6 interesting finds during worldbuilding research
This is Endnotes from Oon, a series of posts in which I offer behind-the-scenes worldbuilding, research, extra and/or other tidbits in relation to my new epic fantasy series, The Nameless Republic, beginning with Son of the Storm. I will try my utmost best to avoid spoilers, but they may be inevitable to a small degree, as I might need to provide context for one thing or the other. If you’re risk-averse and would prefer to wait until you’ve read the book before you eyeball any of these emails, that’s great. But if you’re the brave sort, read on.
One of the most-asked questions I get during book talks is: What interesting stuff did you discover while researching for your worldbuilding? I’m never sure how to respond because I don’t keep a list and there’s a ton of them. But today, I’ll try to offer 5 of them. Here they are:
The ancient craft of Jaliyaa: Most of you know that the main character of SOTS, Danso, is a jali. That is not a randomly chosen word. Most know this role of West-African singer-storyteller-poet-historians as “griots,” but that is only the same word with a colonial French root. The Mande word for it is “jali/jeli” (djali, djéli for French inflection). Across West Africa, bard-type scholar-historian-storytellers are described with various terms. If you’ve ever seen Ablaye Cissoko play the kora or Bako Dagnon sing, then you’ve witnessed a jali in action. In Nigeria, I’ve mostly encountered Hausa and Yoruba jalis, often doubling as praise-singers. In Benin where I’m from, most of the indigenous music takes on a call-and-response storytelling quality, as do many of Nigeria’s ethnic groups.
Falling from a height: In the early chapters of SOTS, two characters fall from a height. One easily picks themselves up, the other takes months to recover, and never uses their legs again. I went seeking a rational explanation for this, and found a paper that explained how age, fall height, ground type and body part of impact determine the damage of a fall’s impact. A fall on one’s feet or buttocks, apparently, is unlikely to cause death, even with increased height. But any upper body part hitting the ground first is almost impossible to recover from.
Traditional African medicine: In Bassa, there are bone-setters, physicians, herbal healers, etc. Most of the methods these practitioners apply, I gleaned from several papers on traditional African medicine. Do you know that some of these plants and practices, now termed “alternative medicine,” have just as scientific methods and effective potencies as Big Pharma’s products? We’re talking medical potions, surgical operations, amputations, etc. Traditional African medicine tends to take a holistic approach—mind, body, spirit—which is unsurprisingly the basis of more popular approaches today. Though the spirituality aspect tends to cause people to shy away (see Christian incursion below), in principle, there’s little difference between this and praying for healing from one’s hospital bed.
The history of drawing: Because Danso is also a scholar, one of my research points was to find out how drawing (and in tandem, writing) came to be. I found this nifty website that’s really a free textbook detailing the origins of drawing and the tools used. You’ll notice the Bassai write with charcoal styluses, which they darken in a fire each time they want to write. That idea came to me only after skimming this material.
Traditional funeral rites of a Benin Chief: In SOTS, a high-ranking Idu noble is buried at the Great Dome, and the rites seem like a string of convoluted activities. But not too much of it is far-fetched. I borrowed most of it from the seven-step funeral rites of a Benin Chief, which you can see with the link above.
A timeline of African Empires from the 1st to 15th Century: While trying to find the earliest records of written literature on the African continent, I stumbled upon a compendium of events in African city-states as far back as 300 AD. We’re talking during Rome’s extensions into Northern Africa and long before Bantu migration. If you ever want to catch up on things like the Christian incursion through Ethiopia or growth of the trans-Saharan gold trade, use this link above.
