Sylva

When I'm doing these, I have a whole list of things I want to say. But I never want to make these introduction bits too long, so it usually just ends up being the last thing I happened to think of.
Anyway, I was working on a short story recently, and decide I could probably make it a full novel-length story. And so for the last while or so, I've been world building for that.
I tend to go into a lot more detail in my own worlds than I do here. Say what you like, few of these worlds involve me spending much time worrying about what local councils look like in random countries, because even I know that's kinda boring.


The forest world of Sylva was once a paradise. The gods bent nature itself to their needs, and fulfilled all that was requested from them. The trees themselves grew into homes, exotic food and drink were there for the taking, and even disease was unheard of.
Needless to say, this didn’t last forever. For one day, a tear opened in reality itself - a pinprick at first, but it was growing quickly.
And the gods, as was their duty to their world, fought against them - by magic and by trickery, by every means that was available to them. And to start with, they were successful - they were quickly able to halt the growth of the tear, but beyond that, their power was limited - for fear of what might happen to their wards, they were unwilling to open the tear any further, and so could act in only the most limited way upon the world beyond it. And so, the gods and the things from beyond the tear settled into a kind of stalemate.
But for the people of Sylva, that alone was a tragedy. For all of their existence, they had been looked after by their gods, and now their gods were distracted by other things.
But humans are adaptable creatures - although they had not experienced such things before, they quickly learned to live with their new situation. Though the gods did not have nearly the power to spare they once had, they did not abandon their people entirely. And with the help of the gods, the people learned to build houses from wood, to grow food from the earth, to weave clothing, and to make for themselves all of those products of civilization that had once been given to them.
But no sooner had they adjusted to the new situation, than it changed again. For, somehow, the things on the other side of the tear evaded the gods, and came to the people of Sylva, and spoke with them.
But, though their bodies looked human, their words were strange, and the people of Sylva could not understand them.
And the things from beyond the tear were angry with the gods, who had defied them - and they struck them down. They had done… something. Noone knew what. The gods were powerless against them. And, seeing their gods fall, the people of Sylva fled from what little they had managed to build. And they were glad that they had done so. For, with the gods dead, the things came bodily through the tear. They built strange structures, they scarred the earth with mines, and burned the forest. Some people stayed behind, and fought them - but what hope could humans have, where gods failed? Those who left have not heard from them since.
But for those who left, there was a new life to be built. Having had only a scant few years to learn to fend for themselves, the people of Sylva could not, as yet, build boats that would take them beyond oceans. And so, they became a nomadic people, keeping far away from the buildings and strange vehicles of the outsiders. For their own part, the things seemed content to leave people alone, so long as they were not interfered with. Why should they care about these creatures, who posed no threat to them.
It scarcely mattered, anyway. However adaptable humans might be, the change to a nomadic lifestyle took its toll. Where once they were a teeming multitude, those numbers have quickly been worn away by the everyday dangers of even the safest world - dehydration, starvation, accident and malice.
It has only been a few decades since they took up a nomadic lifestyle, but the people of Sylva are scarcely recognisable. They have lost almost all that their gods taught them, and from birth, children are taught to fear the things from beyond the world.
They are a hard people, and suspicious of outsiders (not that those outsiders can give much explanation for where they came from). And though they may have banded together for survival, the fact remains that there is little people will not do when food is scarce - even with their constantly diminishing numbers, even within the single group that they have mostly remained, there have been wars. Factions, rivalries, and grudges have developed. Small groups have started to split off and make their own way, and it can only be a matter of time before the entire population splits into many parts - and before each inevitably finds that it is easier to find food for a small group, than for a large one.