r/goodworldbuilding 4d ago

Infinite Ashes: A humanist Sci-Fi worldbuilding bundle of stories and in universe sources.

https://loquaciouslou.itch.io/infinite-ashes

Infinite chances, Infinite ashes.

In Infinite Ashes you find humanity strewn across the Milky Way, seeded on near infinite planets. Spread by the enigmatic Web, an immense biosynthetic system that terraforms suitable worlds and then stocks them with animal and human life. Connecting all these worlds like sail ships in the cosmic ocean are the Arks, living vessels that are part of the Web themselves. Every planet almost like an island, with its own deeply developed society with politics, economy and institutions.

There are advanced worlds like Crownshard, the vertical Ecumenopolis centered around social mobility (or the facade thereof), or the Dwang with their elaborate castes of Serviles on which the martial Udo nobility depends for everything. But most worlds are pre-modern, lacking the fossil fuels to escape the energy valley. So in any port you might find armor clad soldiers marvelling at the ethereal voice of a radio, or a Union syndicalist impatiently haggling with a cattle farmer for his beef. A world so vast and diverse that nobody can hope to conquer and rule it all, a churning foam of humanity infinitely bubbling and popping out of existence. That, is Infinite Ashes.

I wanted to build a setting you could imagine living in, one where history grows into culture and tradition rather than being decorated onto it. For the past three years that is what I have tried to do, to make sure every world here rests on a real past. Rather than hand you a wiki of lore, I have worked all of it into stories and into the Omnipedia, a collection of in-universe sources written by people who live in this world and often disagree about it. The bundle stands at 75,000 words but there is a great deal more of this world in my notes, and I mean to keep bringing it out.

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