My Writing History, Part 3

I have always loved the trope of what I would later learn is called ‘isekai.’ Some of you who aren’t familiar with Japanese media might know it as portal fantasy. It’s a story where somebody from Earth gets transported to a fantasy world. When I was a child, it was my greatest wish. I didn’t have a bad childhood, to be fair, before anyone thinks that the reason I wanted to escape from Earth was to run away from an abusive family. Oh no, far from it. I will admit that I had loving grandparents who saw to my every need and spoiled me rotten. But how much more fun would it be if I lived in a world with magic, ‘mons, and mystery?

From the time I was a child, the only story I intended to write was about humans who came to the fantasy world via a portal. There was a time where ‘the fantasy world’ was just Aloutia, so all the stuff I have currently about solid, liquid, and air portals didn’t exist. There was a single portal that connected Earth to Aloutia, and that was it. In one iteration of my story, the portal was hidden in a small underground town in Kansas. I cannot recall when or why I decided the portal was ‘water’ and that it transported anyone who touched it.

There are many parts of my world where I have no idea where they came from. Why did I develop something a certain way? How did so-and-so come into existence? When did I decide on such-and-such event occurring? I don’t remember when the Gods took their current forms or names. I can’t recall creating many of the sapienti species, or any of the vassal nations of Aloutia. When did I decide to create Cosmo and Ophidia? Or the rest of the planes? I really have no cluckin’ fue where some of my worldbuilding came from. I assume most of it came to me around the years 2003-2005, because I still have documents from 2005 with much of the same worldbuilding as the current story has.

I think I created Morenzal after I decided that there should be portals for each phase of matter. I say “I think” because I honestly don’t remember. When I mapped out the planes I had created thus far and assigned portals to them, I realized I had two portals that could not connect anywhere. I had created Morenzal to connect them, but each plane needed three connections. Morenzal had no water portal connection. The solution was simple enough. Just like how Aloutia connected to Earth, so too could I decide that Morenzal connected to someplace else.

How I envisioned Earth and my fantasy world before I realized I could rearrange the fantasy planes into a pentagon.

This was where the idea of the ‘dominion’ came from, though I did not have that word yet. For a while, Earth and Aloutia were on the same timeline. If you left on June 14th, stayed the night in Aloutia, then came back to Earth, it would be June 15th of the same year. I ended up changing this detail for two reasons: 1. I wanted a human character who had been in the fantasy world for hundreds of years, but who was fairly ‘modern.’ 2. I realized I loved the drama of the humans realizing they couldn’t go back to Earth because they likely wouldn’t return to their own timeline.   

But I wanted time to remain consistent between the planes of the fantasy world. Earth had to be separate, but Aloutia, Cosmo, and Ophidia had to be on the same timeline. Thus, I decided they all existed in a special kind of ‘space’ where time is preserved. At that time, I called it a ‘universe.’ So there was the Terran Universe and the Aloutian Universe. Yeah, I was still calling it ‘Aloutia’ despite that Aloutia was only one of the planes. I had yet to find an elegant solution as to what I would call the entire space. I briefly took inspiration from Fushigi Yuugi and called it the Universe of the Ten Gods, but I also had plans to introduce new Gods later sooo that number would end up changing, lol.

Sometime around 2010, I drew the planes and their connections in various configurations, trying to find the best way to depict it, visually, when I came to a startling realization: it was a pentagon with one plane in the center. It was the one feature of the world which wouldn’t change over time, and which would have been consistent from its beginning to its end. It was an obvious choice for a name. I didn’t want to call it the Pentagon because that name was already taken by the US Department of Defense, lol. I called it the Pentagonal Universe for a few years, but I was never happy with it. I realized the initials would be PU and I could already see people making fun of that. I needed a different word, but I sat on Pentagonal Universe for a while, until the right word came to me. I already used words like realm, plane, and kingdom in specific contexts that would not embody the entire space.

So where did ‘Dominion’ come from? Ladies, gentlemen, and nonbinary friends, I present to you, the best underrated/underappreciated video game of all time: Dominions 4. I was OBSESSED with this game circa 2015.

The Dominions series of video games were made by Illwinter Game Design

In that game, you play as a Pretender God trying to win over the other Pretender Gods. Your ‘dominion’ is the area where you have power and influence. I was familiar with the term dominion use generally, as well as the order of angels called Dominions, and Skyrim’s Aldmeri Dominion.

It was a powerful word, and the more I looked into it, the more I liked it. I morphed the definition for my setting to mean ‘the area of space ruled by a God.’ Or at least where nature is under the command of the same general entity/magical principle. I loved it, and thus the name ‘the Pentagonal Dominion’ was born. It was a bit of a mouthful, but I felt like that added an air of regality to it. Plus, it was highly unlikely any other author would stumble upon that name. It was unique, and just weird enough to be mine.

Plus, PD is a much better acronym.