As promised in my last post, I’m going to be alternating between worldbuilding and building an author platform for a little while until both series are complete. Today, I’m bringing you a new set of questions dedicated to diplomacy between lands and the waging of wars. Now these elements play quite heavily in my trilogy. I’ve really enjoyed building the stepping stones of war, in particular. I find it intriguing to see what issues can spiral out of control until the kingdoms blow up and war becomes inevitable.
As always, we’ll be working from this link.
Foreign Relations
The first step of establishing both peacetime and wartime is establishing what kind of relationships already exist between kingdoms or worlds. Make sure to pay attention to the state of both historic and current relations. Are there standard embassies that exist in other nations or do ambassadors travel infrequently without a real home base? How do the relationships between lands affect trade and commerce?
How are treaties negotiated? Do the rulers negotiate directly, or do secondary parties take care of that? Are there any treaties in place that directly affect the course of your novel? Are any currently being negotiated?
Don’t forget to establish whether any high profile families in various lands are related to each other. It could be interesting to play around with.
Waging War
What major weapons of war are available? Make sure to list everything you can think of, including magic. Think on both a large and small scale. Swords, knives, bombs, siege towers, nuclear weapons. Are any weapons restricted to specific classes of soldiers and/or citizens? Please make note of the weapons subsection of questions for more details to consider.
How has magic affected strategy and war tactics in general? Can magical espionage be conducted? Are there any special techniques that could be used to counterattack large scale magical attacks? How do you conduct a large scale magical attack? Is it a combination of individual powers and spells or a concentrated effort of merging magics together?
Now contemplate the structure of your various armies. Think about having a structured hierarchy to keep your soldiers organized within themselves. That will be especially important if you have to merge armies with others. Of course, you could make things a little more loosely defined in case you want to create conflict there. Also, who is the army made up of? Are they specially trained or is it any Joe off the street? How many people make up the armies, approximately? How are they supplied?
Who can call for the army to go to war? Is declaring war a formal declaration or can your lands just attack each other on the spur of the moment?
How do the presence of non-human magical beings affect battle strategy? Can they be recruited into the regular army or is there a special army specifically for them?
Thank you so much for tuning in this week. Much love!
