Designing an entire world is a difficult undertaking, and time-consuming - unless you happen to be a deity of some sort, in which case I understand the process can be shortened to around a week, give or take. My concept for Shijie was to offer a place for fantasy adventurers to explore Asian-inspired cultures and stories so I started there, with a story: Curse of the Emperor's Stone. Of course, that story is set in a city, which needed fleshing out; and on a continent, which provided important background; and on a planet, which gave everything a context. It's hard to stay on a single level - design is very much an iterative process.

Introducing your world to others is nearly as tough as creating it. Do you start at the macro level and zoom in or start small and fill in the details? I'll just begin in the middle of the continuum, introducing the world of Shijie by offering a peek into the lands of Dazhou, that world's primary reason for being. The map of the continent of Dazhou and its surrounding areas is shown to the right (click for a larger image). The major political entity on the continent is Minguo, so it's fitting that we take a look at that nation first.

Minguo

Major cities: Donghu, Haibianr, Lihe, Nanshan, Xihu, Zhongjing

Minguo is the oldest nation on the continent of Dazhou and, with Prakash, is the source of much of the cultural influence on the continent. It is not a unified nation, instead featuring five major political regions ruled by contenders for the Imperial throne, with their capitals at (from west to east) Xihu, Zhongjing, Nanshan, Donghu, and Lihe.

It also encompasses several city-states, though usually with ties to one of the main regions. Haibianr is the only city-state that is wholly independent, thanks mainly to its near-monopoly on trade with the nations of the East. Trade goods flow west to east from the Nihon Shogunates and Prakash through the elven kingdoms and dwarven clanholds and east to west from lands, such as Florennia, which lie over the ocean from Dazhou.

Minguo is frequently beset by raiders from the lands of orcish Worg-Lords, though organized conquests are rare – occurring every century or two when the clans are united under a charismatic leader. Several of these periods have seen Worg-Lord raiders reach and occupy as far as Haibianr and Dahai, though they rarely spread west past the dwarven territories due to geographic barriers and stout dwarven resistance, and rarely last for more than a few decades.

On culture...

The humans of Dazhou descended from common stock, known as Min (which means "people"), and are believed to have migrated outward from the area that has become Shamoxian, now a barren, ruin-dotted wasteland. Millennia of divergence, enforced by geographic distance and natural terrain barriers that inhibited regular large-scale interaction, has created a number of "pocket cultures" across the continent. The most distinctive of these are found in Prakash and the Nihon Shogunates. The people of Shamoxian, though nomadic, share many of the same cultural features as those of Minguo.

And language...

The language of Minguo, minhua, serves as the common trade language for most of the continent of Dazhou – though most nations, and even regions, have their own languages as well. Within Minguo itself, there are many distinct dialects of minhua. The language is tonal and contextual, allowing a relatively small number of distinct word-syllables to be combined to form a great range of meaning. In written form, minhua is characterized by its stylized pictographs, each representing a word-syllable.

Though derived from minhua, the language of the Nihon Shogunates is unintelligable to a present-day speaker of minhua. Kashi, the native tongue of Prakash, is similarly distinctive, bearing no resemblance to minhua at all. Scholars theorize that it may be a created tongue, introduced sometime following the settlement of Prakash as a means of differentiation. Indeed, the variance between Prakash culture in general and the others of Dazhou supports this theory.