I’m developing Little Tales, a fantasy game combining village building, exploration and turn-based combat. This is one of its island strongholds, with successive walls climbing the hillside towards the keep.

I like the contrast between the imposing stone walls and the forest surrounding them. The terraces give it a clear hierarchy, but the courtyards still feel quite bare. I’m imagining workshops and stores on the lower level, living quarters above, and the keep at the top.

What would you put inside the walls to make this feel like a place people actually inhabit?

I'm running a Lancer (a utopian mech TTRPG is awesome you should try it) campaign set in basically space olympics for the Dune-like faction in the setting, a heavily homebrewed version of the Karrakin Trade Barony Company Games. It will take place during the events of the first Games where the House of Promise (HoP), a fledgling "great house" have been allowed to send a team -- the players.

As such, I've had to do some good old fashioned world-building around the HoP and it's home world, San Simeon. I came up with a pretty stong set of House Words based on their rising sun symbology, "After Night, Always Dawn." But I needed somewhere from them to come from diegetically.

Then I thought about the name of HoP's home world. San is Spanish for saint or holy. In our real world, cities like San Francisco, San Diego and San Antonio are literally named after respective saints. There's even a Saint Simeon!

Unfortunately, Saint Simeon is pretty much known for being a hermit -- which does kinda line up with the distance San Simeon is from the rest of Karrakin space. But I felt and still feel that its quite strange for a planet thousands of years in the future and hundreds of lightyears away to be named after a niche, largely unknown Chrisitan saint. It'd be like if we named a new country today after a Babylonian king.

So I made my own Saint Simeon. One who represents HoP's fighting spirit and republican temperament. And wrote his story into an anthem/poem, one which neatly includes what would become the HoP's House words; "After Night, Always Dawn."

A thousand years or more ago,

When I was newly sewn,

There lived four wizards of renown,

Whose names are still well known:

Bold Gryffindor, from wild moor,

Fair Ravenclaw, from glen,

Sweet Hufflepuff, from valley broad,

Shrewd Slytherin, from fen.

... Freyja racconterà il suo sogno

"Straniero, sono ambigui e inspiegabili i sogni e non si avverano tutti, per gli uomini. Due sono le porte dei sogni effimeri: una è fatta di corno, l'altra di avorio; quelli che varcano la soglia di avorio tagliato sono ingannevoli, portano un vano messaggio; quelli che passano attraverso la porta di lucido corno, dicono il vero quando l'uomo li vede [...]"

Omero,Odissea, Libro XIX

Non riconoscemmo più quella Freyja dallo sguardo inconsapevole, ma già capace di sedurre. Quella Freyja sicura, che quasi intimoriva e insieme suscitava stupore quando, muovendosi come in una danza, lanciava incantesimi senza bacchetta, anche con un semplice movimento degli occhi, e che ora tremante stava cercando rifugio proprio presso di noi che la prendevamo in giro.

Con Helge, la nobile, saggia e paziente Helge Hwuffapuf, che allora aveva appena trentacinque anni, la più giovane e valente maestra del nostro ordine, quella notte ci recammo da Lucius, suo amico di sempre.

[…] Si deve sapere che in origine i lignaggi Lytelwyrm e Hwuffapuf erano stanziali di una regione situata parecchie leghe a tramonto rispetto a Londinium. Il mio lignaggio, gli Hwuffapuf, si era stabilito in tempi antichissimi in un’ampia valle confinante con la Foresta di Dene, quella che una profezia indicava come futuro rifugio di giovani maghi braccati da forze oscure; i Lytelwyrm, invece, abitavano qualche lega più ad meridiem, in un’area paludosa nei pressi della collina incantata di Ynys yr Afal.

👉 I’ve met Hélène Delisle – Libro 1: Azkaban
https://archiveofourown.org/works/93653301

Basically great moments in your lore where characters/factions go through great lengths for what is right in a nobledark world. What`s the context? Who are the villains? What were the ways they were able to succeed believably? How did this affect your setting?