Dhashere

first look at a new world

Welcome to Dhashere!

Welcome to the setting for my science-fantasy trilogy The Spider’s Friend. I would bet the first thing that leaps out at you – aside from how pretty it is – is all those arrows pointing elsewhere. This sense that you’re in a world much larger and more complex than you mostly get to see is a part of the ambience. It’s a slightly smaller setting than I’ve worked with before; this civilization is only a few hundreds of years old, instead of thousands, and it’s the fate of their neighbors, their way of life at stake. Not The World, let alone creation.

Humans don’t have this world to themselves; it’s filled with other sapient species. Dhashere, the civilization at the center of the story, began its life as an empire, dominating other peoples in the region. But Dhashere doesn’t have exclusive control of its own territories: there are people living in its skies, its sea, excavating cities under its feet. People it doesn’t understand, who take no interest in its doings. Or didn’t before some malevolent mystery human – almost certainly ONE of the protagonist’s brothers – started murdering their shamans.

I feel like you can tell from looking how much fun I had making this one. Very little of this story takes place in a fixed location; there’s an extended period where the protagonist and deuteragonist have gotten separated and are chasing one another back and forth across the inland sea. This left me with a ton of delightful detail I could include in the map, such as a hole in the ground and a giant jellyfish. The burning village and ‘some inns (burning)’ are, alas, both burning because my heroes passed through and chaos ensued.

I look forward to sharing the whole story with you!