The Thread That Glows in the Dark

How Obscure History Inspires my Fantasy World

Midjourney

This week, I've been taking a break from writing my serial Requiem of the Moth for some sorely needed research.

Most fantasy and science fiction writers will tell you they build their worlds either before or after they write the first draft, depending on where they fall on the plotting vs. pantsing spectrum. I'm right in the middle, meaning I periodically pause to research and plan out the next plot point. You might be tempted to call it discovery writing until you see the amount of notes I take.

One of my favorite ways of researching (or getting inspired) is grabbing a history or science book and reading it from cover to cover. It's not reading to summarize, it's reading for detail. I'm looking for seeds I can plant into my stories. This week, that book is The Golden Thread by Kassia St. Clair of which

Claudia Befu

requested a review. Since writing book reviews is hopelessly boring to me, however, you'll get a glimpse into how I research and worldbuild instead, using The Golden Thread as an example.

(Sorry, Claudia, this is the best I can do. I do recommend the book, by the way.)

Fabricated Fabrics

Since Requiem is set in a low fantasy world I have been developing for several years, I already had a pretty good grasp on its setting: the mountain range that is home to the pale daylight-hating Sedrivar. Among other things, I also knew what I wanted their clothing and fashion to look like.

Sedrivar fashion is all about simplicity and straight angles. They prefer neutral colors like grey, white, and silver. Black is reserved for the priesthood; white is only worn by the wealthy and affluent as it is expensive to dye and keep clean. Jewelry and accessories are where Sedrivar get to express themselves and feel unique: painted nails, rings, earrings, piercings, and hair ornaments enjoy popularity among nobles and commoners alike. Precious metals and stones are valued because they shine in the dark and can be appreciated even in the dim lighting the Sedrivar spend their entire lives in.

Inspired by the history of kimono in Japan (one of my personal interests, as I own and wear kimono myself), I wanted silk to be the luxury fabric restricted to nobles and rich merchants. Reading The Golden Thread allowed me to fill in more details. For example, I learned that in ancient China, certain silk dyes were more prestigious than others.

Emperors were particularly preoccupied with the prestige of luxurious silks. A yolky yellow shade, which was very labour-intensive to achieve, was reserved exclusively for emperors by law from the seventh century. Palaces had silk dyeing and weaving facilities; reigning empresses presided over a silkworm department.

Wild silkworms live in mulberry trees and feed on their leaves until they wrap themselves in cocoons to become moths. My Sedrivar would need a darkness-loving cave variety that could feed on moss, lichen, or other plants that thrive in the dark. A friend suggested their cocoons and silk might even glow in the dark!

Some of the best details I come across concern atmosphere. Did you know, for example, that an entire shed of silkworms eating sounds like a rainstorm?

In the wild, eggs would be laid on the leaves of living mulberry trees; domesticated silkworms are kept in well-ventilated, stacked trays. Here they loll and eat vast quantities of mulberry leaves brought to them by humans. (So frenetic is this feeding that a shed full of silkworms sound, even from several metres away, like a torrential rainstorm in a forest.)

Now imagine this rainstorm sound magnified in an echoing cavern deep under snow-capped peaks… It's exactly these details that make a story come alive in the readers' minds.

Other tidbits might form the beginnings of subplots: Since silkworms devour vast quantities of mulberry leaves, anyone who stole those leaves was harshly punished.

A Qin statute punished anyone who stole mulberry leaves with thirty days' forced labour, 'even if the stolen goods are not worth a single coin'.

This got me thinking about a mulberry leaf (or its Sedrivar equivalent) heist and how it might affect silk production for that season. Are the thieves caught? At what cost? What measures might be taken to protect the economy and interests of greedy nobles? Could there be rivalries and feuds in silk production?

Words tied up in Knots

As a linguist, I love building unique language into my worlds and have been dreaming of inventing my own ever since I read Lord of the Rings. Language is a vehicle for culture and identity, it shows how speakers think and experience the world. As Wittgenstein famously wrote: "The limits of my language means the limits of my world."

I was excited to learn that remnants of the history of fabrics can be discovered in language as well, specifically the fact that textile work was women's work¹. A popular Chinese proverb states that "men plough, women weave". In its original sixteenth-century meaning, the English word 'spinster' simply referred to a single woman because spinning was how those women earned their livelihood.

In terms of language, textile work became closely related to storytelling because people commonly told stories and gossiped while doing it. We "spin a yarn" or "unravel" a story. The words 'text' and 'textile' share the same Latin root texere, meaning to weave. Fabrica, meaning something skillfully produced, birthed the words 'fabric' and 'fabricate'.

Vocabulary tells us a lot about what was important or valued in ancient cultures as well. The Chinese Shang dynasty (1500-1050 BC), for example, saw the development of the earliest writing system in East Asia: oracle bone script. The amount of silk-related words found in its vocabulary shows how important silk production and trade was in the times when oracle bone script was in use.

Oracle bones were usually made from the scapulas of oxen or sheep, or occasionally the shells of turtles, which had questions incised on them and were used in divination. Around a thousand have been translated and 10 per cent of these include silk-related words: 'mulberry tree', 'silkworm', 'silk goddess'.

In fantasy worlds, one of the easiest ways to show unique flavour is thinking about how people tell time. Years, days, and hours are easily substituted by other words that can act as entry points into the setting. Since my Sedrivar live underground, it would be beyond weird for them to tell time based on the movement of the sun and moon—they never even see the sky! Inspired by this Reddit post, I decided an hour would be called a 'drip' which refers to water dripping from stalactites in caves.

I liked the sound of it so much that I reused it for something else: hereditary trade. Every trade has a drip name that resembles a family name but is used to identify that specific trade. Trade families live and work in so-called driphouses which can be thought of as guild halls. If you read my serial Requiem of the Moth, you might notice that the protagonist Usira, too, lives and works in a driphouse with his moth catcher family. And you might have assumed Isvalri was his family name but technically it's the drip name used to identify his profession.

Other aspects of Sedrivar language, such as the custom to state family name first, given name last, show the importance of family and blood relations in their society. Of course, this was inspired by East Asian cultures and languages which are not only rarely seen in Western fiction but also what I happen to have some expertise in. Nothing wrong with writing what you know, after all!

Your Turn?

I hope this glimpse into how I build my fantasy world from obscure history has been helpful. Do you feel inspired to tinker with your own world or story now? Or do you have more questions about my research, worldbuilding, or the Sedrivar? I'd love to hear from you in the comments!

1. Not in all cultures though. In India, women were not permitted to weave, barely even to spin.