stone, the gargoyles flanked it, and he disappeared inside.
Periodically, the gargoyles “watered” the seed, the tower growing taller in response until it was the tallest structure in the city. People fear that, like a tree, it has roots reaching down into the earth below the town, a fear which seemed to have some merit to it, as the mad architecture of the tower slowly rippled outward, warping nearby buildings and minds. The people near the tower seem happy enough, but those on the city outskirts talk more and more of how far it has spread over the years, and how little of the city remains truly sane.”
)
Upon entering the tower, the heroes saw a single spiral stair leading both up and down, and a plaque reading “As above, so below”. The stairs leading up are lined with shifting stained-glass windows depicting possible future events, and the stairs leading down are lined with carved stone reliefs of past events. The ground floor windows show the heroes entering the tower, and where the gargoyle urine has splashed on the base of those windows, the glass has turned to stone, and the slow gyrating growth of the tower simultaneously reaches further into the air with possibilities, and drives the now fixed events into the ground as historic fact.