War once ravaged most of the civilized world, but now an unsteady peace apparently reigns. In reality however the world is always on the brink of annihilation. Ancient conspiracies, covert government agencies, rebels, rogue agents, archaic magocracies, religions, anarchists, media moguls, freed slaves, magic users of every stripe, techno-junkies and more all fight private battles for supremacy, far from the eyes of the public. Friends and enemies can be one and the same as alliances shift and need commands. Sharpen your blade, prep a spell or grab a gun, it’s all about to boil over.

There is no sun or moon, only stars. The world is lit by the flowers that bloom in the dark and glow with their own eerie radiance, but wink out if plucked. This is the way it has always been, but now the flowers are dying…

I have always wanted to create a reality where wounds don’t heal. Scars and scabs don’t exist. Nor do plastic surgeons. It causes some people to be overly careful – many fewer daredevils – or at least they don’t last long. Wealth is displayed in blemish-free skin. But among the working class, sewn-up wounds and scrapes are accepted with a certain pride of survival.

There is not one God, but several. They all have god-like power over their various dominions. They alone hold the keys to salvation both for the creatures and the planet itself.
But no one believes in them anymore.

In Blackbloom you can make good money selling your flesh suit to a virtual intelligence. Sure sometimes people get hijacked, there’s the whole burn out thing, and god knows what they really did with your body, but it’s easy money. Some people even grow to like possession.

Here is my idea: Blackboom has terrible gale force winds that screech like a thousand banshees, combined with the music of one thousand bag pipes all being played in unison. Cat’s mating can not even compete with the utter head destroying noise of this chaotic and distorted breeze.

It can also be found on my blog:

http://verandahlookout.blogspot.com/2011/09/chuck-wendig-challenge-blackboom.html

The world is kept in orbit by the happiness of people. If the people are not happy, the days get longer and weather patterns get destructive. Happiness of people is a complete industry there. The sad ones are banished in dungeons.

The surface of Blackbloom is almost entirely water, with only a few scattered outcroppings of land. The isolated island ecosystems are fragile, and can’t sustain much life; the settlements are all on the ocean, vast floating cities constructed of precious, hoarded wood and plastic from offworld. Nothing that floats is wasted here. The seas provide ample food – fish, edible seaweed and more – but also many hazards. Worst among them are the vast, night-dark algae blooms that give the world its name. No one knows exactly what happens to those caught in one, because no one has ever survived.

Blackbloom is inhabited by two types of beings: the People and their Shadows. Upon a person’s birth, their Shadow forms as a mere whisper of darkness, hovering by their shoulder unobtrusively. But the closer that a person comes to death, the stronger their Shadow becomes.

The Shadow’s strength and size indicates how long the person has left to live; during their final days, the Shadow becomes malevolent and powerful, wreaking havoc until its person passes. At that point, the Shadow ceases to exist.

But now the Shadows seem to be surviving long after their person’s death, and Blackbloom is darkening…

The Black Harvest is a recurring event; nine days of safety are guaranteed after each. It occurs at random, but there are always three signs that signal the approach: colour fades, turning everything grey. In this swirl of bleakness, one item vanishes from every household – usually one of little importance; easily misplaced. It will return called for by name. Lastly, the moon disappears from the sky. It leaves a ragged tear through which nightmarish creatures appear. Any left without shelter are killed. If the lost item is not recovered by that time, those inside are doomed as well.

Anybody can become a god; sure it’s a hard thing to reach apotheosis, and only a determined few make it, but it’s possible. After deification though, a god requires near constant worship to sustain itself. The more worshipers they have, the healthier their godhood is. However, when they’re longer worshipped, or the faith dries up, they can no longer sustain themselves and they descend into the abyss, a place of utter darkness where pain and despair reign supreme. Thus the gods are constantly interfering with the world and their followers to forever maintain their ascension in a never ending struggle for people’s faith.

The world is dying. It began as a small speck of darkness from a miscast spell or science gone terribly wrong. The darkness grew and spread across the land consuming all in its path. It is known as the Darkbloom and it consumes everything. Neither land nor sea can stop the bloom and it continues to expand ever outward. People flee before it. Some to overcrowded lands of their neighbors, some to the oceans on huge vessels or beneath the waves, some to the winds in flying castles or fortifications sculpted out of clouds. Races war with one another hoping to gain precious living space. Finally, it is discovered that the Darkbloom, is not just a void–it has sentience. But what does it want? And what can placate it?

Blackbloom is the only place where you can harvest the ‘Blackbloom lichen’, a plant that has the properties of both animals and plants. The lichen is so named because of its small oily black flowers. Although the plant can be processed in order to create drugs that vastly extend life, in its natural state the plant is deadly and it defends itself with a venom that can alter the genetics of its attacker.

On Blackbloom all species evolved to the point of sentience, plant life along with the animals. The humans that settled on Blackbloom found a world at war with itself, with predator races still hunting the prey. Humans, rather than conquerors, became mediators. They serve as ambassadors amongst the races, often at great personal risk. Soon after their arrival Blackbloom reached a fragile peace that has allowed civilization to develop.

Blackbloom is a world that parallels our own. While similar in many ways, it differs in one extreme way: their industrial revolution never ended.

The vast cities of Blackbloom stand tall against the heavens, their unnatural geometry providing strangely beautiful skylines, but also producing pollutants that are slowly killing the world and its inhabitants. Political wranglings seem to constantly slow the process of introducing new legislature to curb this, and it’s clear that money is the driving factor behind it. The rich, it seems, want to remain that way, no matter the cost to their fellow man.

With several cities locked in a “Cold War”, spy networks have weaved their way through various parts of society, all of them watching and waiting, but some of the agents have turned rogue and are determined to bring down and destabilize the cities through brutal acts of terrorism. However, the question of whether they are genuinely rogue or sanctioned by their own governments remains unanswered.

Several religions exist in the world, some worshipping various aspects of a single god, but some worshipping their own gods of science and technology – something which leads to fractures in the fabric of society, and sometimes even violence.

In some corners of this world, science and technology has been eschewed for ancient magicks, which some believe are the key to unlocking the secret history of the world. But who knows what nameless horrors they’ll uncover on their quest…

A race of bio-mechanicals also inhabit this world, but they serve as slaves to the humans. However, dissent amongst them is growing, and there is hushed talk of revolution…

The crust of the planet is unstable. Earthquakes and tsnunamis are frequent so that inhabitants of Blackboom live in highly specific areas, and even then, while merely travelling on a road, the ground could give out under too much weight. Many people go missing on a daily basis, never to be seen again. Sometimes large buildings will collapse without warning, despite land surveys.

Blackbloom was what they called the plume of smoke that started it all, like a negative photograph of a mushroom cloud erupting in the upper atmosphere. Those in charge tried to steer people away from using the term, believing that nicknaming the phenomenon would only heighten public panic, but it went viral, and soon, it was being seen in headlines the world over.

People flocked to the sight, snapping pictures and streaming video of the cloud hanging there, and so there were plenty of eyes watching what came next.

I love this idea. I can’t wait to see where it leads.

–
Blackbloom is a world destined for destruction, caught in the gravity-well of the Star that gives it life. Each year, the planet’s rotation brings it a little closer to the sun (and the weather gets a little warmer). One day, a solar flare will hit Blackbloom and all life will cease. Flesh will burn, oceans will evaporate, and rocks will melt.

The question isn’t if this will happen, but when.

This place ain’t right. When you look up at the sky, do you see a lovely spattering of stars and galaxies?

Nope, you see the other side of the world. All of the land mass is an inverted sphere, cradled around a tiny dwarfish sun that squats in the middle like an enormous egg yolk.

What starlight there is comes from various enormous holes in the firmament of the world, if you were to fund a space program, you’d have to strap a drill to the rocket and point it downward.

One of the side effects of this is that people can’t seem to make wars last a very long time. People lose their convictions in the inherent ‘otherness’ of their opponents when they can look up and watch the horrible consequences of sieges and battles with nothing more than a telescope. People just seem more likely to recognise their similarities instead of their differences.

Another, perhaps more melancholic truth is that people don’t have an inbuilt sense of curiosity. Why build a boat and cross the ocean when you can see exactly where the other continent is already?

Progress and new ideas are slow, without meaningful conflict or justifiably distant frontiers there is no impetus for change.

The letter combination ‘bl’ is present in 95% of all human surnames. Stuttering is socially taboo and stutterers are social pariahs.

Eighty years ago, an experiment returned some unusual results. Sounds, of a sort, that we could not detect normally. They were rhythmic and varied, like a whale’s song. It was clearly a language.

Six years ago, a bright young student cracked the code of the language. For the first time, we could hear what was being said, and send a message in return. The content of the speech was shocking, and overturned our ideas of what “life” was.

The cities were pretty surprised to realize we could talk, too.

I think you opened Pandora’s box. Haha. Nice to see the comments and enthusiasm to world build. I think you will have to choose and select. And a note to all the contributor’s: Read what the others have put on here. It can help you to build off each other or give you more ideas for what you would like to see on this world. And one more thing. Think on a larger scale. Most of you are talking globally. It sounds like a single country on this. Start “selecting” smaller parts of the world and place some elements there. It will make the world more real.

The world of BlackBloom is named after the huge flowers that grow in forest clearings. Sought after and feared – the plant can kill with its scent, but send drinkers of its nectar into hallucinogenic bliss. A religious group that rules nations, the Blacked Ones, elect their leaders from those who survive approaching the plant and drinking its nectar unaided.

In the first days, when the gods looked down upon all that they had created, their eyes settled on the second world on the right. As the single, burning eye of the son god illuminated the land, vegetation sprouted and grew, quickly covering mountain, plain, and valley without preference. Upon the prolific weeds, flowers budded, with ebon blossoms as dark as the pits of the underworld. Looking to her peers for agreement, the celestial namer dubbed the place Blackbloom and so recorded the name in the great book.
– From the Book of the Origin of Blackbloom, Chapter 1

The Others yield to the sea. It — some will call it ‘she’, as we humans do — made them, and so it is her obligation to feed and clothe them, and when she decides it is time, it is her right to end them. No Other dwells where the sea cannot reach. They think us mad for avoiding her intemperance.

The methane seas on the southern most landmass are home to tribes of spiritually symbiotic humanoids that actively bond to the spirits of their ancestors granting a freakish kind of non-corporeal familial immortality – Which as a byproduct causes the elders to coerce the young against chastity to make sure their lines will continue even in times of mar or mass plague.

Blackbloom was so named for the pervasive black flowering plants that seem to thrive at every altitude. Humanity colonized. It was different, but what could you expect of an alien planet? Every day, civilization hacks away at the overtaking blackbloom, every night the bloom retakes some ground it lost. But there is something more calculating at work here. The blackbloom is a global sentient, and it is not pleased.

The ancient hive city of Thorn predates recorded history. Its stones never crumble, nor do its basalt walls show more than a few signs of battle when last they were overrun by the ever-persistent horde now known only as the Inheritors who wrested control from the complacent Descendants, driving them in turn down to the Dry Sea over a thousand years ago where they learned sand magic and survival. These desert nomads still look longingly up at the Silver Cliffs where once they ruled the whole of the high northern continent of Marang, knowing they can never go back.

BlackBloom, where the air carries sound for distances unnatural. Where its water is breathable. Where a Jupiteresque maelstrom rages evershifting, leaving BlackBloom’s denizens without permanent roots. Where gravity picks pockets of rebellion, deciding for itself whether to bend or break its rules.

The far side of Blackbloom’s planet is forever in darkness. It’s rotation has been frozen as it orbits a larger planet, much like our own moon. And much like our own moon, there are phases where the entire planet is in darkness. That’s when The Dark comes. That’s when the sane folk, the sane monsters even, hide.

Blackbloom is famous for its poison forest. To eat the fruit of these trees is death. The very touch of the bark renders citizens paralyzed. But, there are some who go willingly, for it is in this paralysis that they experience visions and commune with gods. The shamans of Blackbloom sacrifice their mobility and sanity to see the fate of their world.

Blackbloom is a place where the technologies and magics of various ages and lores compete for supremacy.

On a side note: Robin D. Laws did something similar recently, but this is a lot more free form. Looking ofrward to seeing how it plays out.

In the world of Blackbloom, there is no death, there is life and there is unlife.

Upon death, the rare flower is placed in the mouth of the deceased. Three days later, brain function has returned and the person is alive once more, though they no longer grow older.

Those that can afford to pay for the Blackbloom may go about their lives again as they once did. Those who can’t afford the flower are revived to a period of indentured servitude until they can earn their freedom once more.

The Oubliette are an ascetic order of humans that have shunned the Light, haven been given birth to in sunless, light-less rooms buried deep within the stone city where they live out their entire lives. No member of the order has ever seen the Light; which they so fear thanks to the strange properties the Light imbues on the shadows of other men. To the Oubliette: they are humanities last hope again the shadow – for they are the only men to have never cast one.

To outsiders, Blackbloom is a rouge planet. A protected celstial body that moves through a system, wreaking havoc with orbits, killing worlds. Inside, the inhabitants know only that every night the stars will be different, every day a different sun will warm them, and every so often a crazed stranger will appear with an impossible story of a growing blackness in the sky that consumed another world.

Deep under the surface of Blackbloom, two fluids course through stony veins. One, the raw heat of molten magma that occasionally erupts on the surface through volcanic activity. And two, the black cold of the ichor, pulsing and undulating, carrying magical energies along what scientists and practitioners of magic call ley lines. Along these lines, magic is possible. And when it erupts in a bloom of black upon the surface, it changes people and things directly touched in unexpected ways. It’s from this process that gods and monsters are born.

Blackbloom is the kind of place where nobody would look twice at a fedora-wearing trench-coated fellow knocking back martinis with a crumpled face slugbear draped with jewels. And if they decide to take a flitter down the vacuum boulevard, out past where the moneyed citizens build their compounds, nobody here would be inclined to go searching for them after a couple of cycles have passed. You don’t have to be running from something on Blackbloom, but it seems like most individuals are.

If you look into the skies of Blackbloom, you would see a myraid of shifting clouds, a haze of lightly glowing mist that hovers several thousand feet in the air. It’s not smog, it’s the brush of other dimensions against the metaphysical skin of this lone city, locked and lost among time and space. If you were to look into the skies of Blackbloom you would see visions of worlds here and gone.

It’s usually why nobody tends to look up. Bit of a headache that.

Blackboom is a planet in a globular cluster that orbits the Milky Way Galaxy. As a result of that, for half of the year, the night sky is almost a featureless void, with only a thousand or so stars visible. The other half of the year, the night sky is so bright that one can read large print by the starlight.

Blackboom has four moons, though three of them are small and it takes a telescope to see that they are not fast-moving stars.

Humans are not the dominant intelligent species on Blackboom.

It started in the misty past, in a warm greenhouse climate, on another planet. Humans only carried babies for seven months. A religious cult offered some of those children into the sea.

The children didn’t die. Suckled by emphatic seals and used to breathing in fluid, they grew into something more amphibian than human. They grew large. Puberty never occurred, so they demanded the continued recruitment of human babies.

Women bred during the annual blooming of the black flowers. With a solar revolution lasting ten months, their bodies were repeatedly amenable to impregnation when the flowers bloomed.

Men were unhappy.

Thanks for doing this, Chuck, it helps me play well with others, something I’m not known for.

The planet’s surface is 90% water, with molten landmasses that pour toxic black fumes into the atmosphere. The fumes kill people, but they feed the indigenous flora and simple fauna. The native lifeforms convert the fumes into substances that grant near-eternal life and wellbeing on those who eat or drink of their essences. Only priests have ever visited the landmasses, to gather the quasi-magical plants and animals needed in the cities.

The vast majority of the population lives in cloud-based cities, far above the surface. Their primary source of income: servicing the far-ranging needs of passing spacecraft and their crews, people who view Blackbloom as an interstellar truckstop and rest area.

The most powerful group in Blackboom are the Gravity Mages. They are mutant humans, unable to reproduce, but endowed with the power to mold gravity to their will. They can enchant things to float indefinitely or make small objects impossibly heavy. Zen Djin, the greatest of all the legendary Gravity Mages was once said to have enchanted an entire city to unmoor itself from it’s earthly bonds and fly through the heavens.
The mutation which produces a Gravity Mage is 90% more likely to occur in males than females.

[...] inimitable Chuck Wendig has invited his readers to do some group worldbuilding! Go offer your suggestions and let’s see what we can come up [...]

Ooops, “empathic.” I guess “emphatic” could work as well.

The gate we call came through to get here is a void in the sky, what humans call the Blackbloom.

The city took that name because during certain times of the year when the gate is pulsing with certain radiations, little black flowers bloom. Sometimes they bloom on walls or certain fields or religious buildings. Sometimes they bloom on beings.

Decades after information shifted to the Cloud, almost all of the original forms had been buried in landfills. Gone were the papers, books, and discs of stories, movies, textbooks that contained the hard copies of engineering, law, and study of society and cultures.

Then a mad hacker altered Stuxnet. His creation spread across the world’s networks like wildfire, frying electrical components across networks and electrical grids. The world was left in figurative darkness. We couldn’t remember how to manufacture the components that tied everything together.

So when They arrived to help us, They found a world in chaos.

Here’s hoping this doesn’t double up. It didn’t post the first time. Apologies if it does!
___________________________
The Sopari are an advanced amphibious humanoid species averaging about 2 feet tall when fully grown. Their skin is smooth and damp when out of the water. The females grow to be larger than the males and take on a mossy-green hue while the males are a light brown. The Sopari lay eggs guarded by the population’s Godem (harem of males). The females handle the hunting and exploration. They generally hunt in packs of six. They have recently made contact with humans on the planet.

The Sopari are found in the largest swamp of one of Blackbloom’s peninsulas called Murska.

In Blackbloom Gods walk among men, but are never recognized. In their wake there is chaos.

Blackbloom is a dying world, rent by fierce dust storms and endless winters after a black fungal bloom dessicated the oceans. The survivors of the apocalypse drew strength from eating the black algae, cultivating it and in turn being “changed” by it.

Blackbloom is a terrible place.

It was mostly earth-like, so they decided to terraform it. Only something went wrong. An explosion ripped the crust right off the planet. A big piece of it is still up there; not quite orbiting, not stationary, just there. Sometimes it blocks the sun, and they say that it’ll come crashing back down soon enough.

After the planet cooled down, the wealth of minerals right there on the surface set of a mining boom. But anyone wanting to get rich risks air that will give two in ten people cancer, terrible volcanic events, and the aliens who got there first.

This is cannibalized from a setting I ran for a Firefly RPG campaign. Anyone interested in a little more can see the full flavor text in my blog, because any opportunity to re-use flavor text is something I can’t resist.

http://markh-blog.blogspot.com/2011/09/blackland.html

Re: Joshua D:

In the world of Blackbloom, there is no death, there is life and there is unlife.
Upon death, the rare flower is placed in the mouth of the deceased. Three days later, brain function has returned and the person is alive once more, though they no longer grow older.

Those that can afford to pay for the Blackbloom may go about their lives again as they once did. Those who can’t afford the flower are revived to a period of indentured servitude until they can earn their freedom once more.

–Love this, want to add:

Nobody–human or any other race–who has been bloomed may leave the planet. Their faces (and any area that visibly flushes or blushes, like upper chest and genitals) are marked with a fine black lace that comes from staining of the blood (or other bodily fluid, in non-humans).

The Unbloomed, or people in their first lifespan, are often used as surrogates if a Bloomed needs to conduct personal business offplanet. This often is used to pay for the Bloom.

Any Bloomed who leaves the planet starves to death; only the planet can provide the Bloom. However, the blood of those who have left the planet contains the pollen that, if awakened, becomes the bloom. Horrible atrocities have occurred when starting Bloomed meet a compatriot.

Blackbloom is sought by the dying and smugglers. The flowers won’t grow elsewhere, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a market for the pollen across the universe.

There is a slough where once an animal shelter stood in the eastern division of Blackboom. There among fumaroles and geothermal steam pots the feet of buried dogs face the sky. It is the duty of Woodruff Harbach to find the last living pair of trumpeter swans living off the hydrothermal algae. Woodruff knows swans are not kind elegant creatures, they are vicious and refuse to return to the frozen western landscape. He steers his craft around the landscape, and spots through his gas mask, the female perched on a crumbling cinderblock wall.
“Stay girl I won’t hurt you.”
Caroline Gerardo
(exactly 100 words)

Blackbloom is not so much a place as it is a state of mind. All across the sector, wherever that insidious weed is found, there also you will find those, human and alien alike, that imbibe it’s narcotic nectar and drift into a world of dreams without rules, a galaxy spanning literal meeting of minds where anything can happen and often does.

There are vast desert areas where the sands are like oceans, and people can ride the sand in specially designed boats.

The destinies of several pairs of warring races are intertwined: as go the Orcs so go the Elves. Dwarves and Goblins rise and fall together. Therefore, each race is presented with the dual struggle of surviving the emnity of their hated foes while coexisting with them to ensure survival.

In Blackbloom there grow on the mountain cliffs great monstrous flowers, sprawling bulbs with nightshade petals and a fleshy pink interiors. On hot summer nights they open, letting loose black clouds of malignant pollen that blot out the sun in the following weeks and force the People on the Plain to shut their doors and huddle inside around old storytellers and great prophets.

There comes then, the Time of Madness, when children chant in tongues on the floor and new kings are raised at their decree.

A race of beings exist hidden from most of the world. No one has ever reliably reported seeing them, but nearly everyone has felt their effects. They tangle and knot loose cords and threads, spoil food too quickly, leave mysterious patterns in dust, spontaneously order disordered objects, etc. Their reasons for doing these things and level of sentience are unknown.

Building off of what oldestgenxer and Miranda Cardona brought to the table:

These gods work to their own ends, and grant boons, abilities, talismans, magicks, or knowledge to those mere mortals, be they human or otherwise (though who’s to say the gods don’t play favorites with the denizens of Blackbloom), who find them, and would follow the old ways once again.

Blackbloom is a small world, further from its sun that Earth is from Sol. It’s also tidally-locked, which gives it only a thin strip of human-habitable land along the edge between a brutally-hot side facing the sun and an ice-cold endless darkness. At the darkness-side edge, strange fungi grow. They are nourishing and tasty enough for xenoflora, but the humans eeking out an existence on Blackbloom’s livable surface are always wary of ‘others’ who live in the cold – silcon-based lifeforms that do not seem to have any connection to the life forms we know from Earth.

http://whateverknowsfear.com/?p=159

Blackbloom’s original name was lost to the eons, along with the civilization that sculpted its polyhedral temples or its gridiron of canals. Its first settlers, the humans, named it Blackbloom for the continent-spanning blast pattern that resembled a charred black flower with five serrated petals. Some theorized that a comet or a meteor had ended Blackloom’s original civilization. Human archaeologists studied the blast’s epicenter and concluded the blast pattern was caused by a massive energy discharge. Upon this discovery, dozens of races embarked to Blackbloom, eager to discover, and possibly master, an energy that murders worlds.

@ DeAnna – Nicely done! That is what makes something like this fun/interesting

…Blackbloom is a city that lost the sun.

It is unknown how – or why – the sun was taken from them, but on the far side of the world it is rumoured that another city has it, a place of light and colour; a place the children of Blackbloom are told in stories is called Illumibloom.

With no sun, the citizens of Blackbloom are forces to live under generated light that need giant generators and power supplies to keep them functional. Because of this, the city is heavily industrial, a place where every parent works for the power company or works for the state. Most are content under the thumb of those in power, but some want more – want light. Want to find Illumibloom.

(Note* When I typed rumoured, spell check wanted me to change it to Rumsfeld. Oh dear…)

[...] so ordered by Our Lord’s Regent On Earth, Chuck Wendig, I submit my contribution to the  worldbuilding challenge. If you’re a writer, I encourage you to participate in the TerribleMinds weekly flash [...]

Blackbloom has the most brutal and harsh enviroment thinkable. There’s no way for human and human-kind to survive outside – radiation, sun flares, metane storms, electrical fields, magnetical anomalies, fields of fluctuating gravity and time… All living species gather in various enclaves – either gigantic glass domes, made with long-forgotten technologies of our ancerstor or deep caves, where strage kinds of fungi substitute the sun.

Blackbloom is a plague that is turning all living things evil — plant, animal and human. It feeds off of magic and those strong in magic are hunted by those infected. There are various theories on how it started, but nobody is certain. Magic is outlawed by many governments. Fear feeds prejudice against magic weilding worldwide and those that have the power have started to band together.

To the outside observer, Blackbloom City is a tangled maze of narrow streets, alleys and dilapidated houses. It takes living there amongst the people to understand the order that arose from chaos; the streets all named in alphabetical order, general color coding of the buildings.

This all started to keep humans from going into Xeno areas. The Xeno had proven themselves to be peaceful aliens, but different from us. Humanity has never been good at playing nicely with those who are different. Some humans were compassionate to the visitors. For their trouble, they were sentenced to Blackbloom.

Blackbloom is the place were mass is born. Situated between universes, this nether realm facilitates all the universes physics in a smorgasbord of ideas and rationales. Humans are new to Blackbloom. Learning about it after many centuries of smashing atoms, until one day they discovered the rarest of all particles.

The Black particle: a sentient particle living outside of all known physics, it’s capable of almost anything, and yet man is unable to crack its code, but simply follow it’s journey between universes. Mankind and infinite other races intermingle in their quest to unlock the secrets of the Blackbloom.

The Gods of the various Blackbloom cultures are real, physically real. They walk the earth and interact with both sentient and non-sentient species. They are several times the size of the beings who worship them and they cannot be killed or harmed by any known method. The Gods can work miracles or just sit and lecture. Sometimes a God will not be seen for years, then show up again. Having Gods who exist in the here and now has made religion on Blackbloom very different from religion on Earth.

Re:Deanna; Re:Joshua D

The cultivation of Blackbloom falls under the Kavanni’s jurisdiction – a pseudo-priesthood.

The cultivation is particularly dangerous because if Blackbloom is harvested too early or too late it is deadly poisonous.

There are groups of people (both peaceful and militant) who oppose the use of Blackbloom to extend life. The peaceful lobby against it through the government while the militant attempt to destroy Blackbloom fields and havests, even going so far as to attack the Kavanni.

Near the outer edge of the galaxy orbiting a dim, red star is the world known as Blackbloom. Positioned at the outer edge of the star’s biozone, Blackbloom receives little light, plunging the world in perpetual twilight. Despite this curse, life thrives in ways only perceived by the imagination.

Carpeted by forests of gargantuan mushrooms, the vast majority of the planet’s flora is various forms of fungi bursting forth from Blackbloom’s fertile soil. Some of the larger stalks have been measured to be near 30 meters in height.

Blackbloom’s fauna, unlike its fauna, is quite diverse. Ranging from tiny fish swimming the world’s rivers, lakes, and oceans to large beasts that roam the plains, all of the native creatures share one uncommon trait: they are blind. Scientists who have studied the planet’s animals living on the surface have concluded that they use a form of echolocation as a means of “sight” to make up for their lack of eyes. Investigations into Blackbloom’s aquatic creatures is still ongoing.

Despite (or because of) the exotic ecosystem, Blackbloom hosts three major starports, whose lights are the brightest locations in the entire solar system. The starports are inhabited by a number of sapient races. Among the races living there are a fair number of ashara, bilingi, humans, and landasta, the four major races of the Interstellar Coalition.

When reports from a scout vessel stated the discovery of Blackbloom and the rare mineral quasinite, the Coalition moved quickly to claim the world as their own and protect any of its citizens from the Dasta Confederation’s military advances. So far, the Dasta Confederation has not indicated any interest in the planet, but the Coalition’s military advisors suspect that may change very soon.

Blackbloom. Hmm.

The planet is home to two sentient races. One is a human-like people. They call themselves the Watu. They are an intellectually and technologicaly advanced people.
The other race are darkly opalescent energy creatures. These number far less than the Watu. They call themselves Roho. Not much is known about them, except their claim that they have always been there.

The sun is blue dwarf star that has swirling, black energies coruscanting across its surface. Every three thousand years these energies flare, enveloping the planet and killing almost the entire Watu population. Those who are left are plunged back into a savage hunter-gatherer status. And the Roho guide them back (again) to their previous intellectualy and techonolgicaly advanced society.

The Watu have no idea about the star’s destructive tendencies. But the Roho do.
They always have.

[...] Chuck Wendig of Terrible Minds has issued a challenge.  He wants to collaboratively build a world. [...]

There are clouds of ink vapour which sit just above ground-level and sort of swirl oilyly* around themselves. The ink, bluish black, is permanent, and as a result, most of the humans are the same colour. The minotaurs are usually only this colour from chest-height down.

*new word.

You’re going to pick just ten? Wahhhahhahhahhahha. That’s some funny shit. Just 10.

Blackbloom has three seasons:
– A rainy, humid hot season that spurs the growth of an algae-type organism which feeds most of the lower life-forms
– A dry, temperate season
– A dark season when the planet enters into a synchronous orbit with its moon, which blocks out the sun (much like an Earth eclipse) for three Blackbloomian months.

It bears mentioning that a number of you appear to be exceeding the “100 words” limit — hew to that, as therein you’ll find simplicity and brevity an ally.

– c.

Blackbloom is post-apocalyptic and vast, inhabited by humans and their mutated counterparts. There is a belt of asteroids visible both night and day from the destroyed moon that orbited Blackbloom, which itself is in a tide locked orbit, with one side always facing the sun. Civilization is concentrated in the twilight region, with the rich living in the decadent darkness and the poor living in the harsher light. Mutants live in the extreme cold and hot regions.

The Anansiids are an arachnoid race, once nearly exterminated by the humanoid inhabitants of Blackbloom. Those who survived the “Du-Octo Wars” now fill the role of mercenaries, assassins and spies, mostly on behalf of the non-human races – though an Anansiid’s only true loyalty is to himself and The Brood.

Anansiids are hermaphroditic egg-layers, extremely intelligent, and fully sentient at hatching. They’re also poisonous. Babies’ bodies are roughly the size of a chicken egg; adults can weigh up to one hundred pounds. Most speak at least five languages fluently. All can spin webs.

Blackbloom is twice as large as our earth. Every person born has a doppelganger. If you run into your doppelganger, you die, but your doppelganger gains the years left of your life. Doppelgangers plan on taking over the world, as they have already in some countries. The only time a human knows they’re talking to a doppelganger is if it’s their own.
There are “otherworldly” beings who know who the doppelgangers are, but they’re becoming extinct. The doppelgangers are killing them off one by one.
The doppelgangers goal in world domination is….

Blackbloom is twice as large as our earth. Every person born has a doppelganger. If you run into your doppelganger, you die, but your doppelganger gains the years left of your life. Doppelgangers plan on taking over the world, as they have already in some countries. The only time a human knows they’re talking to a doppelganger is if it’s their own.
There are “otherworldly” beings who know who the doppelgangers are, but they’re becoming extinct. The doppelgangers are killing them off one by one.
The doppelgangers goal in world domination is to …

Re:Deanna; Re:Joshua D; Crystal

The pacifist faction, the Loti, have long petitioned Blackbloom’s Magistracy to outlaw indentured servitude. Although most Indentures were treated fairly well, many have been exploited, citing their use prostitution, organ harvesting, stem cell farming and lithium mining. The Magistracy enacted an Indentured Bill of Rights, but was lax in enforcing it.

The militant faction, the Rosary, saw the Unlife as an abomination, attacking Kavanni and Unlifes without prejudice. The Kavanni response was to form an militia of Indentures , promising them unlimited Blackbloom treatments if they were killed in battle. And die, they did.

Night never falls in Blackbloom, only the perpetual grey twilight of volcanic smog. We live along a volcanic belt, a huge swath of angry earth that belches ash both day and night. Most of the giants simmer, rumbling with the snores of sleeping gods, but occasionally a god awakens, and we hear stories of neighbors buried in slag. Here in the shadow we light torches. Occasionally we stare at the largest of all beasts–Mont Saren. They say it will kill us. They expect us to be afraid.

But we are human, and humans grow bored. Even with impending death.

The Orchid Colonies of Blackbloom once grew like kudzu. In the last millennia, however, the last two Orchid colonies devoured one another. In the wake of their final, silent battle, as humans began to burn away the overgrowth, seedlings began to appear around the world. The black-purple flowers did not stay still for long, soon sprouting limbs and gathering in the darkest forests of Blackbloom. Most seem to be ascetics, but occasionally, a silent plant-person wanders into a village seeking unusual supplies or rare elements. No human has ever returned from an excursion to a modern Orchid den.

Blackbloom is a nexus of possibilites. Time and space are not the standards against which we judge reality. In Blackbloom, our pasts, presents and futures coexist. In Blackbloom our futures, great or terrible, are just as real as our memories of experiences long past. It is here that we swim in the magnificent and frightening seas of chaos.

DUN-DUNNNNH!

There’s a wormhole in synchronous orbit to Blackbloom that’s situated just above the southern equator. Unfortunately, the wormhole only seems to travel one way, from an unknown location far away to Blackbloom. Occasionally, other species will use the wormhole as a giant garbage disposal unit, throwing their refuse into the hole that invariably ends up landing onto the planet.

A sort of cargo cult has arisen that worships the crap that falls from the wormhole as sacred relics gifted to them by their god(s). And of course, sometimes the unwanted things that are thrown into the wormhole aren’t just garbage, but dangerous, unkillable prisoners as well.

Blackboom’s central civilization is built around a stringent caste system. Everyone knows readily where they stand in station compared to those around them. However, it is not an entirely rigid caste system. Every year there are great Games in which one can win elevation of their caste, find entrance into one of the great vocations, or through penalty of disgrace lose station. Thousands enter, and less than a percent actually attain actual glory. Those few who gain reward through luck and skill are handed over to the royal surgeons for modification, each caste being represented by a dominate physical trait.

The nonhumans were once the souls of humans’ ancestors, poured like jelly into body-molds made of straw and scraps of tin. By now they’ve taken over their own creation, and their materials have improved significantly.

Blackbloom. The planet is the fifth out in its solar system. Two moons circle around it on opposite sides, yellow and black. For most of the year, only one moon is visible, Shen. It is a mostly nondescript moon, slightly yellow and not very large. However, once a year, the secondary moon, Thornn, is fully visible for one month…or would be if anyone was foolhardy enough to step outside. Thornn is made almost entirely of obsidian, no one knows how or why. All they know is that when Thornn is in the sky…the dark ones come above ground and hunt.

I hope my idea gets picked…I love this idea!

Aethos is one of the great cities of Blackbloom. It is collloquially known as the “Sky-City” due to the various tiers and platforms containing the city proper rising from the ground to well above the cloud line. How high one lives in the city is a denotation of rank and class with the working classes living in the shadow of the city down on the ground. Even still living on the ground of Aethos holds a kind of glamour for the working classes. Aethos is the premiere manufacturing ground for ethereal technology and even the poorest in the city usually have one or two wonders that those living farther afield would die for. Water in the city is delivered via a ‘trickle-down’ aqueduct resulting in four rather spectacular waterfalls that also power the city’s hydroelectric plants. Because of this those approaching the city by airship are treated to the iconic view of the city wreathed in rainbows. Far from the ears of the ruling elite in the city there are whispers of a shadow court beneath the earth. If one finds access to “The Shade” one discovers the literal underworld of Aethos where the weak, infirm and amoral all share the shadows in a twisted mockery of the bright city. Thieves, assassins, and a thriving black market trading in stolen ethereal technology are all found in The Shade, as well as alchemists, sorcerers and other Will-Workers of great skill and little scruple.

The gods in Blackbloom are not worshiped. They are dead.

They were killed.

They were killed when mortals decided that enough monuments were built.

Monuments built with mortal sweat and mortal blood.

They were killed when mortals decided that the god’s laws for them were unfashionable.

Unfashionable laws that demanded mortal sacrifice and mortal pain.

They were killed when mortals decided to stop fighting.

To stop fighting each other for divine favor.

They were killed when mortals discovered the true laws of the world, and that the gods had no claim to their dominion.

@Jared

Love that, of course then there would have to be hidden cults that consider the gods to have been martyred and seek to resurrect them and will willingly commit any atrocity in the name of their cause.

Sunrise spills yellow light across fields of wildflowers. For a moment, the world is bright patches of color, is calm and quiet. Soft.

Fleeting.

In the seconds that follow, the calm is broken apart. Blackbloom’s beautiful violence.

Claws coated in dark ooze dig through petals and leathery bodies rip open blossoms, splattering black ichor over the field. Thousands of wings stir up a shrill buzz. Fair warning: Our little monsters wake up hungry.

Fields left ravaged, broken stems and naked dirt drink up the sludge and get ready for tomorrow.

It’s a beautiful place. If you can survive the morning.

Each species has a branch of government, based on what they do best. The Lex’na handle the legislation. They communicate telepathically, and don’t waste time in debate. The Kellia, with their long tradition of leadership through combat, decisive thinking processes, and ability to regenerate limbs, lead the executive branch. The humans? The humans are judicial. The humans made the compromise, and it was obvious what they had to be.

Only the humans could even attempt to understand where the other sides were coming from.

The planet Blackbloom, overrun by humans, is dying. The dominant factions of the humans are the Faithful, who live by the books of various religions, and the Scientists, who live by Experimental Method. Recently, the Scientists have solved the problem of fusion power.(When you say humans and non humans dwell on Blackbloom, I see living creatures that are not human, but not necessarily humanoid, or sentient.)

P.S. Does this mean you’re not going to have any more FridayFlashFictions?

The black bloom is an easily cultivated dark, fragrant flower. When it’s seeds are crushed and burned, it generates ecstatic visions. Many people spend their days lost to the black bloom. A few struggle to revive their crumbling society from the lethargy of the black bloom.

I neglected the alien and wanted to revise my entry:

Blackbloom is a plague that is turning all living things evil — plant, animal, human and alien alike. It feeds off of magic and those strong in magic are hunted by those infected. There are various theories on how it started, but nobody is certain. Magic is outlawed by many governments. Fear is the catalyst that feeds prejudice against magic wielding worldwide and those that have the power have started to band together. Factions of aliens and humans allied and factions of haters on both sides, independent of each other and hating all the other groups.

@Louise — Friday Flash isn’t going anywhere, but the Worldbuilding will merely take the last Friday of every month.

– c.

This is a fantastic idea! Here’s my entry:

“The peace of Blackbloom is shattered after the Blooming: thousands of people are marked by the Blackbloom, an eldritch force suffusing the universe, allowing them to warp their physical realities. Races and factions contest with each other to control or free the Bloom Bearers and their powers. Other just wish to answer the questions brought up by the Blooming: What is the Blackbloom? Why were the Bloom Bearers chosen? Is there a limit to their powers? Were there noticeable events preceding the Blooming?”

Blackbloom is Earth, long from now. The name is from a psychotropic fungus that escaped after being developed in the lab, and now affects almost everybody.

The fungus increases the lifespan, creativity and intiuitive capacity, lowers inhibitions and sends its bearers irrevocably mad.

Blackbloom is ruled by the oldest and maddest. A small cabal has found a cure.

I’m glad to hear that, Chuck. : )

Very interesting concept—collaborative world-building.

We’re trying out story telling in a shared world…66 writers would write stories in a shared setting in the four weeks of October:)

We’re calling it the Rule of Three, and today is the last day of sign-ups!

Re:Anthony; Re:Deanna; Re:Joshua D; Crystal

Apart from the factions, the servants, the rituals and the high cost of living (and living again) is the mystery of the black flowers’ origin. Who planted the initial crop? Are they a gift from the gods or some form of necromantic abberation?

And what would happen if they *stopped working*?

There is a secret society, an arcane order shrouded in mystery, quietly attempting to answer these questions. They hold no titles, establish no lodges, exchange no handshakes. Each simply knows the other and together they plumb the depths of the world’s mysteries surrounding the Blackbloom.

They are the Drought.

Blackbloom’s atmosphere is the strangest thing about the world, something that has puzzled biologists as long as the practice has existed. While the normal non humanoid fauna of Blackbloom wander the world without fear of the air they are breathing, humanoid developed creatures have a 40% chance of developing ‘corrosion.’ The cause of this disorder is thought to be a lesser gene’s effect on the lungs of the creature. The effects of corrosion are the degradation of the breathing system in the creature, this including the lungs, throat and nasal cavities of the creatures.

[...] Flash Fiction this week, as Chuck Wendig is busy putting us through our paces in a monthly worldbuilding exercise. I love building new worlds – I even plan on teaching a class about it – but I find [...]

My grandparents emigrated from the Undersea region of Blackbloom when my mother was a child, moving from an overcrowded underwater city to the uncertainties of life on the surface. They settled on a farm and eked out a living, struggling against the perpetual storms that rage across the planet and the voracious blackbloom weed. As soon as I was old enough to pull weeds and haul a cart of water barrels, I worked on the farm. Now my hands are calloused, my legs are scarred with blackbloom burns, and I dream of the crowds of the Undersea. Surely the blackbloom can’t grow underwater.

Blackbloom, like Earth, formed amid the gaseous explosions and rocky collisions in the middle of empty space, as the universe was being born. Like Earth, life sprung forth from the dark, primordial spaces in swamps, rivers, oceans. Like Earth, carbon-based life forms evolved over eons into sentient beings.

And like Earth and her ever-expanding population of humans, the beings of Blackbloom consume more their own planet’s natural resources than they replace.

Those that inhabit Blackbloom intend to do something dramatic about it. These beings of Blackbloom are, as it happens, far more advanced that Earthlings. Technologically, scientifically, intellectually.

Blackbloom is dying. And the Blackbloom inhabitants are looking for another planet.

They think they’ve found just the one.

Arlene Angelina Devereux pulls the axe from the corpse, splashing gore upon her worn jeans. She looks angry at the still twitching body kicking its feet. “They are all the same aren’t they?” “It’s easier to think so, but they aren’t. ” The man next to her is tall and dark-skinned wearing an unnaturally wide grin. “Mort, when will all this end? How long must I hold this mantle?” Mort points his grin towards Arlene with sunken eyes that gleam malicious intent and says, “As long as it takes.” Hard resolve washes across her features.
Welcome to Blackbloom.

Blackbloom did not used to be Blackbloom, but no one likes to think about it now. IT reminds them of things that they cannot have anymore, and that list is long enough to choke a ryrfin, as the old grandmothers say. Blackbloom is where they live now, and what they live with.
It starts as a raised, itchy darkness around the nailbeds, just as you are sprouting your first hairs about the privates. By the time you are full grown, it is a rustling, inky glove halfway up your forearms. And when they lay you in your grave, you are cloaked head to toe in the Bloom, your features hidden, your eyes shadowed, your skin a distant memory.

Almost forgot to post my entry!

http://www.foxedproductions.com/2011/10/blackbloom-festival.html

Seems like y’all are posting everything inline. Whoops.

During the midwinter festivals on the continent, families fell an elm, stand it in their homes, and decorate it with candles. “When Shadows Bloom” is a popular candle-lighting carol. The lyrics suggest that the tree and candles drives away the long winter nights. On Solstice, when the nights begin to shorten, the tree is chopped for the family’s hearth.

The elm is likely used because N. Umbrosia is commonly found on his branches. The black leaves of this plant, commonly called blackbloom, must have seemed to our savage ancestors to be the ever-lengthening night being absorbed by the elm.

[...] you missed it, last week’s brand new worldbuilding challenge — “Blackbloom” — is still going strong at 100+ entries. Come, define a new world. I’ll pick the [...]

At the rotten heart of a dying world, Blackbloom thrives. Though the planet above – poisonous, ruined, wild – is quarantined, a black market warren whose tunnels stretch beneath the whole planet nonetheless plays host to all manner of unsavoury sentients. Though once benign, the plants of the feral jungle overhead have changed as the daystar wanes, their properties grown mysterious and fey. Potions, poisons, panaceas – for any who manage brave the surface, reclaim its treasures and live to sell them after, a hungry market exists on other worlds for the fruits of Blackbloom: the Maze of Dead Flowers.

Blackbloom: a space station orbiting Europa. Earth is in desperate need of fresh water.

Drilling is going well, popular opinion polls tell us we are favored among the human race. Living far from home is weird, but not in a bad way. Last week, A comet flashed by us trailing a cloud of ice crystals. Everything looks different here, so far from the sun.

We’d be perfect if it weren’t for the black tar that gums up the works of the drill. Every day half of us drill and half of us burn away tar. The brains are working on a solution, but so far, burning it off seems to work just fine.

[...] at Terrible Minds, there’s a little flash project going on that is absolutely fascinating: These are the only things you know [...]

The cultures of Blackbloom do not make a distinction between singing and dancing. A singer who does not dance is considered ‘quiet’ and a dancer who does not sing is considered drab or pale.
Asking a friend for a forgotten lyric is done by miming the steps as often as by humming the tune.

(Had another idea..hope we can make multiple entries…>.>)

Blackbloom is actually a bead of sweat on the skin of a sleeping god. Not that anyone inside it KNOWS that. All the strange creatures inside the city know is that they live in a saline bubble, bordered on one side by a slowly moving ‘ground’ Though others demand it is a ‘wall’, not that it matters, gravity doesn’t exist here. It has been moving for generations, surely it will continue? What of this strange darkness that looms though the membrane of the bubble? The Seers predict Doom. But don’t they always?

Blackbloom is a world in which the battle has already been won; the corporate masters overthrown, the senate dissolved and reinstated to Platonic ideals with Aristotelian common sense. But the underworld is filled with loosely organized cells of resistance — some of whom are led by former power-brokers who escaped the guillotine, some led by idealists who believe fervently in the personal right to wealth. They control the shattered landscape beyond the walls of the great citadel-cities, building inevitable revolution.

In Blackboom, there is a machine that at precisely dawn, declares the date of death [day, month and year] to all newborns on that day. Because of the sensitivity of this information and the pressure of achieving as much as possible within the time frame, parents hide pregnancies, lie about their children’s age and birthdays are never celebrated, so that the child will never learn the day of their death.

The world was once terraformed. Aliens had seeded it With algae spores. These spores grew on all the wet things, killed some of them, and converted others. It was a very painful process. Creatures walked around, bodies half-covered in algae, going mad from pain.

The algae spores are a modified version of filamentous green algae, which does conjugal reproduction (trading DNA with other species). The algae takes the sulfur out of the SO2 atmosphere, leaving the free oxygen that the original lifeforms are allergic to.

The algae is still out there. Occasionally there’s an outbreak. Non-natives are particularly vulnerable.

[...] the “Blackbloom” worldbuilding [...]

[...] Remember Blackbloom? [...]